crafty_packrat

Today I went to see a production of Come From Away. It's the story of Gander, Newfoundland and their response to the closing of United States airspace on 11 Sept 2001. I went with ellen_fremedon, M1, and M2; we were sitting in the 2nd balcony, which required taking the elevator up to the 7th floor.


Here's the NPR Tiny Desk Concert to give you an idea of what the musical was like.



The show is without intermission, and only about 90 minutes. The actors play one main role, but double and triple other roles to fill out the story. This production had some amazing lighting design that kept your focus on the actor currently performing, while allowing the rest of the cast to be the chorus or to move around the set while not being noticed.

If you have a chance to go, it's well worth seeing. Just bring tissues.

When to see Synetic Theater's production of The Tempest, which was amazing as usual. However, I am very glad I didn't sit in the splash zone, as I was two rows away and still got splattered a bit. I'm also glad that they did this production in October -- last time they did The Tempest, they did it in February, and getting wet then is a recipe for hypothermia.

For those of you that don't know, Synetic floods the stage with 2 inches of water for their production of the Tempest, and then takes full advantage of it for lots of interesting effects, including a piano that spouts water from the keyboard. This season's production also cast Prospero and his brother with women, so we had Prospera and Antonia, dancing in full-length dresses on a flooded stage.

I'm probably going to buy a subscription to the rest of the season. I actually do want to see the entire slate this time, and that will save me some amount of money.

I went to see Syntetic Theater's Sleepy Hollow last night with greenygal, pleasance and A Pseudonym.

All in all, it was a very loose adaptation of Washington Irving's classic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, but mostly the differences came from making Ichabod Crane and Brom Bones into soldiers recently returned from the Revolutionary War, instead of a schoolmaster and a local tough in the 1790s. They kept the Headless Horseman as the ghost of a Hessian solider, but had him out for revenge because Ichabod and others had killed him during the war, and unnecessarily slaughtered his beloved horse as well.

Which mean there were several fairly terrifying scenes of the Horseman and the horse spirit chasing through the woods after various characters. Yet again, Synetic made one fairly static set piece into several terrifying different things. They also had strips of a Hessian flag (well, an approximation of the actual Hessian flag of the period, anyway) that the Horseman left on the bodies of victims for just that perfect ominous touch.

The scene where the Horseman comes out of the woods on his horse to confront Ichabod and is surrounded by the decapitated ghosts of his victims (played by the ensemble, dressed all in black, wearing identical masks, and carrying their heads) was incredible spooky. The horse at that point was the dancer who'd been playing the horse's spirit throughout, a member of the ensemble working the front legs, and another ensemble member with the Horseman on his shoulders to give him the illusion of being mounted on horseback. It worked really well and was really creepy.

The next play in this season is an adaptation of My Father's Dragon, which should be much more family-friendly.