Thursday, February 9, 2017

Sick enough to curl up in a hole

In the end I bought a ticket for Rabbit Hole for tonight.  I wasn't feeling great yesterday but I went swimming.  Had I had perfect foresight, I probably could have gone to the play instead and made it through the whole thing.  A couple of hours into work today, I knew I was in no shape to go out tonight (and I should have gone home early, though I was booked into back to back to back meetings).

It's probably just a really intense cold.  (I'm kind of worried that the cold and certainly the cough may not go away until winter breaks.)  This was further reinforced by just how bloody cold it was when I was coming home from the bus stop.  I suspect that quite a few people will bail on the play tonight.

I certainly don't miss too many events due to sickness.  The last one I recall was a trip to see The Iceman Cometh.  That was a very expensive sickness (I think it was actually food poisoning).  This cold only cost me $21 or so.

There is a small chance I will see the play Sat. evening or Sun. afternoon, but it really depends on how I am feeling and the weather.  I kind of feel that the moment to see this play has passed, but that could easily be the general sickness talking.

Anyway, I am off to bed for the evening.

Edit (Feb. 11) I managed to get through As You Like It this afternoon with almost all of my coughing confined to the set change-overs.  Still, I wasn't entirely thrilled when I found out they were doing it uncut -- 2 hours and 50 minutes!  I have to say it was a good performance, and my son felt that he followed along pretty well.  Unlike Shakespeare in High Park, I was able to actually hear the 7 Ages of Man speech without interruption.  As in that performance, Jacques is gender-switched.  What was different was that in this version, Orlando's older brother is female, so Rosalind's cousin, Celia, ends up falling for a woman.  (Celia has a few good moments where she was positively rolling her eyes at Rosalind's infatuation with Orlando, but then falls in love almost instantly with his older sister.)  The wedding scene came together well.  As always, I find the offstage instantaneous transformation of the usurping Duke to be ridiculous, but here it is downplayed as almost a side note, and the banished Duke pretty much waves this off and the wedding celebration remains the main focus.  This is probably the most effective approach I have seen yet to what is a major shortcoming in this play.

I thought very seriously about seeing Rabbit Hole this evening.  I would have had just enough time to run down and see if they had a few tickets left, but 1) I think it is probably better if I don't push myself, 2) it was a bit of a struggle not to cough for 3 hours (maybe if the matinee had been closer to 2 hours I would have been more open to it) and 3) I didn't really want to end the evening on such a downer.  If they had a show tomorrow (Sunday) I would have gone, but tonight is the last night.  Too bad. 

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