Observation

You're expecting a review of the show I went to last night, but this blog ends up having a completely different tangent, and not what anyone expects. It's not going to be about the inhumanity of humans against fellow humans in history, that would be what my husband would be writing this morning, if he blogged. It's not going to be general disgust for how a man can put his ideologies ahead of love for his child. What can you say about that anyway, that hasn't already been said.

Let's begin by saying that the show was very enjoyable. I loved it, I've always loved it anyway, and this production did it justice. We are talking Broadway quality, without question. This despite certain issues, which were beyond the control of those taking part. Because of that, because of the reasons why the show was brilliant DESPITE its compromises, you'll see no reference here to its title, or any names involved, because my blogs show up in search engines. If you missed these details, please refer to my Facebook page.

The short version: the fact of the matter is that because of budgetary restraints it was short a few cast members. Some of them simply doubled up on roles, some crowds were smaller than they might be. Shows cope with this sort of thing when illness strikes, and they cope when it's ongoing too. In theatres everyone "mucks in" and it's common and normal to work outside your "real" role, whether back or front stage.

In this show they are coping, for the entire run, by having a senior member of the technical staff get on the stage. Bet you can guess who.

The funny part is that he didn't tell me ahead of time.

Have you seen the video of students playing basketball, where you are told to count the ball passes? It's very difficult to keep count because there is much going on, so that when you finish, you have a number in your head but may not have noticed that there was a person in a gorilla costume on the other team. If you missed the gorilla, and felt really silly afterwards, well then you know I feel. I watched my firstborn child through an entire scene on stage and never saw him.

As you can imagine, this was his plan. It was a test.

"Well, if you didn't notice, then nobody else did."

True!

In addition, he was wearing a big hat. Now DON'T laugh here, it's actually even funnier that it sounds.

Remember the show. All the men are dressed in black, with beards, and hats.

That's how my boy dresses all the time.

In the show they all (except the lead, I think) have fake beards. Good fake beards take time to put on correctly, there's an expert who does them all at the beginning of the show, and they stay in place until the end. Technicians who run on between other responsibilities, and then run off again, don't have time for all that. They just have time to replace their usual hat for a bigger one.

So he grew his beard out a bit. He's a bit inconsistent in the facial hair department, it comes and goes, so I thought nothing of it. Busy life and all that. No, it was necessary.

In fact, because of the way he looks, his natural face, without any help at all, is the most authentic, for the show, of the entire cast, but I did enough jokes about that last night, and if he's reading this, which is possible, I'm not going to get myself into trouble by dwelling on his ethnic appearance. Not his fault. My fault. DNA and all that.

(Apparently I'm getting photos of him in his big hat at some point, I'll share them)

So, there it is. How to hide something in plain sight.

My kids are always playing tricks on me, but that one is the funniest to date. He wins. Who can beat that?

The challenge is ON!