A night at the Theatre.

Spent the lovely, 8 inches of snow covered evening with the lovely Kelly, Kelly's T, Amanda, and Chuck watching the touring production of Miss Saigon. Now, I know I'll take flak for this, but I sided more with Chuck's review of things than is with my better judgment. But I guess when you've seen something done so well, seeing an alternate version years later just doesn't do it for you. I guess I'm a Broadway snob.

The guy who played the Engineer was great, and most of the other leads were decent. But one of the psuedo leads was decidedly not as on the mark, and it was all I could do not to cringe. Perhaps he was having an off night. (And it's not defamation if it's a review, right?)

And I don't think they miked the ensemble. Their speaking parts were mostly unintelligible. And the ensemble songs were great.

So I'm glad I went. If nothing else that to shield T's eyes from the opening prostitution scene. (Which I didn't actually do.) And I hadn't heard that music in years. It's amazing how much you forget when you haven't heard it in a while. I was convinced that they left out the whole helicopter scene until it suddenlly appeared in the second act.

[Postscript: Chuck had asked me which tour I had previously seen, and I found a site that listed the casts for each of the shows. And sadly, the way I figured it out was by imdbing that 90s Saturday Morning teen show "California Dreams" to find the name of the girl. Because I remembered that the girl who played Kim was on that show, and when I was 14, I thought that was kinda cool. I'm such a dweeb that I didn't fixate on the fact that Jonathan Pryce, who is much more experienced, was actually starring as the engineer. But hey, she was on a TV show, and that was like, oh, like so cool. Heh.]
Anyhow, the drive home was terrible. The news keeps saying it's going to be better in the morning, but the sky will have to open up and rain down fire to make that happen. I couldn't even see the road on the highway and my SUV was sliding all over the place. The wind is drifting the snow so badly, I don't think 6 hours is going to help much.

Unfortunately, my firm doesn't close for the weather.