Weekend, Part 2: Entertainment
Oct. 27th, 2010 04:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreThe Science and Engineering Festival was not the only thing I did over the weekend. Saturday night, I went to Antonio Rocha's storytelling concert, Tales of Dark and Light, produced by Telling Moments. I had not seen him tell before, so was not quite sure what to expect. His background is in mime and I cringed a bit when he started with a few minutes of classic mime routines (e.g. climbing an imaginary rope). It's not that I dislike mime - I even took a mime class once upon a time - but I like it in small doses. Fortunately, he moved on to more conventional (though still fairly physical) storytelling. The first half of the evening was intended to be spookier ("the dark") with a lighter second half of mostly personal and family stories. The lighter material is more my speed, particularly his closing story about a trip he took t Africa when he turned 40. But I did like a spooky story from Africa quite a bit, though I wish he'd said where in Africa it was from. (This is one of my soapboxes. Africa is a huge continent, with a diverse population. Chichewa people from Malawi have about as much in common with, say, Ewe people in Ghana as Norwegians do with Italians.) At any rate, I enjoyed Antonio's show and will look for opportunities to see him again.
Sunday afternoon was Little Theatre of Alexandria's production of The Visit. Thanks to good metro timing, I was able to stop at Mischa's to stock up on coffee. This is sort of the anti-Starbucks with high quality coffee roasted (not burned) in house. I ignored their baked goods in favor of having fish and chips at Eammon's, which is part of Cathal Armstrong's restaurant empire. The cod was good, but it's the chips that are amazing. I often don't like french fries but these are worth going out of the way for.
But it was the play I was meaning to write about. We read Durrenmatt's work in high school and it made a big impression on me then, becoming a favorite. Looking back, I suspect this was largely because it was really the first black comedy I was exposed to. LTA made only minor changes to the script to modernize things, e.g. having one of the things the mayor buys on credit be a new computer. But all of the amusing little quirks were there - the rhyming names for the members of Claire Zachanassian's entourage, her pet black panther, and, especially, the yellow shoes. Margaret Bush (as Claire) and Steve Lada (as Anton) both did fine. I thought Robert King as the teacher was a bit weak at first, but his performance got stronger as the teacher dealt with his internal conflict. The most notable performance was by C. Evans Kirk as Koby. All in all, this was well worth seeing.
Sunday afternoon was Little Theatre of Alexandria's production of The Visit. Thanks to good metro timing, I was able to stop at Mischa's to stock up on coffee. This is sort of the anti-Starbucks with high quality coffee roasted (not burned) in house. I ignored their baked goods in favor of having fish and chips at Eammon's, which is part of Cathal Armstrong's restaurant empire. The cod was good, but it's the chips that are amazing. I often don't like french fries but these are worth going out of the way for.
But it was the play I was meaning to write about. We read Durrenmatt's work in high school and it made a big impression on me then, becoming a favorite. Looking back, I suspect this was largely because it was really the first black comedy I was exposed to. LTA made only minor changes to the script to modernize things, e.g. having one of the things the mayor buys on credit be a new computer. But all of the amusing little quirks were there - the rhyming names for the members of Claire Zachanassian's entourage, her pet black panther, and, especially, the yellow shoes. Margaret Bush (as Claire) and Steve Lada (as Anton) both did fine. I thought Robert King as the teacher was a bit weak at first, but his performance got stronger as the teacher dealt with his internal conflict. The most notable performance was by C. Evans Kirk as Koby. All in all, this was well worth seeing.
