Last Saturday was “my” Saturday – a Saturday where I was in charge. Mer and had a leisurely morning; I blogged and Mer slept in, and then we listened to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me from bed. Recently, our public radio station moved Wait Wait from 1:00 back to 11:00, and so it makes it possible on very lazy mornings to listen from the comfort of a cat-laden bed.

After Wait Wait, Mer wanted to get her hair cut, and since it was a beautiful day I went running. I ran about 4.7 miles at a fairly slow pace. I was tired (it was my sixth day in a row for running), but I enjoyed the sun and I listened to part of Sense and Sensibility on my iPod (from the *free* website Lit2go, from the University of South Florida!).

After we both got back (and I showered), I took Mer to lunch at a local hole-in-the-wall, Hamburger Station. It is a small diner that mostly serves burgers and fries, and they are pretty cheap. The burgers are “sliders” – small hamburgers that are only 99 cents. I had two and a pretty good bunch of fries, while Mer got one burger and some chili cheese fries.

Since we had both recently had the ice cream bug, I took Mer to Handel’s ice cream for dessert. I really do love Handel’s – I think they have the best ice cream stand going (although Ben and Jerry’s is pretty fantastic in the store-bought variety). I bought a couple of Thin Mint Girl Scout Handel pops to take home, in addition to our eat-there ice cream. It was quite satisfying.

We went home and I took my usual weekend nap. That got me well rested for the evening’s main event. We got in the car and drove the 90 minutes to Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania. We had two former students with roles in Grove City’s production of My Fair Lady, and the tickets were free, so we went to see it.

I really like My Fair Lady. I think it is an interesting and funny musical. I love the characters; Higgins is wonderfully rude, and Mr. Doolittle is just plain funny, and Eliza is a great character that you pull for. I enjoy the songs very much, and the dialogue is fun.

Grove City did a great job with this play. They had a huge cast (probably upwards of 40 students) and a full pit orchestra. The pit at Grove can be raised and lowered, so the orchestra was just slightly below the stage, which forced the sound up rather than out, which made the lyrics easier to hear. The stage crew had built a 3-foot-wide “U”-shaped thrust around the pit, which led to some breath-holding dance numbers where I was afraid the actors were going to fall. Off to one side was an impressive opera house facade and on the other was a pub facade. The great bulk of the main stage was taken by a three-level set, that was mostly used for the interior of Higgins’s house. It was a tremendous set.

My friend Kevin is a junior at Grove, and he got to play the old English bachelor, Colonel Pickering. He did a great job at it – he even grew a beard (which was colored grey); I have never seen Kevin unshaven, let alone hirsute. Mer’s former student Austin (a freshman) played a drunken friend of Mr. Doolittle. That looked to be a fun role – lots of revelry. The other actors were very fine, and the sound was excellent. It was a good time, and since Mer gave extra credit to students to go see it (since it is based on a Shaw play that she teaches), we got to see a number of CVCA students, and even a few alumni were at the show as well.

My Fair Lady is a long play, coming in at just under three hours. It was a tribute to the show that the evening did not drag at all, and I only got antsy just before intermission. It was worth the price of admission (and even the three hours of driving).