Last Christmas, Mer and I got a gift card to use at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. We mused on how to use it, with no real consensus until we found out that we could use it for the Great Lakes Theater Festival, which performs at Playhouse Square. The GLTF has a special 2-for-1 subscription package, where if you are a new or lapsed subscriber, you can buy one subscription and get one for free. This season is pretty great – Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace, Miller’s The Crucible, and Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well. With a little bit of our anniversary funds thrown in, we found we could afford the Saturday matinee package for the four plays listed above.

So, two weeks ago (yes, I’m behind in blogging), we headed up to Cleveland to see Measure for Measure. We have not gone to the theater in Cleveland since moving to the new house, so we got there really early. We caught part of a talk about the play (a feature that happens an hour before curtain on Saturdays), where the speaker talked about how relevant Measure for Measure is today in an age where powerful men have been brought low by sexual scandals. It was not a deep talk, but it was a good overview.

Since we still had about 45 minutes until curtain, we had time to wander in the gift shop. Meredith got distracted by a book on Mamma Mia, so I wandered to the small gallery in the theater. This gallery never seems to be open on weekends, but you can look through the windows. They have a fair amount of sculpture, and my current favorite piece was back after it had been away for a few months. It is a larger-than-life sculpture of a woman playing the fiddle. I love this piece – it captures motion really well, and it just speaks the joy of music to me. It is called Melody by a sculptor named Tuan. If you are looking for a Christmas gift idea for me, consider Melody – it is only $79,000. I’d put her next to our piano.

Mer found me and we went to our seats. Briefly, Measure for Measure is the story of a city (Vienna) where the the Duke has become concerned that laws are being ignored, especially sexual laws. His solution is right out of modern boardrooms – he decides to leave and installs an upright and just man (Angelo) to start enforcing the laws. The Duke also reveals later that he is curious to see if Angelo can remain just with the temptation of power. It’s not a very charitable solution, but there it is. Angelo sentences a man (Claudio) to die for the crime of fornication (Claudio has gotten his lover pregnant). Claudio appeals to his sister (Isabella), who is entering a nunnery, to plead with Angelo for his (Claudio’s) life. Isabella does so, and in pleading for Claudio’s life, Angelo (the powerful official) falls desperately in lust with Isabella. He proposes that if she sleeps with him, he will spare Claudio’s life. She refuses. Things are moved along and patched up by the Duke, who comes back to the city disguised as a friar. It is a comedy, so all ends in marriages. However, it is considered a “problem” comedy, because it is a very dark play, and some of the things the Duke does are bordering on cruel (not telling Isabella that her brother is still alive when she thinks he is dead, having Isabella briefly arrested for “slandering” Angelo, etc.).

The director decided to set Measure for Measure in a modern police state. The set was stark, with many steel bars showing. There were surveillance cameras everywhere, and the sets were changed by police guards, who often stayed on stage without lines. Angelo was dressed well in a suit, and was often behind or near a large desk. The “walls” of rooms could quickly become the bars of a cell, or the walls of a convent. It worked really well. Having the cameras everywhere was effective – when Angelo decides to offer his deal to Isabella, he goes to great pains to turn the cameras off. When Isabella says she will expose Angelo as a fraud, he asks her who would believe her. She points to the cameras, after which Angelo smiles as he turns a camera on and off. It exposed Isabella’s powerless situation really well.

The acting was first rate. Angelo was smooth and powerful. Isabella was strong in resolve, but realized she could not save her brother. The Duke was smart and scheming. It was a well-done production. My only slight gripe was right before the intermission. The police had been hauling prisoners around strapped upright to dollies. That worked really well. But right before intermission, while the Duke was musing over justice and the lives he can save, the police wheeled four prisoners on stage. Of the four, only one was under the death sentence. I thought wheeling all four on stage was heavy handed, and I think it would have been more effective to just have Claudio on stage. Small detail in an excellent production.

That was our afternoon – we got home about 4:30. We still had more going on that Saturday! Our friends Ray and Sara had extra tickets to go see the Summit Choral Society do an a cappella concert in Akron. We were told it was at a church downtown at 7:30, so we headed out about 7:00. We parked at a parking garage about 7:20 that was next to what I thought was the church. As we approched the church, there was a wedding streaming out, so we figured it was the wrong church (it was almost 7:30 now). We walked quickly (Mer was running at points) to try to find the street the church was on. We walked four or five blocks down the street, then went to another street and walked back to the car. We jumped in the car to drive around looking for the street. We went six or seven blocks, then drove back another way. We came to the same garage, and saw that it was on the street that we were looking for – the church that had the wedding in it was the right church after all. It was now 7:45, so we were a little surprised to see Ray and Sara standing on the steps. It turns out the concert started at 8:00. Ray and Sara had seen us walk by, but had not been able to stop us (they were still in their car). So, we had good exercise before the concert.

The concert itself was much fun. The choir was about 60 people strong, and they opened with some pieces I really like (a piece by American composer William Billings, and they did a wonderful job with “Magnum Mysterium” by Lauridsen). The concert had several arrangements of gospel songs, and they even threw in a PDQ Bach piece for fun. The choir had three brothers as special guests. These three brothers could really really sing – they all could sing different parts, and they sang their own arrangements of gospel songs and originals. The high tenor was getting higher than many of the sopranos in the choir. They were amazing.

The concert was much fun, and ran for about an hour and a half. I had a mild headache for much of the concert, so I did not enjoy it as much as I should have. Ray and Sara took us out to eat at Applebee’s after the concert. We had a good time visiting and laughing with them at the restaurant, and my headache went away with the food.

So, theater, music, and food! Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!