Midnight Blogging

After a week’s vacation (ahhhhh…), I am back in town and trying to organize both my wits and the scattered aspects of my life. I’m not having a whole lot of luck yet so the following is a pretty random collection of theater-related thoughts.

I had planned to attend the performance of “The Merry Wives of Windsor” this past Saturday but it was canceled because of the excessive heat. While I was disappointed, I’m glad the management made that decision because I don’t expect actors passing out from heat exhaustion would have enhanced the entertainment value of the play at all.

I came back for the Sunday performance, where unfortunately the audience numbered only a couple more than the cast. The skies threatened throughout the evening but they never opened up, making me think it would have been the perfect night for a performance of “The Tempest:” built-in celestial lighting design!

Richmond Shakespeare’s next season was listed on the “Merry Wives” program (spring show = “The Tempest”) and I was particularly excited to see “King John” listed. This is one of those Bard plays that doesn’t get produced very often so I’ll be looking forward to seeing it staged. It also seems to have a couple of particularly meaty roles; who could resist a character called simply “the Bastard?”

Because I can’t seem to leave this subject alone (and it doesn’t seem to be going away), I was intrigued by this Playbill ettiquette item on handling patrons who text during a performance. I also found it interesting that the second question concerns snoring, a more prevalent problem in my experience but one that doesn’t seem to result in the same kind of vehement reaction.

I don’t know whether to be amused or horrified to think of “Magic Mike: The Musical.”

The theater season doesn’t come to a screeching halt in the summer like it used to, but it does taper off a bit. If you are finding holes in your social calendar, you might consider taking in a show at ComedySportz improv. Beyond the regular “Hams” vs “Legends” go-rounds, they have been doing some interesting alternative programming lately. For instance, last Friday there was a Middle School league versus the Major League show (in the interest of full disclosure, I should say there was a Timberline on the Middle School team). The ‘young and cute’ versus ‘old and clever’ dynamic made for some unexpected highlights. As always, you never know what’s going to happen at an improv show.

And just to bring everything Full Circle (and hey, did you hear there’s a new theater company in town called Full Circle?), one of the highlights of “Merry Wives” was the performance of Brooke Turner as Mistress Quickly. Turner has trod the ComedySportz stage on numerous occasions and joins the ranks of other prominent Richmond thespians (Jeff Clevenger, Jennifer Frank, Chris Evans who has since moved to NYC, etc.) who have used improv to keep their talents honed. Pretty nice company to be in!