30, 31, 32

Reviews of “[title of show]” came out over the weekend, both Ms. Haubenstock at the T-D and Mr. Miller at GayRVA seeming to like it quite a bit. I finished up my review yesterday and it should be in next week’s Style. The best capsule review I can offer is also the simplest: don’t miss this show or you’ll be sorry you did.

This past weekend was a little weird in that seemingly all of a sudden, a big slew of shows were all closing. “Art,” “Honk!” and “Quilters” all wrapped up and, to complete the slew of one-word titles, “Shorts” opened and closed. (For those of you who might have missed it, Ms. Lewis in the Times-Dispatch wrote up “Shorts” and Mr. Miller weighed in on “Honk!” last week). I’m always more aware of openings and those occasional weekends when several shows arrive at the same time and there’s a buzz of new possibilities in the air. Now it’s like a big deflation as I look around and rue the shows I didn’t get a chance to see.

My recent out-of-town adventures allowed me to take in my 30th and 31st shows of the season. Several years ago I started keeping track of the local shows I’d seen during a season and this year I expanded my little spreadsheet tally to include any production whatsoever, including staged readings and out-of-town shows (I only counted the Radio City Xmas Spectacular once, even though I saw most or all of it at least 4 times). So “[title of show]” became the 32nd production I’ve seen this season, the 23rd local professional production.

Twenty-three was the total number of local pro productions I saw last season so I’m certainly going to beat that number this year. I’m looking ahead and thinking I could possibly make it to 30, particularly given that the Firehouse will have two shows in rep that I haven’t seen (thanks, Firehouse!). Even if I make it to 30, that’ll mean 39 productions overall for the year which will fall short of the 2008-2009 season when I saw 35 local pro productions and 5 non-pro ones.

Forty productions. That means that, on average, three weekends out of the four in the typical month I went to see a show. I’m not tooting my horn here or anything. It’s just a little staggering when I look at the numbers. Even more staggering to me is that I know people whose theater consumption dwarfs mine (looking at you, Ms. Haubenstock!) How do they find the time?