Disappointing Deluge

Fiorella finally yielded to peer pressure Sunday afternoon and joined the rest of the audience in a standing ovation for the Georgetown Palace's presentation of Singing in the Rain, but she didn't agree with the sentiment.

The show was pleasant enough in a high school sort of way, but it certainly didn't meet the high standard set by such past productions as Grease, Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.  Fio and Husband had invited Brother Bill and his wife as well as Son and his girlfriend to join them for what they thought would be the hit of the season, but it wasn't.

Fio started having misgivings the second she saw the opening flat, a washed-out depiction of Graumann's Chinese Theater.  Husband's misgivings began when the band struck up--the trombone and trumpet were especially problematical. 

Then there was the acting--or maybe it was the directing--or maybe the idea of trying to turn an iconic movie into a stage play.  People raced onstage to begin scenes, then raced offstage to end scenes, like they were vaudeville performers.   Wouldn't blackouts with those multiple descending screens been better?  And what was it with the klunky stagehands?  And the audience curtains to backstage that kept flipping open and showing daylight? 

About the actors, some cues were obviously missed, and each actor seemed to have his own individual style, as if he/she were the only one on the stage.  Fio suspects that so much time and effort went into learning the song and dance numbers that the cohesion of the story, the understanding of how the characters related to each other, was lost in the shuffle-ball change.

And about those song and dance numbers, they were good, but not as sharp as, say, Jessica Kelpsch would have made them.

All in all, the production was amateurish, but the audience loved it. Or maybe, like the woman sitting next to Fio who hummed along with every song, they loved the memory of seeing Gene  Kelly, Donald O'Conner, and Debbie Reynolds lighting up the silver screen.

Getting Things Done

Fiorella didn't realize there was so much time in the world.  You'll remember that her accursed Lenovo started flipping on her again so she took it off to Click to get data transferered onto her brand-spanking new Dell (blessed be the name). Since she won't be getting the machine back till Monday, she now has lots of spare time on her hands, which means a forest of cedars have met their doom and--wonder of wonders--Fio has started cleaning up her office/study.  She spent about twenty minutes in there yesterday, and will give it twenty more today.  Limiting her time commitment is her technique for handling tasks she doesn't want to do.

It worked for the guest room when Younger Son vacated after two years' residence.