Last weekend (April 25-27th) was the start of a marathon of theater. Due to season tickets bought months ago combined with tickets that we bought at the CVCA Auction, we managed to have four outings in three days – three evening performances and one afternoon performance.
Friday evening was CVCA’s spring musical, Oliver!. CVCA has impressed me deeply with its musicals, and this (my eighth) was no exception. The set was elaborate and fantastic. There was a thrust stage built just for the musical. The stage was painted to look like cobblestones. Several of the buildings on the set could be moved so you could see the inside or the outside depending on the scene. There was an elevated bridge at the back of the stage to be London Bridge. It was a great set.
The acting was superb. The stereotype of high school acting is that it is at best “okay for high school,” but I think our students were at a high collegiate level or a good amateur group. The leads were especially good, and of the leads, I was most impressed with the actor playing Fagin, the old man in charge of the young pickpockets. The actor playing Fagin not only did a great job when he was center-stage, but he never left character even when a minor part of a major dance scene. He would still be “old” even then – putting his hand on his back, being slightly stooped, relying on his walking stick, and so on. What a great job.
The orchestra was scaled way back this year to about a 10-piece group, but it was still capable of providing excellent music. There were four adults and about six student musicians, and I am impressed that students would be able to play at that level for two hours. Nicely done.
There is also a joy in seeing “your” kids on stage. It is a great pleasure being part of the “in” crowd – of being able to wave and say hi to fellow audience members, and to congratulate the actors and musicians after the show. Several of the actors came looking specifically for Meredith – it was quite touching. So, that was an excellent Friday night.
Saturday afternoon was more serious, but jaw-droppingly good. We went up to Cleveland to Playhouse Square to the Great Lakes Theater Festival to see a production of the The Crucible. What a deep, thought-provoking play, and Great Lakes did a magnificent job of putting it on.
The set was very interesting. The stage was filled with a three-sided box made of plywood. This box was added to with other plywood settings to make different spaces. All of that wood should have been warm to see, but they were lighting everything with really harsh florescent light (much to Meredith’s satisfaction, since it was showing that florescent light was evil). The light became more and more harsh as the play went on, especially in the courtroom and prison. The only time the wood was lit warmly was in the home of the main character, John Proctor. It got to such an extreme that near the end of the play, the officials came into the prison carrying florescent lights instead of torches. It was unusual, but it worked very well to have the set reflect the action on the stage.
The actors were great. This show ran in repertory with All’s Well That Ends Well, and it is much credit to the skill of the actors that we either forgot who they were in the play we had just seen a week ago, or we forgot within just a few minutes. Two of the comic characters from All’s Well were playing very serious roles in this one, and I could not place one of them, and Mer could not place the other. Amazing. The actor playing John Proctor was especially good in his role. We were also excited to see an Actor’s Summit regualr (Alicia Kahn) on the stage in Cleveland.
The Crucible is such a great play. It was painful to see the community of the play being torn apart by the literal witch hunt, and seeing good and sensible people being driven into the ground just on suspicion. It makes you think about what happens when a large group or even society itself conflicts with your beliefs. It is probably not a coincidence that the play was staged with the current background of terrorism and the U.S. government’s response to it. Very moving play, which I’d love to see again someday.
Saturday evening we upped the culture level even further. We went to see and hear the Summit Choral Society’s concert of Gabriel Fauré’s and Maurice Duruflé’s requiems. There was a large orchestra and choir, and a large children’s choir as well. The music was peaceful – both composers went for quieter versions of the requiem. We got to see this with our friends, Ray and Sara George. We met them for supper at another CVCA Auction gift certificate, an Italian restaurant near Akron, where we all got really excellent pizza. But I digress. I enjoyed the concert well enough, but it did reinforce that I really like folk music much better than classical. The music was done really well, but my mind wandered quite a bit. Of the two requiems, I liked Durufle’s better – it had more dynamics going on, and the melodies were more interesting to me.
We actually had to leave the concert a little early, because we had to be a CVCA at 10:00. We were meeting our Dominican Republic small group team at school to help tear down the Oliver! set as a fund raiser (each small group needs to raise $400 to contribute toward the trip). So, Mer and I got to see more people, and we had a good and productive time tearing the set down, which took about two-and-a-half hours to finish.
Sunday, we finished off the theater going with a Weathervane Community Theater’s production of Enchanted April. Meredith had shown me the film a number of years ago, and while a “chick flick,” it was quite enjoyable. It tells the story of four women (and two husbands) right after World War One who go to Italy in April. It has a very happy ending, and is not terribly deep, but I’m a sucker for Pollyanna-esque plays and movies.
The set for the second act, which is in Italy, was very impressive. They had a master gardener design the set, which had an elaborate garden for the women to romp in. They did a nice job. Mer and I had a good time at this play.
The hardest part of the weekend was losing nap time. I was beat all week long, which found me going to bed at 7:30 on Thursday evening.