I am going to see the Hamilton, the musical played by the Toronto cast next week! I don’t go very often at all because tickets are pricey (70 to 200CAD + fees), but live entertainment gives a feeling that’s hard to replicate behind a screen.

I usually go 2 or 3 times a year, and went to see Peter Pan Goes Wrong last month. It was hilarious, and I was pretty amazed at the lengths the cast went through for the physical comedy. Found that its actually on Youtube earlier today, so I’ve been having fun looking dornthe small differences.

I believe it was Tosca, which I saw on a student ticket many years ago. The plot is a working man’s wife being forced to sleep with the local tyrant, Scarpia, to free her husband, Mario, from his clutches, but Mario dies anyway. I remember being very interested in the following line to his underling, Spoletta, as Scarpia orders him to spare Mario and fake the execution:

Scarpia: I have changed my mind. The prisoner shall be shot…Wait a moment…
(He fixes on Spoletta a hard, significant glance and Spoletta nods in reply that he has guessed his meaning.)
Scarpia: As we did with Count Palmieri. A sham one!

Two possibilities there the opera leaves you with. One, this worked successfully with Count Palmieri Mario, was the victim of a screw up. We see Spoletta present at the execution stopping the sergeant from giving Mario a mercy kill after the firing squad do their part, so he seemed to be helping the ploy. Scarpia also wrote out a free travel pass for Tosca to leave his domain with her husband afterwards, so it seemed he was dealing honestly with her.

Or, two. Scarpia wanted to keep Tosca to himself. The pass he wrote out was a fake, or he wasn’t going to give it to her, and he spared neither Count Palmieri nor Mario. His orders to Spoletta, given in front of Tosca, referenced Count Palmieri because he’s pulled this same trick before and likes getting women to, ah, service him in exchange for favours before betraying them for kicks. The stage directions call for significant glances between him and Spoletta, which could mean anything.

I live in a city with a pretty active Broadway tour scene + local theater, so I get to a show about once a month. Actually going to a show tomorrow night :)

Rashomon, when I was in college. God, the troupe did an amazing job. I was pulled in and enthralled the whole time.

I want to go watch more theatre, but life is not as easygoing as it was in college, and I’m too burnt out and frazzled to appreciate stuff properly right now. I plan on going soon someday soon though.

I saw an Ibsen play recently. I’d never seen or read any of his work before and I understand now why he was so controversial back in the day! I only really knew of him from references in BoJack Horseman, which was why I almost died with laughter when the first line of the show was, “What are you doing here?”

It’s been 5 years now, maybe? A small local production of “It’s a Bird… It’s a Plane… It’s Superman”. It was a lot of fun, can see how hard they worked with a limited budget and space. The bigger shows are too loud and overproduced for my tastes anymore.

I don’t go very often, but I should see more! Usually I see musicals, but the last thing I saw on a stage was actually a Shakespeare play a few years ago. I was visiting London for the first time and saw As You Like It at Shakespeare’s Globe. (That performance was also really cool because the actor who played Celia was Deaf and signed her lines, and the actor who played Rosalind acted as her interpreter).

I lived just north of Atlanta all my life (until moving to South Carolina a couple months ago), and an old church near me was converted to a playhouse. I went to go see Murder on the Orient Express there with my sister.

Earlier in the year, we went to see Hadestown at the Fox Theatre in downtown Atlanta, and it was spectacular!

Went a month or two ago to see Peter Pan Goes Wrong and it was hilarious, highly recommend. Before that, probably Hamilton circa 2019.