Happy Birthday to me!

I'm 24!

Kick off my Sunday Shoes...

So, hideously late night having seen "Footloose" at the Marriot in freakin' Lincolnshire, and now, laundry. I would also like to mention that I have lost my second bicycle in a month to bicycle thieves. Kick a bicycle thief today!

So, Footloose was fun... ish. Extremely, extremely fluffy. I perhaps should have been drunk to totally enjoy it. However, it is one of those musicals that folds in hit songs from the 70s that are frequently sung on American Idol. Yes, the two best numbers were "I Need a Hero," (which inspired deep, deep Kareoke cravings within me) and "Let's Hear it for the Boy." All the young people had strong, overwrought pop-rock voices, and were good dancers, and the all the old people had stage presence. The lead girl was kind of slutty- not an actual slut, nor a wide-eyed innocent- but just a sort of slutty teenage girl, which makes me happy. She had a pretty cat face. The secondary girl had some lovely pipes and channeled Molly Shannon. The lead male was serviceable but rather boring.

All in all, not my cup of tea. See, it's about a town where dancing is illegal, and though that seems like some crazy red-state allegory stuff would go down with that plotline... eh, no. It's actually about getting over grief. Gyp. But it won back my goodwill with the ultra-high-energy, reprise every song in the show finale.

Forgot to tell you all about "The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz" on Saturday. Molly Brennan's outfit alone is worth the price of admission, but add in her actual performance, and Jake Minton's just damn cute Lion, and all those darn munchkins, and the tango, and Cliff Chamberlain's action-star parody tin-man, and all the rest, and you'll get a very good deal indeed. I don't care what you say. As far as I'm concerned, this is the only Oz in town.

Sunday brought me to the very bizarre and super-lovely spectacle by Redmoon, "Loves Me, Loves me Not." Wondrous. I know they had to knock it together last minute in order to avoid the wrong sort of Katrina associations, but I was still quietly thrilled. I couldn't even tell which marvelous things were Redmoon, and which were just nature being obliging- like a suspiciously well timed flock of geese.

Sing out, Louise!/ Damn everything but the circus.

Darn, but it's hard to take a week off. Breaks my stride.


Anyway, earlier today we had Gypsy with Porchlight at TBC. Very famous, strange, and good show which I had never before seen. Odd hybrid. See, it's about vaudeville performers, and there are three classes of songs. Deliberately awful in a charming way vaudeville numbers- (Let me Entertain You), pert vaudeville tinged old school musical songs (All I Need's the Girl) and semi-psychotic, hugely dramatic arias screaming forth from a broken soul (pretty much everything Mama Rose sings.) These last, interestingly, have little vaudeville tinges (because the person singing them is a performer in real life), but they keep breaking down, and the music is gorgeous, and the words are terrifying, and so, really, I can see why people make a big deal about Mama Rose. She's a fascinating monster. She kept making me cry.

At the same time, you have cute numbers with kids, and funny numbers with strippers. They can't really take any of the oomph off Rose, but it's always great to get a little variety show in. Porchlight had cute kids, and a fantastic Mama Rose. Perhaps a little too much always at the highest intensity, still... Louise had a nice voice, but was a little colorless, and needed work on her striptease. I wonder if Toots L'Amour can sing at all?

And again. Variety acts. Hephaestus at Lookingglass was last night. I'm afraid this was a disappointment. Which is odd. I mean, Hephaestus is one of my favorite Greek gods- not quite as sexy as Hades and Persephone, but still romantic and endearing. And the circus! I love the circus! I love the silks, and beautiful girls on swings, and sudden, arrested falls. They lift my heart up with them. And Lookingglass has some wonderful acts.

Problem is, adding the story to the acts didn't really enchance them. It detracted from them. I'll explain more in my official review, but right now I'm very tired. I'll just say this: circus acts, like vaudeville numbers, don't really tell a story very well. Perhaps the most effective story to tell with a circus act is one about circus performers. Like the creators of Hephaestus. Can you think of anything more romantic than marrying someone you met when you were both child acrobats and then travelling around the world with your tiny acrobat offspring? Because that really happened! It was in the press kit! I mean, the Amazing Wallendas. If that title doesn't scream perfect piece of theatre I don't know what does.