Three shows

[prog]

Saw The Lion in Winter last night. It was pretty good. I thought the leads were good (chanaleh was great, actually... and it was a pleasure to see her really act, versus play choral role in a G&S show) but the actual story didn't do much for me. It seemed to wander around between straight-up historical drama and anachronism-laden semi-surreality, without really settling on either. Shrug.

I was probably made a little negative by the crummy venue (a stifling-hot church basement, complete with people watching TV and washing dishes in adjoining rooms) and the strange set-changing. The sets were actually quite nice -- within any one scene. Between every scene, stagehands lugged around these heavy pieces of furniture, most prominently a (cleverly jury-rigged) four-poster bed. The first time they disassembled and removed the bed in under two minutes, they got a round of applause... but when they brought it back in, and then took it out again, and so on, it became a strange sort of running gag for the audience to snicker at. I do not think this was the intended effect. I am left wondering if they could have just done without the bed entirely, and gone with a much more minimal set. Maybe not.

Then I went home, and then was immediately summoned by dissidentdiva to watch Das Experiement at her house. It was kind of fun, but also kind of silly and cynical. Everyone had fun petting her new wee orange kitty-cat though, who is very very cute. Then I went home again.

On the way to and from her house, I walked past the Episcopal church at the corner of Beech and Mass Ave in Cambridge. Both times it contained a suited evengelical ranting in Portuguese (it's a Brazilian-centric church) at a couple dozen parishoners seated in the front pews. Both times, I paused to peer in at the spectacle for a bit.