More vacation, a play, and a cemetary

We have sure been enjoying our vacation. Been working on various projects that always seem to get overlooked, and I am sore all over from my return to the gym. Heck, it had only been a few weeks, but boy did I lose my tone fast. My upper back is still just sore and aching. Ah well. Unlike David, I actually like the soreness, it reminds me I've been doing something good.

We also went to see a play, "Edward II" at the, er, Shakespeare Company or whatever they are called. Every time I go to see a classic play, I say a little prayer, that this will finally be the production that opens my eyes up to the glory of classical theatre. And every time, I leave disappointed. I just can't get over the fancypants language, it sounds so artificial to my ear that I have a hard time getting into it. There were some good actors in the bunch, but also a few that as soon as they had a monologue would go into their "monologue voice", which always drives me crazy. About half the company could benefit from a MissChievous school of acting lesson, which was one of the best acting lessons I ever had. Rehearsing a scene with her in the middle of the quad, I realized that if anyone walked by, they would think she was just having a conversation, while if they heard me they would know I was "acting". Point taken. It is supposed to sound real. I hate actor voice. I know in the classics there is a certain amount of that built in to the artsy language, but it is a trap! Good actors know to take it down as much as possible.

They moved the time frame to the 1930s, and made use of a fantastic costume designer. It sort of doesn't really make any sense in that time frame, kings getting thrown in dungeons and stuff, but still, I liked looking at the costumes. (Edward at one point was wearing a leather jacket like Keanu in The Matrix, and I think I spent five minutes just watching the flow of the hemline, it was awesome.) Also they used a lot of underscore music to trick you into thinking you were watching a movie. I like that trick. There were a few moments of very clever direction, but the death scene in Act II was so grotesque and gratuitous that I wished I'd walked out at intermission.

The theatre was nice though. I would like to go back and see their next play, Mary Zimmerman's take on "Jason and the Argonauts". I mean, I'd love to see the definitive answer to the question, "What exactly is an argonaut again?" I missed her "Metamorphosis" on Broadway, but my super talented and gorgeous friend Anna did another play with her (playing, I forget, Helen of Troy or a Greek goddess or something appropriate to her leggy hotness) that I saw in Princeton, and it was totally fabulous.

And also, if he make it this far reading through a blog post that pretty much no one but me cares about, I know at least one reader of my blog will be excited to hear that David and I did a geocache the other day. It was our first in like a year and a half, and we had a great time. It was a multi-cache, and took us through the Congressional Cemetery to the gravesites of people like John Phillip Sousa (who was, incidentally, born a block away from where we live now). So that was pretty fun. We kept walking by this one grave for a guy named "Andrew Jackson". At first we were like, could it be THE Andrew Jackson? But in the bottom corner it was engraved "lovingly erected by niece, Jane Doe". THE Andrew Jackson I'm sure has a big old monument somewhere erected by the government, not his niece. But I love it that this woman was so vain that she put her name on someone else's tombstone. You know, so we could all see how generous she was to do that. People are awesome.