Sink Me! Zauberflöte 3

Last Christmas we received as a gift season passes to Hale Center Theater in Orem. We've greatly enjoyed the experience, and this week marked the last play of the regular season. They saved the best for last, as Sink Me! It was the Scarlet Pimpernel. The story and music are incredibly passionate and moving and full of adventure, excitement, intrigue and things of this nature. I'm not ashamed to admit I was brought to tears several times. While I'm not ashamed, I'm still not going to admit it. Anyway, it was so popular that they were completely sold out and we didn't get to sit together at first (they moved us after a few no -shows, and boy did the No-Shows miss out). We had watched the Jane Seymour* version awhile ago and Nicole just read the classic book. Delightful in any rendition, but the musical was definately a treat.

On Friday, after a long work day, we thought we'd try the dollar theater. Dispicable Me was sold out three people in front of us. Inception was sold out 3 hours before us. So we got tickets to Toy Story 3, but not in 3-D. It was another sold-out theatre, but our seats were decent. Pixar really does a good job with story structure and whatnot and I was impressed. I resisted being brought to tears on this one, but it was hard. The Pixar short before the show, "Day and Night," was pretty crazy. It was about two blobs who are windows to either the day or night world. And they fight, but end up learning from each other. Y'know, that short really resists any simple explanation. I have no idea how they pitched it. Maybe something like "A metaphysical morality play with lots of negative space!" or something.

Anyway, speaking of relatively new releases, we also went to see "The Magic Flue" a play that just came out in 1791 by some unknown called "Mozart." ;)

Apparently there was a lot of symbolism in it. Oh, and it was in German. I think I want to learn German now. I was listening to "Ode to Joy" in German right before and, at least as of last night, I'm leaning towards learning German before French. (Niether of which will be accomplished anytime soon). The only problem is that the DVDs in our collection only have Spanish and French, not German. Maybe I can get some from Nicole's Brother and family, they're in the Air Force and station in Germany right now. Or I'll just go to opera's with subtext-er, subtitles.
Our favorite characters might very well be Papageno/a. Definately the funniest, but they also are the characters that model happily having children (as opposed to the Queen of the Night above who nearly drives her daughter to suicide). Anyway, the kiddie Papageno/as were cute. And touching.

I laughed, but I didn't cry. Still, as Albert Einstein said, now that I've seen this, I can be "cultured."****

*Aparently Jane Seymour (OBE**) was born Joyce Penelope Whilhelmina Frankenberg. Good change Jane.

**Order of the British Empire - That's right, she's like a Knight!

***Aparently she also was a Bond girl and has different color eyes. If it weren't for wikipedia, I'd have just thought she was Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

****That's not what he said about the play exactly.