Monday night M. and A. and I went to the "thee-a-tah," as we say in our fake British accents when we want to be silly, which, of course, is most of the time. Our local theater is putting on Taming of the Shrew and both girls had said they'd like to see it. Shakespeare 6 minutes away? And kids who want to go? An easy decision. I knew from the art on the playbill that this wasn't going to be a traditional production, because Petruchio had a cowboy hat and gun, so I was intrigued too.
M. and I read the play (together, aloud, taking turns with parts) in the days before the performance. A. listened to some of it, and we gave her a synopsis of the rest. Then we went to see the play. It was hilarious! They used almost all of the original play and wording, with a few side comments of their own thrown in, but it was all set in the Old West. Grumio was staged as a Mexican who would break into loud, rapid Spanish at some of the parts where the original character goes on and on for comic relief. The actors did a great job, and all of us thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a great help to read the play beforehand so we knew what was happening in each scene and could understand what the actors were saying.
A few days before that, Mike and I saw another play called Home School Musical, put on by a theater called Desert Star that does musical parodies. This one, of course, was a parody of High School Musical, with a lot of Utah jokes and even Napoleon Dynamite thrown in. We had wondered if the script would be positive or negative in its attitude toward homeschoolers. Home school was definitely made fun of, just like everything Desert Star does a play about, but not in a mean way, and the general tone was positive toward home school by the end of the play. It was very funny and clean, and I wish we had time and money to go see it again and take our kids!
We're pretty lucky to have all these theaters within easy driving distance. And with the questionable quality of most movies coming out now, it's very nice to have other options when we want an evening out.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
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I'm Tamary and
2 comments:
We love going to the theatre also, and I agree that it is nice to have an option that's better than so many of the lousy movies nowadays. We have tickets to see Home School Musical this month, so it's good to hear that you liked it. Desert Star is fun. And Hale Center is doing the Scarlet Pimpernel this year, woo hoo! Too many good things and not enough time...
I'm glad to hear your opinion of Home School Musical. We were thinking of going but I wondered if I should take the kids or they would just feel mocked and it would be a bad experience. They really want to go so maybe we'll do it.
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