rant whine 'splain espouse: Cleanning the loft, H2G2, and Lennon, the musical

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Cleanning the loft, H2G2, and Lennon, the musical

Velma and I spent most of the weekend cleaning up the loft in an attempt at getting it in some form of presentability before The Return of the Great Book Crawl next Saturday. Moved stuff around, folded laundry that I hadn't had time to do, emptied some more boxes and recycled a bunch of stuff.

On Friday we saw The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy with Jenny and Hunter. I will reserve my review of the film for later, when I have more time.

On Saturday night I took Velma to see "Lennon," which premiered a couple weeks ago and is playing at The Orpheum before going to Broadway.

The musical is the story of John Lennon's life. Being a huge Beatles fan, I thought Velmer would like it. When I got the tickets, though, I was a little hesitant, since it hadn't premiered yet and I wasn't even sure if it was going to be any good.

But it was great. And that's a lot for me to say. Because I hate musicals. But it really was. Lennon is not portrayed by on particular actor, but by all the cast at different times. As hard as that is to imagine, it is spectacularly well pulled off. Truly effective only because the script is excellent. The acting and singing was excellent as well, but the key to this trick working was definitely in the script.

It was moving and inspirational, fun and rockin', funny and raucous, sad and bittersweet.

The only real low point was the drunk, loud, obnoxious guy in the stairwell who wouldn't shut up during one numbers. Firemen came, cops came, everyone was loud and annoying.

The band, by the way, was fantastic. Two guitarists, one bassist, three horns, two percussionists, two keyboardists...did I leave anybody out? There was only one song that seemed a little too long and boring, sort of breaking the pacing of the show, but maybe they'll shorten it before the musical heads to NYC.