We aren’t usually this social.
And while we love musicals and plays, we don’t usually attend the theatre this often.
But everything came together as a perfect storm, and we found ourselves in the audience three times in three days.
Months ago, we bought tickets to one of our new favorite musicals—Come From Away. If you aren’t familiar with this one, it is based on the book The Day the World Came to Town, the true story of what happened in Gander, Newfoundland, on 9/11. Our friends, the DeMuths, bought tickets with us, and we were excited to share this musical with them.
Then, a few weeks ago, my mom texted the family that her friend’s granddaughter was playing the role of Cosette in a local high school production of Les Miserables. Of course, Les Miserables is our favorite musical of all time, and any chance we get to see it, we go! This time, we attended with my parents, sister and brother-in-law, and niece. We went in with fairly low expectations, even though it is a large high school, but we were blown away by the 16-year-old who played Val Jean! Mom’s friend’s granddaughter was great, too. It was a wonderful performance all around.
Finally, we had tickets for a play we had enjoyed during our trip to Prince Edward Island a couple of years ago, a comedy called The Play That Goes Wrong. We said if it ever came to Dallas, we would go. We discovered it would be at a smaller theatre in North Dallas, so we bought tickets for the weekend before all our other play tickets. Only it snowed here that weekend, and the performance got canceled! The tickets weren’t expensive, so we originally bought four to force us to be social. But when we had to reschedule, the only other performance we could attend was the Saturday after the already scheduled back-to-back social theatre trips! So then we were three for three. We enjoyed this laugh-until-you-cry comedy with a couple of new friends from our church. We were glad they enjoyed the quirky humor!
So that’s how we ended up seeing three plays in three days—which was also three straight days of socializing! Truly, I think we would have bailed on at least one of them had it not been for going with other people, and these being three shows we know we enjoy!
After that matinee on Saturday, we were exhausted! But then our Community Group held its scheduled meeting on that Sunday afternoon.
As the saying goes, the show must go on.
What is your favorite musical or play? What have you seen recently?
Just after I graduated from college, I acquired a work visa in England. I worked as a domestic at The Salvation Army International College for Officers (8 week sessions for officers from around the world) in Upper Norwood, a suburb of London. On my days off, I went into the city. One night, I snagged the best deal. With student status, I secured (for only 5 pounds) a seat in the far left of the second row (considered obscured vision, but I felt I saw everything with no difficulty) for a showing of Les Miserables. It will forever be one of my favorite musicals (although I saw probably 7 or 8 shows during my 7 months there).
Wow! What a fun experience–both London and Les Mis! On our one trip to London we had our kids and my parents with us and we got to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the West End.
Good luck with that dinner party! We did that once and just had it catered because the kids were little, and I couldn’t focus on more than cleaning the house. But it will turn out fun and perfect because your people will feel loved that you thought of them
Ha! Ours was partially catered. (More about that in my blog post next week!) But yes, everyone had a good time and were happy to be there, so I guess it was a success.
Would love to see “Come from Away” sometime as I enjoyed the book. I will admit, tho’, that Le Miz doesn’t hold any appeal. It’s one of my dad’s favorites, but … no. We subscribe to a local professional theatre nearby (the Chicago area is HUGE on theatre) and the last show we saw was “White Christmas.” The next show is the musical “Titanic.” Gee. I wonder how that ends. 🙂
If you have access to Apple+ TV, they have Come from Away. It’s the stage version that has been filmed. That was the first way we saw it. After watching it, we knew we would find a way to see it in person one day.
Yes, here in the Dallas area we have lots of great local theatres–both community and professional. Our next play locally is Camelot, which I’m not sure I’ve even seen on stage but I used to listen to my grandparents’ record of the soundtrack when I was little! 🙂