01 March 2007

Happy Birthday, Cat in the Hat!

NPR did a nice piece this morning on The Cat in the Hat's 50th birthday and, of course, the musical button at the end was a bit of the Seussical overture, which amused me as David is currently working on a production of that show and in a bit of serendipity, they open tomorrow night.

David will be dividing his time between Sally*, who is playing the Mayor's wife, and Joan, who is the Stage Manager. Certainly if one is to divide one's time between two women, one could not do better than Sally and Joan, but this division is occurring because David is the Assistant Stage Manager and both Yertle the Turtle and the Grinch.

Don't worry - I've already commented on the typecasting, even though David is neither a power-hungry egomaniac nor a scheming misanthrope (or mis-Who-thrope). He is actually rather kindly, unless one persists on repeating errors of fact as actual fact.

Traditionally, actors complain about tech folks and tech folks complain about actors - in a good natured way, of course - but as a dual-nationalist, I guess David will be left complaining about the audience.


*And, unless they've modified the script and messed with some subtext, this will be the first show that I see both Sally and David in where she isn't after my man.

1 comment:

Maureen said...

I don't generally complain about tech people (unless they make mistakes even I know not to make, like turning off the lights too early or not opening the curtain) because I don't know enough about the jobs they do.

Perhaps when I've done as much theater as you have (that'll be the day!), I'll know enough to marvel that an experienced lighting tech made the "rookie mistake" of using a certain setting or gobo, or a sound tech didn't make the simple adjustment necessary to get that buzz out of the sound system, but until then, I mostly am glad they're there to do what I can't.

But that's for the truly technical aspects. When it comes to costuming, I have no qualms about nitpicking about straggling threads that read to the back of the house, uneven hems, things that don't fit properly or don't "match" the other costumes on stage. Friends in shows I think are starting to resign themselves to the distinct possibility that the first thing I'm likely to mention when I greet them after a show is the costumes. ;)