Tony-Winning 'Company' Revival Will End Broadway Run July 31

Well damn, that sucks.
Not that anyone thought B'way was back to pre-pandemic levels, but still.  This, to my mind, is a sobering measure of just how woefully incomplete Broadway's Return really is (so far).  If the time when Fun Home and The Band's Visit could run over a year apiece is gone for the foreseeable future (is there such a thing as a foreseeable future anymore? has there ever been?), it will be a bitter pill indeed.

Hopefully my finances will improve in time to catch this at least once more before closing.  (My day job is supposed to resume any day now, after being on hiatus since mid-March, but I've heard no definite word since their "late June" estimate, three months ago).

In better news, a North American tour is planned to start in fall 2023.

Today I started going through my closet and selecting dress shirts which I'm not going to fit in again any time soon. And by the time I can fit in them again I will want to buy new ones.  I'm saving the very best of them in the hopes I will lose enough weight some day to wear them again.  I started going through my pants but I decided not finish it all in one go.  Leave some for later! (I said, not procrastinating one single bit).  I did go through my belts and they are in a box with the shirts to bring to either Goodwill or a clothing closet for guys who need causal dress clothes but don't have any.

Mrs. Lovett, You're a bloody wonder -- eminently practical And yet appropriate, as always. As you've said repeatedly, there's little point in dwelling        On the past! No, come here, my love... Not a thing to fear, my love: What's dead Is dead. The history of the world, my pet, Is "learn forgiveness and try to forget." And life is for the alive, my love, So let's keep living it! Just keep living it, Really living it...

Do you mean it?  Everything I did, I swear I thought Was only for the best -- Believe me! Can we Still be Married? Oh, Mr. Todd, ooh, Mr. Todd, leave it to me... By the sea, Mr. Todd, we'll be comfy-cozy By the sea, Mr. Todd, where there's no one nosy-- Just keep living it, Really living it...

Granted, three lines of Todd's would have sufficed for the gameplay, but I couldn't resist.  This is just such a devastatingly well-wrought scene: starting even earlier, from Todd keening over his dead Lucy, while Mrs. Lovett grasps at echoes of "Poor Thing" to defend her duplicity; then lurching into the reprise of the "Little Priest" waltz (plus Mrs. L.'s pitiful rush of "By The Sea", with too many words crammed desperately into an inappositely square rhythm, badly hobbling the music's triumphant lilt -- until Todd, steamrolling ahead without missing a beat, bodily forces her back into the dance tempo)... it's just diabolically effective dramatic writing.  Todd's lethally straight-faced parody of the actually-moral position here is what makes it so terrifying; by the time his homily arrives at "What's dead is dead" (as they literally waltz around his wife's corpse), one can only laugh in horror at Nellie's simultaneous plea "Can we still be married?".  We may at first be as thrown-for-a-loop by Todd's spooky volatility as she is; but when she ends up, seconds later, engulfed in flames inside an oversize iron coffin, it's a double-whammy for the audience: absolute shock and -- after this excruciating buildup -- absolute inevitability.  This is one of those passages that should be invoked, near the top of the list imho, by anyone seeking to analyze Sondheim as an unparalleled dramatist, as distinct from his brilliance as composer and lyricist ("Barcelona," whatever its virtues, actually strikes me as a relatively wan example on which to build this case).  The story beats, the general tempo and perhaps even some of the devices (creepy callbacks to happier times?) might possibly have been provided, in some form; I can't remember Bond's original script well enough to say, and of course I don't know exactly what Wheeler may have given SJS to build upon.  But God is in the details, and Sondheim's execution of these particular details just takes your breath away.

I am waiting both for the game and for the trash company to pick up the recyclables. I was not expecting to have to put out my trash this morning, but then I looked over the recycling schedule, and it did not list today as a holiday, so I had to hurry up and get it ready this morning. Maybe the recycling people are treating the day as a holiday, while the regular trash people didn't.

I need to take the dog for a walk earlier tonight, because on Saturday as we were on our evening walk, we missed three goals.

Today was a very nice day.  It was cool and not humid.  The morning felt like a lovely Fall day.  It would have been an awesome day to spend outside.  I was inside....at work.  Work today was much better than the last three days.  It could even be called a good day.  

Make me confused,
Mock me with praise,
Let me be used,
Vary my days,
But alone is alone, not alive.

So far, through two periods, the hockey game tonight is going very well, and I'm enjoying it.   (I'm hoping I didn't just jinx the home team.) 

We went on a lovely walk this evening that felt much better than our morning walk, which felt quite warm for 9 am.

I am craving pizza.

Worth checking out for Menken's heartfelt rendition of "Somewhere That's Green" at 8:47, delivered at a relatively brisk tempo with a composer's sensitive yet unfussy pianism -- and bone-deep connection to a character who, seemingly from the moment of her inception, has captured listeners' imaginations with more apparent depth than her cartoon contours might suggest:

Once -- yes!  Once, for a lark!
Twice, though... loses the spark.
One must never deny it;
But after you try it,
You vary the diet.