The front of the Paramount Theater in Charlottesville
The Paramount marquee
At dinner we all got a laugh at an ad for the show which ran in the Hook, a local paper that covers the arts (and lots more).
The Hook ad for our show
Everybody threw in their two-cents worth about the ad but I think my favorite comment was Hardy's. He just observed that they obviously pasted somebody else's head on a shot of his body. Does the phrase "robust fantasy life" mean anything to anyone?
We got a nice surprise in the lobby when we walked out to get a few pictures before the show - our boss, Barter's Producing Artistic director Rick Rose was in the house. I'll have to admit it was nice to hear his distinctive laugh in the audience. I've missed it.
Rick and Ben share a laugh over the Hook ad
We load the bus in a few minutes for our drive to Morganton, North Carolina and a show tonight at the CoMMA (City of Morganton Municipal Auditorium). More to come!
Morganton, NC, tonight? There used to be a state asylum there, I believe. One of my my father's cousins died there, if I have the story correct. Make no connections between cousin Oscar and me, please. I never met the man.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I will admit that the place where y'all performed Tuesday night was a hazard to my mental health. I drove into Hazard around 4:15 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, and one of the first places I saw was The Forum at the Hal Rogers Center. I thought, "Oh, that's easy enough to find..." Then I had to find the motel. It used to be Days Inn, I believe, and is now something like America's Best Value Inn. It was 4-5 miles away from the Hal Rogers Center, along streets that were unfamiliar to me and where there was a lot of construction. But I finally found my way to it. Coming back to it after the play was another story. I took several wrongs turns. At one point, I found myself driving the dangerous streets of downtown Hazard at nearly 10 o'clock at night and working myself up into near-hysetria (Not really, but it makes for a better story for me to say so.) I left a shrill message on my buddy's phone. Imitating Mike Ostroski as "Lennie," I said, "George, I am lost and I can't find my way back to the motel...AWE-NEST, George!" (I did not recognize the accent Ostroski was using, but then I don't know much about accents.) I found my way to the motel about 15 minutes later, so I was just playing around. But my buddy told me the next day when I was in Abingdon that he thought he was going to have to call the Kentucky State Police to go looking for me!
When I saw the size of the crowd in Hazard Tuesday evening, I was glad that I had made the 325 mile drive to get there. I had a nice
drive to Hazard on Tuesday, and another nice drive from Hazard to Abingdon on Wednesday.
And you know what they have going on in Abingdon--HEAVEN SENT, LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, THE FOREIGNER. It was my second time to see the first two. I had not seen the Barter's production of THE FOREIGNER, and wasn't planning to until my mother's second cousin in Floyd told us she had seen it in early October and had enjoyed it immensely. So I decided to see the matinee on Thursday before I drove back home.
I had been thinking that I had seen a production of THE FOREIGNER back around 1980-81 when I was in college, but it turns out I had seen a local--as in Altavista Little Theater--production in 1987. I couldn't figure out why I didn't remember a thing about it until I got a clipping about it out of my files and saw who was in it. "Betty Meeks" was played by one of the town librarians, a woman my brother used to call "Ms. Uh-Huh" because she repeatedly said "Uh-huh, uh-huh..." when she was conversing--which she did a LOT. The rule about library patrons being quiet apparently didn't apply to her!
Needless to say, Mary Lucy Bivins and Poisson and Danny Vacarro and the rest of them (he wrote dismissively about the younger cast members) gave me plenty to remember Thursday afternoon. I am very glad that I went to see it before it was gone.
I am also very glad that I made th effort to see OF MICE AND MEN on tour. I liked the newbies (some more than others, though), and the role-switching (one case of it that I noticed) seemed to work well. And the dog was quite good. I told Eugene about him playing close attention and waiting for his cue in the scene where he was about to be taken out and shot. He's a real professional, that fellow!