A Lot To Say

Would like to start out with a link I just saw from a friend on Facebook... Rural America in Color Photos, 1939-1943! Wow!

And as for yesterday, I started the day nice and slow: breakfast, dishes, showing the wedding pics to the wedded couple, watching "On the Air" again, just to refresh my memory (and to realize that, yes, indeed I have to show it at the meeting), Backgammon with Dad, and finally helping Mom a bit with my brother's room downstairs that needed cleaned (somebody from church is going to be staying over once in a while) before I took off for Everett to go workout.

I wanted to swim in the pool, but again, it was closed. So I did the 1.5 mile run instead. I have to say, running along the waterfront on the Navy base is a lot more interesting (and distracting, with things to look at) and motivating to run then 3 laps around my block or 6.5 laps around a ball field in Bellevue. It felt like no time at all. And then I went in the fitness center and did 5 minutes (1,000 meters) on the rowing machine and lots of push-ups. Back down in the locker room I found out I weighed only 158! This is *good* news! After then, for fun, I checked out the Navy Exchange on base and got workout shorts and a t-shirt (not official, so they won't be issued to me next month or anything :). On my way back through Everett, I checked out the "Vintage Cafe" that I saw on my way in. It's housed in an old saloon house, and I had a soup & salad at the bar. That night after a dinner of corn-on-the-cob, leftover pork steak and the first pasta I've had in months, we watched Netflix... which was "The Brave Little Toaster" (1987), strangely enough. This psychedelic, random and funny animated film would be too scary for little kids, I'd think. It seemed like a forerunner to Toy Story, with the crazy mean guy tearing apart appliances. Anyway, this we watched during most of chat.

But today! Goodness! What a set of plays! What a time I had with Mom!

We took off at 10:30, arrived at the Mukilteo Ferry just in the nick of time, driving on at 10:59 for an 11:00 departure! 20 minute ride, and then five miles to the town of Langley. Appropriately for the day, Mom and I listened to a disc of the Bible as we drove.

So we arrived in town right around noon. We drove a small circuit (very small) around the town to scope things out. And we ended up at a family dining place right on the corner near the waterfront... "Mike's Place Restaurant & Creamery". Wow, did they have a big selection! Breakfast all day, lots of salads and sandwiches and entrees for dinner. Had a chicken breast sandwich with mushrooms and melted Swiss. And we liked it so much that we returned after the play for dinner... had a breakfast plate with sausage and potatoes mixed up in scrambled egg with the nicest wheat toast. And then some chocolate ice cream to share for dessert.

We arrived at the Children's Theater an hour before the performance to pick up our tickets and wait for the doors to open. We had to wait for about a half-hour before lining up to get in, but the tickets were available right away. Good thing I called when I did: they said the shows sold out the day I called! They turned a few people away while we waited. And because Mom was paying attention, we were first in line at the door. Only had to stand there for a few minutes before they let us in. And it felt like waiting at a train station... we clearly heard train sounds being rehearsed inside. I was kinda surprised at how small the theater was. A low ceiling, and only four rows of seats, raised up behind each other. I think there were only about 80 seats. The sound effects table was near the entrance to our left, along with the small sound booth. The director sat on the far right, and there were six microphones on stage, with a keyboard and space for musicians just below stage right. There was a neat little set: three large, painted backdrops that could be turned to reveal different backgrounds. A train station or dirty street, and a few different scenes for inside nice houses. At stage left was a small desk with a little lamp in front of a white screen. Beforehand and during intermission they played old film from 1930's London.

It started with Agatha (played by the IMWF's Hilary Booth - Melinda Peterson) sitting at the desk and introducing us to herself, living in Nimrud, Iraq. A picture of the ancient ruins appeared on the screen behind her head. And she spoke of how she wanted to write an autobiography, but not in the normal sense. She wanted to "reach in and grab it with her hand" rather that set out a record with names and dates in chronological order. So she wrote "Butter in a Lordly Dish" on request from the BBC. This (as all were) was great. Amy Walker (Betty) played the murderess! And she ended up killing David Ossman (Mr. Eldridge)! LOL! When she killed him, the picture on the screen (which had changed to a country scene) turned red as the lights went out. It was about a young woman trapping the prosecuting attorney who had convinced a jury to convict her husband for murder. Very gripping!

And then we saw Agatha again, who told us about being asked to write a radio play by the BBC for Queen Mary's birthday (Mary was a fan). The result: "Three Blind Mice" which was later adapted into "The Mousetrap". Mom had seen "Mousetrap" before, so she knew the story. I was able to guess the truth right before it happened, although I love how Agatha spreads doubt on almost every character. :) In this one, Amy played a very naive, Betty-ish sort of role, with a completely different accent. :)

Here there was a short intermission: all four plays took about three hours together.

To open the next act, Agatha began at the planned epilogue of her autobiography. She said she was 75 years old in that year, 1965, and that she'd been working on this work for fifteen years, although she'd been writing stories for 54. After a pause in her speech about retiring, she said something like, "Are you kidding? There is always more to say!"

This segued into a "Personal Call". A rich American receives mysterious phone calls from his dead wife as he's preparing to go on a second honeymoon with his second wife (Amy). And yes, everything is very mysterious and dangerous. I won't let the cat out of the bag, but there was a red screen near the end.

Agatha started the next play by talking about how she started writing and what she thought she could write about... detectives seemed natural with all the various poisons she was around working at a hospital pharmacy (on Wikipedia, it says she did this later in life). So she thought about what sort of detective she should have and decided on modeling him after a Belgian she knew. A short, meticulous man named "Hercules". This later changed when she found a last name. :)

And here was the finale: "The Yellow Iris". This I have seen adapted into a film with David Suchet. And Phil Proctor (Mackie Bloom) did an exceptional job portraying him. Interestingly, at the end of Phil's bio in the program they list to his credit "...a thousand other voices" that he's currently doing with the Firesign Theater. Phil played a small role with a thick British accent in the first play, and a fluent Italian in the second. French, he had down pat. :) In this final play, Amy played a Spanish nightclub singer (and was perfect!). She sang a duet by Rupert Holmes (deja vu) with a local young man (Gabe Harshman), a funny and witty off-kilter love song (it was *very* like Rupert) called "You're the Thorn in My Side". Some of the lines: "you're the lint on my dress", "you're the crick in my neck"... and of course it fit together perfectly and the couple still couldn't live without each other at the end. :) This play was set at a cabaret show on the BBC, so there were several live numbers. The other Rupert wrote was called "From Time to Time". Gabe sang this alone and had a prominent clarinet accompaniment. Lyrics were about clocks tick-tocking and how he was always thinking of "you". Another neat twist to this one: Agatha was at the cabaret show as well, and at the end she spoke of how silly it was that her fans wanted Poirot and Miss Marple to meet... "he would feel out of place there"... and at the end, Poirot came up and asked her to dance. And the last line was about her reconsidering about Miss Marple.

A perfect delight, really.

We took our time at dinner and missed the 7:00 ferry by a minute. But it's only a 20 minute wait, so we were home by 8. And we had a beautiful sunset on the ride over.

Jp

I forgot to talk about the Foley artist... he looked much like the one from Owensboro, but the programs say different names. He came all the way from Indiana to do this and he was very good. David Ossman's son helped him out as well... and another son did some acting. They were all very good! Oh, and of course it was directed and produced by the same people who did WENN in 2008. We saw a lot of Judith before the play (as she was in charge of the tickets) and she spoke before and during intermission about how they want to do more of this, mentoring young, aspiring actors in new productions.