4 July 2018

[KathyB]

...Or, as it's known in the UK, "Wednesday."

I am very much in the mood for some Chinese food, and don't know if the place across the street is open or closed today. My instinct is that they're closed.

That freelance work that looked so enticing yesterday is staring me in the face this morning, daring me to do it instead of procrastinating.But the procrastination is winning.

[DiveMilw]

Happy Wednesday, everyone!!!

[Chris L]

There's a continuous roar of explosions outside that, at any other time of year, would make me wonder if a revolution hadn't broken out. Fortunately, only the occasional loud explosion is in the vicinity of our house. Otherwise, this is the noisiest Fourth of July I've ever heard. Wish I could post a recording of it.

[scenicdesign71]

Firework sounds outside my window kept me awake until 2am the other night, which wouldn't have bothered me (I'm a night owl by preference) except that I had to be up at 5am for my first day back at work.

And I had tickets to see Carmen Jones last night, so I really didn't want to be too exhausted (after a ten-hour workday on very little sleep due to fireworks) to stay awake.

And, on Monday and Tuesday, I had been working on another job, which, in addition to painting, involved lifting, moving and stacking dozens of pieces of scenery all around the small workspace, on a pretty much constant basis (paint the scenery, move the scenery, repeat for nine hours).  It also lacked air conditioning -- so, with temps rising well into the nineties, it was kind of a literal sweatshop.  (For all that, it was actually enjoyable and productive -- in just three days, we were able to get quite a lot done in spite of the heat).

So it's been a busy week; having Wednesday off was a real lifesaver.

And I did manage to stay awake throughout Carmen Jones -- though I also managed to forget the change of clothes I'd packed to bring to work with me, so I ended up going to the theater in my work clothes.  (Fortunately, I had laundered them the night before and showered in the morning.  Also fortunately, I was back at Madam Secretary, on an air-conditioned stage for much of the not-very-active day yesterday -- so, paint clothes notwithstanding, I was actually far less grubby than I may have looked).

Carmen Jones was odd... gorgeously sung, Doyle-ishly staged, accompanied by a small but effective six-piece ensemble from a mezzanine overlooking the mostly-bare stage (the spare but beautiful designs were by Scott Pask [set], Ann Hould-Ward [costumes], Adam Honoré [lighting] and Dan Moses Schreier [sound]).  But the show itself, even judiciously edited down to a fleet 90ish minutes, remains a hopelessly dated curio, not really redeemable even by Bizet's score or Doyle's dream cast, headed by the marvelous Anika Noni Rose in the title role.  Clifton Duncan makes a riveting Joe, and Soara Joye-Ross's ecstatic "Beat Out That Rhythm On A Drum" was, for me, the evening's high point -- but to be honest, the entire cast was in glorious voice.  As to what they were singing about, it's not their fault, or Doyle's, that I couldn't have begun to care even if I'd tried.  Hammerstein's midcentury, middle-aged-white-guy's notion of African-American culture seems, to put it kindly, fanciful -- by comparison, it makes Gershwin/Heyward's Catfish Row look like unimpeachably rigorous anthropology.  But I certainly didn't mind listening to ten breathtakingly talented performers luxuriate in chamber-sized Bizet for an hour and a half; there are many worse ways one could spend a hot July evening.