Stage moms and tow trucks

Tonight I managed to duck out of the office early enough to see Signature Theatre's current production Gypsy with my friend Melanie.  I'd never seen the show before and this production has gotten great reviews (and accordingly is sold out most nights), so I was excited when I managed to snag the tickets.

It's essentially the story of the mother of all stage mothers, an indomitable woman of ferocious energy and vitality who pours all of herself into pushing -- driving -- her daughters towards stardom during the waning years of Vaudeville.  She doesn't quite succeed the way she imagines.  The pretty, talented daughter elopes young and is never heard from again; the other daughter, so often relegated to the background, then becomes the object of her mother's ambition.  She hasn't the talent for real performance, but ultimately achieves a sort of stardom when she discovers striptease (the character is loosely based on the real-life striptease Gypsy Rose Lee).

Momma Rose is a fascinating character; a force of nature in the same vein as Scarlett O'Hara only with her energies channeled into her daughters instead of herself.  She's charismatic and oppressive and, when she finally opens up and lets herself shine in the song "Rose's Turn", magnificent.  (That song has got to be one of the hardest to perform well in all of musicaldom.  It was as thrilling a physical feat as any prize-winning gymnastics routine might be.)

Now, if only that were the end of my story!

But no.  Part deux of this evening's adventure kicked off in the parking terrace.  I'd offered to give Melanie a ride to the nearest metro station only to discover that my car was nowhere to be found.  Vanished without a trace from the parking terrace.  The only thing to do was call the police to see if the car had been reported as having been towed (I wasn't so vain as to think anyone in the neighborhood would think to steal an eleven-year-old Kia).

Sure enough, there it was in the tow-truck register.  The policeman gave me the number for the impound lot and I set about tracking it down -- which turned out to be a lot less easy than you'd expect.   For one thing, it's not so fun to be making all these phone calls at 11pm at night when the temperature is around 15 degrees outside and you left your scarf and gloves inside your now-impounded car.  For another thing, the towing company does not make finding your car easy.  This is partially due to physical location.  Towing companies apparently have access to a fourth dimension that is not readily findable by Google maps and Uber drivers.  We followed the directions to a T but found ourselves in a God-forsaken spot next to an underpass near the Pentagon, with no impound lot in sight.

But fourth dimensions aside, the problem was also partly one of personnel.  As you might imagine, a towing company isn't going to be the place where you find America's best and brightest (especially working the overnight shift).  For example, when I found myself beneath that underpass and called for further directions, the conversation went something like this:

Me:  Hi, it's me again, the GPS has led me to this underpass and I'm wondering if you can give me further directions.

Guy:  Mmmkay.  I'm next to the Public Storage building.

Me:  There's no Public Storage building in sight.  In fact, there's nothing in sight except the Pentagon and wilderness.  I'm on the edge of the wilderness.

Guy:  I have no idea where that is.

Me:  Well, let's brainstorm.  How about you give me more info about where you are -- can you give me an intersection?

Guy:  Oh! Yeah, I'm on 12th Street.  

Me:  Thanks.  [Beat]  Umm, I thought we were going for an intersection.

Guy:  I just told you the intersection.

Me:  No, you told me the name of one street.  Intersections, by definition, require at least two streets.

Guy:  Oh, got it.  Twelfth and Long Branch.

Me:  That's more helpful.

Only it wasn't, really, because Twelfth and Long Branch apparently don't ever intersect.  But at least it got us going in the right direction, because after a while we spotted the sign for the Public Storage, which in turn led us to the place where cars go after being impounded.

It also looked very much like the place where teenagers in horror movies go to get murdered.  I was fairly confident that I did not live in a horror movie, so I wasn't too nervous -- but I did think it prudent to ask the driver to wait for me while I bought back my car and/or escaped from any crazy people with chainsaws who might be waiting for me in the shack.

Turns out I was right about not living in a horror movie -- no one tried to murder me; all they wanted was my money.  So $150 later, I climbed in my car and drove away, bidding fond farewell to my driver and the poor man who had to spend his nights in the tiny freezing shack giving driving directions to idiots like me who somehow manage to get their cars towed in the first place.

Maybe next time I should bring a stage mother with me to talk her way out of paying the towing fee...

Don't Rain on My Parade

Memorial Day weekend!  The unofficial start to summer!  Time for beach and sun and humidity!

Oh wait.  I live in Seattle now, where it's in the low sixties and rainy.  I've been warned/assured by exactly everyone I've met that summer starts on July 4.

But still -- summer or no summer, it's a holiday weekend and that should count for something.

I considered venturing out into the city, which is celebrating its "Folk Life Festival" only a couple of blocks from where I live.  But after seeing the swarms of hippies and punks wandering to and fro on their way to said festival, I decided I'd seen enough "folk life" and focused on other pursuits.

For example, yesterday morning I killed two birds with one stone by trying out a new diner for breakfast and researching how to climb Mount Fuji later this summer.

Eggs Benedict with ham, pulled pork and bacon, with tomatoes
at The Lucky Diner

And last night I met up with a coworker and a couple of her friends for dinner at Cascina Spinasse, which turned out to be a charming and delicious Italian restaurant.  Sadly, I have no photos -- I figured I needed to lure these people into being friends with me before busting out the camera and blog on them.  I will say, though, that the gnocchi with snails and mint/pesto sauce was amazing.  As were the puff pastries filled with rabbit pate.  I have no doubt I'll be going back . . . .

Today was even colder and rainier than yesterday, so after driving out to church I thought I'd just spend the rest of the day reading and napping like I've so often wished I could do on a Sunday afternoon.  That lasted about an hour before I got bored.  Bored and convinced that I was being lazy and unproductive.  So I got up and started working through a stack of mail and bills and stuff.  That's when I rediscovered a page that I'd torn from a theatre program from a few weeks ago.  It was an ad for a website called Encore Arts Seattle and my first reaction on seeing it was basically where have you been all my life?  I mean, seriously, the website consolidates in one place information about all of the performing arts events in the city -- exactly the sort of thing I'd been wishing that DC had for the past six years!  (Notch a win for Seattle.)

One doesn't stumble upon Aladdin's lamp without giving it a rub, so I ran a search for what was happening tonight:  I had a choice between Little Shop of Horrors and Funny Girl.  I've seen Little Shop plenty of times, but never Funny Girl.  I knew the play had been Barbra Streisand's big ticket to fame back in 1964, and it's been a great way for the writers on Glee to showcase Lea Michele's talent.  The production got okay reviews and the tickets weren't too expensive, so I bought a ticket and then started Googling where the theater was.

The Village Theatre turned out to be in Issaquah, a small suburb of Seattle about twenty miles east of where I live.  I drove out through the rain and was happy to see a familiar sight . . .

Dinner!
(The first Five Guys I've seen in Washington)

and to discover that the theater was a cute little building full of old people (why am I always the only person under 65 at these things?) on a tiny "Main Street" brimming with old timey charm.

The Village Theater

The play was okay.  It's the (heavily fictionalized) story of Fanny Brice, who rose to stardom in Vaudeville during the early 20th Century as part of the Ziegfeld Follies.  Having now seen it, I agree with the critics that it's not the best written play out there.  Some of the songs are amazing (especially "People" and "Don't Rain on My Parade"), but this is one instance where, from a writing perspective, the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

To have any chance of succeeding at all, you've got to have a dynamite performer in the part of Fanny.  The woman who played Fanny in the production was about 85% of what I'd hoped she would be (granted, I was hoping for a Barbra or a Lea Michele).  She had terrific comedic timing and a knack for the physical humor in the part.  But she wasn't a Broadway belter, and she never quite conveyed the intensity, drive and irrepressible energy that Fanny should have.  Fanny should feel like a force of nature; this one was something less than that.  (I kept wanting to have the woman who played Mama Rose in Signature Theatre's Gypsy come and show us how to do force of nature.)



The rest of the ensemble was of varying proficiency.  I'm used to fully professional ensembles, so I'm still adjusting to these regional theaters that bring in the Equity professionals for the leads and key ensemble roles and then fill up the rest with local non-Equity actors.  I'm not totally opposed to giving the non-Equity actors opportunities, but there's a noticeable difference in the level of polish and professionalism.

Still, shortcomings notwithstanding, I enjoyed the performance.  Live theatre is fun and exciting, and I liked the themes in this play of ambition and relationships.  Like Fanny, I want to be a star, and I don't want anything to rain on my parade -- but I also think that Fanny is right when she sings that "people who need people are the luckiest people in the world."  I'm pretty good at the ambition part, but I'm not very good at needing people -- and when I'm feeling most ambitious is when I'm the worst at needing people.  Come to think of it, that's a lot of what I'm hoping to fix in the long run with this new job and move to Seattle.  Here's hoping I can make it work.