prusik | Encores! weekend 2008 #1

[Ok, I have three stories, all almost ready to send out. So, what I should be doing is proofreading like mad, and making sure that I'm absolutely satisfied with what I've written. That way, I can actually send them out. These stories may be brilliant. They may be awful. But they're definitely not going to sell if I don't ever mail them out. I'm basically admitting this entry is cat waxing because proofreading is so much fun...]

I took the usual 6:30am bus to NYC on Saturday. Met up with my friend, J, at Drama Bookshop. We dithered while he found a place to eat for lunch. It's tricky. He wanted to try some place new. He's a picky eater. The places I'd love to try in Manhattan he blanches at. e.g., I've heard great things about an Italian raw fish place. We ended up some place old.

From there, he went off to see August: Osage County. I went off to see Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll. I really enjoyed the latter. It's Stoppard's take on the intersection between Czech politics from the late '60s to the '80s and the popular music of the time. The first few scenes were hard to get into. They were so short, and seemed to cut off just as they got interesting. Things click after an especially wrenching scene where we finally get to the emotional core. It's Stoppard, so everyone is erudite. There's all sorts of seemingly digressive discussion which, of course, al turn out to be relevant. (e.g., specific words in a poem of Sappho.)

Stoppard punctuates each scene break with relevant music of the area. (e.g., the cue that we've know entered the '80s is that act two opens with a song by U2. It's quite the change from everything that's come before.) It's a device that works well, when it works. Like I said, the first few scenes never seem to reach their point. That the music intrudes to end the scene does not help. (Also, I was highly annoyed that they didn't end each musical clip at the end of a phrase.)

The acting was uniformly excellent, with especially fine work from the leads Rufus Sewell, Brian Cox, and Sinead Cusack. I found myself fascinated with the length of various characters' hair. (It's significant to the story and needs to change quickly between scenes.)

Met my friend J, again along with another, D, for dinner. The restaurant we'd originally wanted to go had a longish wait. We put in our names, then went searching for another restaurant. We recapitulate the lunch problem, more or less. (The man that I marry will have more interesting taste in food, not that either J or D were ever candidates, BTW.) We end up back at the original restaurant, which eventually seats us.

The three of us go to the first Encores! concert of the season, Applause, the 1970 musical by Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, Betty Comden and Adolph Green based on All About Eve. Christine Baranski was under-rehearsed as Margo Channing. She'd apparently had the flu during Encores! very short rehearsal period. It was all smoothly professional, but not much more. However, Kathleen Marshall really outdid herself with her choreography. The gay bar scene was campy as all hell but the dancing was incredible. (That the male dancers all had these incredible bodies helped...)

I went into this knowing only the source material and a couple of songs. The show was not a pleasant surprise. The few songs I knew may be the only good songs in the score. That's too bad.

Our mutual friend E surprised us by showing up. (He lives in California.) So we chatted for a while. He's planning on showing up at the next Encores! concert. It'll be good to see him again.

We then went our separate ways. For me, this means taking the 12:30am bus back home.

During the various bits of down time (e.g., waiting for the bus), I read Elizabeth Bear's Carnival. Oh. My. God. I have absolutely no critical faculties when it comes to this book. Ok, I still have 160 pages left to go. It's still possible for everything to go pear shaped, but it's not likely. She's done everything perfectly so far. The characters are realistic, vivid, complicated, and compelling. The dilemmas they find themselves in grow organically out of their situations. There are no easy solutions. The world she creates is beautifully detailed and fascinating. The plot formed from all of these elements just grabs me by the throat and won't let go. (I wish I could take the day off and just finish the damn novel.)

So, on that mildly envious note, I'm going to proofread...