pameladean

On March 5,

dd_b,

lydy,

arkuat, and I went to see the Gilbert and Sullivan Very Light Opera Company's production of "The Sorcerer." None of us had ever seen it performed live, and I think that only David had seen it on videotape, though he must have seen or listened to it more than once, since he began singing John Wellington Wells's song as soon as he opened the program book and saw the list of characters.

We weren't expecting much, necessarily, since this operetta isn't performed often, and the last one of those that we saw had not impressed us. But this was different. I didn't find much of the music memorable, except for Wells's songs, and many of the characters were slight even by G&S's standards. But the production was pretty sparkly. The woman playing the female half of the obligatory pair of young lovers did a great deal of quite difficult physical comedy. In general, in fact, they did a lot during otherwise, possibly, boring musical numbers by having whoever the song was addressed to attempt repeatedly to say something in response, only to be ignored by another burst of song. This effect could have been overdone, but they stopped short of that.

I was disappointed that, although they added "gender" to the list of qualities that shouldn't be a bar to two people's getting married, all the couples that formed were heterosexual.

The standout performances were those of Wells, the sorcerer who provides the idiot Alexis with a love potion to feed to the whole village; Constance, a young woman who is in love with the middle-aged rector; and the young woman who played both Cupid and a minion of Wells. As the latter, she did a series of perfect cartwheels; as Cupid, in a fairly silly costume, she was really magnificent, sweeping aside whole phalanxes of chorus members and loosing her cardboard bow so smoothly that its goofiness was quite eclipsed.

Constance was fat and staggeringly beautiful, and had a splendid voice, well up to the requirements. It was a pity that they put her into such a frumpy dress, even if it may be standard for the part.

The plot was a little out of the ordinary, too. Wells's summoning of demons to activate his potion was really frightening and spooky, and the solution at the end, while very off-putting to our sensibilities, was at least stark and alarming. I didn't so much mind Wells's getting a severe penalty for his dabbling in the occult arts as I did Alexis's getting off with a slight scare.

Yesterday was so warm that, even though we had lost an hour and forgotten that we would when electing to watch a third episode of "Farscape" after coming back from the Minn-Stf meeting, Eric and I went for a short walk along Minnehaha Creek. Many people were abroad, with bicycles, skateboards, regular skates, strollers, dogs, canoes, kayaks, and canoes with dogs in them. Ignoring the detour sign for pedestrians and passing under 35W, we startled a mourning-cloak butterfly from a large piece of machinery. The creek was brown and active, spreading well beyond its usual banks and running quite fast in narrower spots. Eric noticed as we were hanging over a bridge that beneath the running water were large tracts of ice along both shores. In some of the narrower stretches, there was ice all across. We assumed that the melt water had come along so fast that the creek proper had not had time to melt, so the water was all running over the original ice. We admired many trees and saw five mallards, clearly in mating mode. They were annoyed by the canoes.

We had to tear ourselves away from the outdoors and go to a birthday dinner for David's sister, but we had a very enjoyable time, and we were very happy that David's mother was able to come out and join us. I met his sister's partner's mother for the first time, and quite liked her. I also hadn't seen her stepson since he was maybe eleven or so, and he's turned into a charming young man. The restaurant seemed rather flummoxed by an 11-person party, but all the food came except for the stuffed bread Eric and I wanted to share. They finally brought us yet another basket of naan, and we just ate it. The restaurant was Kurry Kebob, in Northfield, and has not been so scatter-brained with smaller parties.

I noticed yesterday that some crocuses were coming up in the front bed, but it wasn't til after dark that I realized I should have looked for snowdrops in the back. They are up and blooming madly in the shelter of one of the peonies, pushing up out of the unsheared grass with perfect abandon.

I am sure we will have a dreadful blizzard, or worse, temperatures in the single digits with no snow cover, before spring is really here. But I'm glad of the snowdrops.

Pamela