Broadway!
So the other night, Drew and I had tickets to see Oklahoma!
The quintessential American musical, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! has been a staple of community theaters, school groups, etc. I have a special fondness for this show; I played Aunt Eller in our 10th grade production.
The production currently playing at circle in the square is ...different. Intimate, dark, erotic, edgy.
Let's start with Circle in the Square. It's a small theater, seating capacity 840. It' what's known as "thrust theater" where the audience sits on three sides of the stage. Here's a link to the seating chart, that should give you an idea of what the stage looks like. There are 12 cast members (no chorus) and instead of a full orchestra, a six musician band that sits directly on the stage. Instead of period costumes, the cast wears modern western dress -- lots of denim and cowboy boots. Instead of churning butter, Aunt Eller opens many packages of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix and prepares cornbread batter. An effort has been made to make the songs sound a bit more like country music than 1940's show tunes. At various times, our Curley grabs a guitar and accompanies himself while singing.
As is the norm of Broadway these days, casting is colorblind -- our Laurey is biracial. Interestingly, Ado Annie is played by an actress in a wheelchair.
And it amazes me how, without changing a word of dialogue, the whole meaning of the play has been changed. who plays the part, how the line is said, is just as important, if not more important, than the words in the script. Our Jud Fry is a much more sympathetic character, his death a much more complicated thing, than how he's traditionally viewed. Drew didn't like it, and I'm still trying to decide how I feel....
Afterwards, we had dinner at Ellen's Stardust Diner. We used to come here all the time, but lately the wait for a table has been prohibitively long....
Food was good -- Drew had a burger and I had a meatball sub.
But the reason the lines are out the door...
This is no ordinary diner. the owner, Ellen Hart, was a "Miss Subways" in 1959. The diner is filled with pop culture memorabilia from the 1950's. When the diner first opened, the waitstaff was dressed accordingly -- the guys in bowling shirts, the girls in poodle skirts. (Now the "uniform" is a company t-shirt.)
More importantly, Ellen's is the home of the singing waitstaff -- all of the waiters are aspiring actors and singers, and take turns performing when they are not waiting tables.
Seriously, one minute your waiter can be carrying your food to the table, the next he'll be grabbing the mike and crooning a love song...
The quintessential American musical, Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! has been a staple of community theaters, school groups, etc. I have a special fondness for this show; I played Aunt Eller in our 10th grade production.
The production currently playing at circle in the square is ...different. Intimate, dark, erotic, edgy.
Let's start with Circle in the Square. It's a small theater, seating capacity 840. It' what's known as "thrust theater" where the audience sits on three sides of the stage. Here's a link to the seating chart, that should give you an idea of what the stage looks like. There are 12 cast members (no chorus) and instead of a full orchestra, a six musician band that sits directly on the stage. Instead of period costumes, the cast wears modern western dress -- lots of denim and cowboy boots. Instead of churning butter, Aunt Eller opens many packages of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix and prepares cornbread batter. An effort has been made to make the songs sound a bit more like country music than 1940's show tunes. At various times, our Curley grabs a guitar and accompanies himself while singing.
As is the norm of Broadway these days, casting is colorblind -- our Laurey is biracial. Interestingly, Ado Annie is played by an actress in a wheelchair.
And it amazes me how, without changing a word of dialogue, the whole meaning of the play has been changed. who plays the part, how the line is said, is just as important, if not more important, than the words in the script. Our Jud Fry is a much more sympathetic character, his death a much more complicated thing, than how he's traditionally viewed. Drew didn't like it, and I'm still trying to decide how I feel....
Afterwards, we had dinner at Ellen's Stardust Diner. We used to come here all the time, but lately the wait for a table has been prohibitively long....
Food was good -- Drew had a burger and I had a meatball sub.
But the reason the lines are out the door...
This is no ordinary diner. the owner, Ellen Hart, was a "Miss Subways" in 1959. The diner is filled with pop culture memorabilia from the 1950's. When the diner first opened, the waitstaff was dressed accordingly -- the guys in bowling shirts, the girls in poodle skirts. (Now the "uniform" is a company t-shirt.)
More importantly, Ellen's is the home of the singing waitstaff -- all of the waiters are aspiring actors and singers, and take turns performing when they are not waiting tables.
Seriously, one minute your waiter can be carrying your food to the table, the next he'll be grabbing the mike and crooning a love song...
I love live plays.
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It's amazing how subversive some classic Broadway was. We just get so entrenched in how we think things were, so we don't necessarily get the subtext. It sounds like this production brought the subtext out more.
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