Dream with Our Eyes Open

The sis-in-law (the one who's married to a minister) had a rotten week: her employer is transferring her, with almost no notice, to a different facility, and as she runs a senior center (basically, daycare for senior citizens), it means leaving behind not only staff, but also clients. So she decided at virtually the last minute to come down (with our nephew in tow) and see the Young Lady's play (our daughter is crewing her school's not-quite-spring musical, Beauty and the Beast) Friday night, because she thought it would cheer her up. This meant I had to clean up the guest room, which was wall-to-wall wrapping paper bits and rolls still, from the last installment of Xmas. But when I got home, there was an Amazon box waiting: I have Samurai Deeper Kyo 27, xxxHolic 11 [thanks, megan!!], and Takumi-Kun 2!

Saturday I was not feeling well - malaise about sums it up - and nothing much happened except meals out (lunch at Oriental East, which has great dim sum and forgettable service; dinner at Austin Grill, which is quite good for a chain) and the week's grocery shopping. The Young Lady was crewing again and had to eat leftovers for dinner. Oh well - it builds character!

Sis-in-law left early Sunday morning, and then sanada came to visit! We had brunch at Jackie's (retro American cuisine in a groovy-funky 1960s industrial setting) and talked manga nonstop. A good dose of fangirling makes one feel ever so much better. Then we went and saw the matinee of the play ourselves. Energy level good, one or two really good performances, scenery very uneven (the Beast's castle was very, very good, the village scenery was pretty lame), costumes pretty nice (althought the dinner plates were awful), and the special effects were much fun ... during the Beast's transformation at the end, petals fell from the catwalks onto our heads. They were meant to be rose petals, but all I could think of was (a) Sakura of Doom and (b) Nanao dumping baskets of petals over Shunsui. And the casting was the usual marvellous Blair High School racial mix: Oriental Belle, African American Gaston, Hispanic (I think) Beast, and so on. Dinner was what the Mr. calls "the meat place" - Brazilian BBQ.

Well, as all the reviews said, this was a bloody mess. Literally (gobs of stage blood). And also very well acted, and affecting. But you can tell this is early drama, and early Shakespeare - the villain is bad because .... he's bad. That's it. End of explanation. And he's the only non-white person there, which made it very, very uncomfortable ... .

We've seen a fair amount of really good theater this year, because the Young Lady's school program requred that she see a play every quarter (they didn't have to be professional productions, though). But I think maybe now we're in the habit for its own sake ... .

Saturday saw us desperately seeking a play - any play - that we could get to without having to do any driving into DC's less friendly downtown areas. See, the young lady has to watch a play every quarter and write a review for her school program. We'd hoped to hit some Shakespeare downtown (Metro-able), but left it 'til too late - all sold out.

So we ended up seeing a student production at University of Maryland (College Park), The Green Bird. It was originally a Commedia dell'Arte play from the late 18th century in Italy, written by Carlo Gozzi (who also wrote more famous stuff, like the story for Turandot). And actually, this was a good choice because it was a helluva lotta fun ...