We are the patriarchy! We are on the balcony!

I've just spent a lovely, lovely Sunday hunched over my laptop doing tippy-tappy-typing chores like a good girl/pathetic Dickensian drone. If the world was just and kind I'd be out on the beach right now with Harry Potter 7 and a Moscow Sling. Instead, I'm blogging at you. Hope you like it, unfeeling jerks!

Past two weeks have been about plays that make a great noise. I saw "Jerry Springer, the Opera" last Sunday, when the Bailiwick was like the wrong side of a steam cooker. (the INside, get it?). Had fun anyway. I have a great weakness for choruses that have a collective identity, and a sense of humor. "Jerry Springer" had a chorus like that, and it's pretty much the only one I've seen outside of a G&S operetta. Sure, choral jokes don't tend to come off the first time (it's a diction thing) but when they finally hit, whether it's on the third repetition or when I'm listening to the CD, damn do they kill me.

On Monday, I got stood up by two people for "Siskel and Ebert Save Chicago." They have been chastised, thoroughly.

The title of this post comes from "Ragtime," which I finally caught last night. I don't think it's ever going to be a musical that I love- the lyrics and the book don't do it for me and everything is too on point- but Porchlight really makes it wail. Their music direction is so SHARP, equity, schmequity.

Anyway, it's a panorama of turn of the century America- during the bows, JP Morgan, and a number of other powerful/violent white males were standing up on the second level. I imagined an extra song for them.