More Theater

Recently, we decided to vary our theatre experience somewhat from our usual and enjoy an outdoor theatre performance of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at The Globe Theatre. The Globe is a faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599, where Shakespeare worked and for which he wrote many of his greatest plays. Many theatre-goers attend “on-the-cheap” and opt to stand throughout the entire performance, which we both agreed was not an option for us. In fact, we actually splurged on portable seatbacks for our wooden bench seats. The play was not one which either of us had read, but was quite enjoyable and was extremely well performed.

A couple of our more usual theatre experiences included A Few Good Men, which premiered on Broadway first and then was made into a successful film. The cast for the London West End premiere was very impressive and starred Rob Lowe as the rookie Navy lawyer assigned to defend two Marines on trial for the murder of one of their platoon members. Another fine play was Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, starring Brian Dennehy. We agreed that although this was not a “light” play, it was superbly done and definitely one of the best that we’ve seen.

Our most recent treat was a delightful musical, High Society, the story of the wealthy, elegant and priggish, Tracy Lord who is about to embark on her second marriage to a successful but stuffy businessman. We loved the memorable Cole Porter tunes including True Love, Just One of those Things and I Love Paris. The cast included Jerry Hall as Mother Lord. In case you don’t recognize the name, she is the Texan supermodel and ex-wife of Rolling-Stone, Mick Jagger. She made her West-end debut last year as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate, which we missed. This was the opening performance of High Society (our first premiere!). We predict a respectable run!