Ushered opening night on Friday. I doubt I'll ever become a fan of Princess Ida but the company did a great job - wonderful choral sound and very funny in all the right places. The costumes were lovely, the set worked well, and lots of interesting stage movement in the big numbers. I thought the female principals as a body were stronger than the men, but the men were hardly bad singers; I just liked many of the women's voices more.
Sunday I went to see another local company's How to Succeed in Business... Boy, is that a dated show! All the women, and I mean every single one in the show, are secretaries, and all the men are executives. The female lead's big number is "Happy to keep his dinner warm" - definitely very much a product of its time. Not an A-list musical, but the company did a great job, as I've come to expect from them: good voices, good costume design, and the thing that keeps me coming back - the production numbers! Only a couple of them in this show, but they were great; the company gets some real dancers (as opposed to singers or actors who move really well or dance a little) so the choreographers can do some really impressive stuff - lifts, tosses, backflips, all kinds of stuff that is impressive on tv but really impressive when it happens 20 rows away from you.
Back to working on my 06-07 season spreadsheet...
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