A different stage show

Back in the day, my lovely wife and I would see a movie a week. Sometimes two. Summertime always meant 4 or 5 concerts; I saw Neil Young like 3 years in a row back in the 80s. That’s on top of seeing theater whenever someone I knew was in a play. Man, those were the days…

Still, I do still manage to see something else besides theater once in a great while and last week we packed up the wee ones and took in the Sara Evans concert at Innsbrook. Ms. Evans has an amazing voice and my 11-year old daughter knows virtually all of her songs, many of which have some great lyrics (“Perfect” is a particularly favorite of mine).

Well, the show was wonderful. Sara (we’re on a first name basis now…) had a cute personality, even though she did a lot of that Katherine McPhee-style waving at the crowd (can she even see who she’s waving at?) And she covered a lot of her hits and some songs I hadn’t heard before but instantly liked. Most impressive: the sound quality was exceptional; clear as a bell and loud enough but not ear-splitting like so many concerts tend to be these days.

But on the way home, I did think for a moment about what a great value theater is, particularly musical theater. At Sara Evans, we were probably 50 yards away from her and had to stand much of the show to see anything. The crowd was generally well behaved but there were still several words tossed around casually I would have preferred my 5-year old hadn’t heard. At a good musical, you have singers that are also usually awesome plus a story that hopefully is entertaining plus you can sit down relatively close to the performers and the crowd generally sits in respectful silence and listens. All and all, not a bad deal…