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fauxkloreBeing home doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing things, of course.
Pat (the Style Invitational Empress) and her husband, Mark, usher at Arena Stage and had gotten four free tickets for American Prophet there as a result. I ended up going with Kathleen, Cindy, and a friend of another friend. The show is a musical about Frederick Douglass. It was interesting and well-acted, with Cornelius Smith, Jr. quite convincing in the lead role. As for the music, I particularly liked the song “Brother” and the use of the traditional “Wade in the Water.” Overall, it was well-worth seeing.
A few days later, I went to see the Folger Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the National Building Museum. They had built a theatre within the museum for this. There was also a walk-through set outside the theatre area.
We also had time to browse the museum shop before the show. This is, in my opinion, the best museum shop in DC, but I resisted temptation. As for the play, the production was somewhat streamlined and emphasized the humor in it. I particularly liked Jacob Ming-Trent as Bottom. But the seats (at least the ones we had) were extremely uncomfortable.
A few nights later, I was at Nationals Park for a different sort of entertainment. No, not baseball, but a concert. Specifically Lady Gaga. It was chaos getting in, since they didn’t open the gates until half an hour after they said they would (which was 2 hours later than when they’d originally said) so I was waiting in line on Half Street in the heat for ages. And she started the concert almost 2 hours later than had been advertised. Still, she put on a good show. We were up on the third tier (which used to have a view of the Capitol but now has a view of a lot of new buildings and a few construction cranes to put up more buildings) so we had a great view of the stage. Or, at least, the jumbotron. That felt more like watching a movie than like being at a concert, frankly. I have a lot of respect for her both as a musician and as a person and I enjoyed the spectacle. But I really prefer more intimate settings to arena concerts.
Anyway, she did a lot of familiar songs and some unfamiliar ones. Here’s “Poker Face.”
I really liked the hat she wore for “Shallow.”
The final entertainment event I went to recently (well, aside from seeing a movie, which I will write about in my next quarterly update) was seeing a one-man show called My Son, the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy at Theatre J. I think I’d seen an excerpt from this on-line and it seemed right up my alley. Indeed it was. Brad Zimmerman had a mixture of Jewish jokes (many of them familiar, but so what?) and personal stories, largely about his relationship with his parents. I’m not sure how this would play to an audience that doesn’t consist of older Jews, but it played well for me and I’m glad I went. (A friend who went to a later performance also enjoyed it.)
Which reminds me of one of my favorite Jewish jokes: Did you hear they’re making a talking doll of my mother? You pull the string and it says, “what? Again with the string?”
Other things I’ve done recently (all over zoom) include a book club meeting, crafts group, a story swap, and countless games of codenames. This past week was the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conference. That merits its own entry. And, in a little while, I am heading up to New York for the weekend.
Er, yes, I am busy.
Pat (the Style Invitational Empress) and her husband, Mark, usher at Arena Stage and had gotten four free tickets for American Prophet there as a result. I ended up going with Kathleen, Cindy, and a friend of another friend. The show is a musical about Frederick Douglass. It was interesting and well-acted, with Cornelius Smith, Jr. quite convincing in the lead role. As for the music, I particularly liked the song “Brother” and the use of the traditional “Wade in the Water.” Overall, it was well-worth seeing.
A few days later, I went to see the Folger Theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the National Building Museum. They had built a theatre within the museum for this. There was also a walk-through set outside the theatre area.
We also had time to browse the museum shop before the show. This is, in my opinion, the best museum shop in DC, but I resisted temptation. As for the play, the production was somewhat streamlined and emphasized the humor in it. I particularly liked Jacob Ming-Trent as Bottom. But the seats (at least the ones we had) were extremely uncomfortable.
A few nights later, I was at Nationals Park for a different sort of entertainment. No, not baseball, but a concert. Specifically Lady Gaga. It was chaos getting in, since they didn’t open the gates until half an hour after they said they would (which was 2 hours later than when they’d originally said) so I was waiting in line on Half Street in the heat for ages. And she started the concert almost 2 hours later than had been advertised. Still, she put on a good show. We were up on the third tier (which used to have a view of the Capitol but now has a view of a lot of new buildings and a few construction cranes to put up more buildings) so we had a great view of the stage. Or, at least, the jumbotron. That felt more like watching a movie than like being at a concert, frankly. I have a lot of respect for her both as a musician and as a person and I enjoyed the spectacle. But I really prefer more intimate settings to arena concerts.
Anyway, she did a lot of familiar songs and some unfamiliar ones. Here’s “Poker Face.”
I really liked the hat she wore for “Shallow.”
The final entertainment event I went to recently (well, aside from seeing a movie, which I will write about in my next quarterly update) was seeing a one-man show called My Son, the Waiter: A Jewish Tragedy at Theatre J. I think I’d seen an excerpt from this on-line and it seemed right up my alley. Indeed it was. Brad Zimmerman had a mixture of Jewish jokes (many of them familiar, but so what?) and personal stories, largely about his relationship with his parents. I’m not sure how this would play to an audience that doesn’t consist of older Jews, but it played well for me and I’m glad I went. (A friend who went to a later performance also enjoyed it.)
Which reminds me of one of my favorite Jewish jokes: Did you hear they’re making a talking doll of my mother? You pull the string and it says, “what? Again with the string?”
Other things I’ve done recently (all over zoom) include a book club meeting, crafts group, a story swap, and countless games of codenames. This past week was the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conference. That merits its own entry. And, in a little while, I am heading up to New York for the weekend.
Er, yes, I am busy.
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Date: 2022-08-27 02:37 am (UTC)