Why I'll Never Be An Adult

            OH MY GOD, y’all, is it possible to get pregnant from a musical? If it is, I’m in serious trouble because I’m almost definitely having Seussical’s baby. Yeah, the dorky little show is actually that good.

            Incidentally, our upcoming appearance on Jeremy Kyle is going to be fantastic. Seussical is going to be all, “You were cheating on me with Les Mis! How do I know that baby’s mine, eh?” and I’m going to be crying and screaming “It’s got FUR and STRIPES, of COURSE IT IS YOURS” and meanwhile Les Mis is picking up chairs that have been flung around the studio to build a furniture wall and mumbling in French to itself. Further digression: this is why I will never be a theatre critic. I am totally qualified, but at some point my editor would have to propose that I actually write something that makes sense to another human being while I lie on the floor screaming about pregnancy and Jeremy Kyle.

            Seriously, though: if you have the chance, go see this show. The venue is small and the staging is about as low-tech as it comes, but a ridiculously talented and energetic cast make for some of the most vibrant theatre I’ve seen in a while. Every one of them deserves kudos. Kirsty Marie Ayers is particularly outstanding and presh to death as Gertrude McFuzz, and David Hunter (whom you may remember from my last blog entry) is doing what he does best as Horton the Elephant – namely, he’s removing my heart from my breast and crushing it to a fine paste underneath his heel whilst being the most adorable thing in the West End. Also, on an even shallower note, special props to Natalie Green for having such a slammin’ bod that she even makes the Sour Kangaroo’s high-waisted wide-legged salmon-pink trousers look foxy.

            Unfortunately, I wound up sitting in the middle of a mostly-empty second row, and I felt like a total creeper. I dislike the feeling of being essentially in the actors’ laps; I’m a big fan of that fourth wall. Also, there were some minor issues with the microphones and the sound balance that were distracting in the moment, but should be fairly easy to solve. Neither snag hindered my enjoyment of the performance much, but I’d like to go back when they have some of the technical stuff smoothed out a little more.

I know the show is ostensibly kid stuff, but don’t be put off by that. Fun stuff doesn’t stop being fun just because you don’t need a booster seat at the theatre any more. Come on, I know you still sing Disney songs and have waffles for dinner when you think no one’s looking, right? (If the answer to that is “no,” you can just leave now. We don’t need your kind here.)

One final David Hunter-related note. (I promise this is not turning into a Fuck Yeah, David Hunter! blog. It’s relevant. Sort of.) Apparently my mother has found this blog! Hi, Mama, if you’re reading this.  Remember what happened the last time I saw one of Dave’s shows? If not, go refresh your memory with the second half of this entry. Anyway, TLC read that entry and phoned me, very concerned that I was developing a drinking problem.  I had to explain to her that I wasn’t drunk when the whole swearing-and-accidental-hitting thing went down. There is nothing like the shame of having to explain to your dear old mother that her only child doesn’t have a problem with drink – she has a problem with life. APPARENTLY.

A Bit of a Holiday Before Things Get Serious

            I spent last weekend in Stratford, Ontario, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival with TLC. She’s been taking me there ever since I was a wee thing of eleven, and that’s a huge part of what sparked my deep love of theatre, particularly of the classical variety. We saw five shows: Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Cymbeline, The Pirates of Penzance, and Elektra. I’ll blog a bit about the shows themselves later.

            The trip afforded me a chance to see one of my favorite-ever people, Craig: certified tall person, Lord Byron look-alike, and former London denizen. He drove up from Toronto to see me, and he escorted me to Henry V. He’s one of the cleverest, warmest and funniest men I know, and I see him so infrequently that the little time we get together is terribly precious to me.

            “I have a friend who got her MA in Publishing in England,” Craig told me. “She’s back in Toronto now. She works at one of the biggest literary agencies in the country.”

            “Oh lovely! I think I’d like to be a literary agent,” I said. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my degree yet, but I’d really love to get the chance to crush people’s dreams and being an agent would let me do that. Literary agent, or maybe pediatric oncologist, but that would take too much extra school.” He laughed. This man laughs at my jokes about cancer-stricken children. I’ll never find another man like him.

            Of course, in addition to outstanding theatre, Stratford also boasts a number of superb restaurants, so I dove head-first into the town’s gustatory delights. It was a weekend full of wine and cappuccinos, pastas, pastries, local-vegetable salads and crème brulees. I gained three pounds. I don’t even feel bad about it. I didn’t have an unpleasant mouthful all weekend.

            This season marked the return to the Festival of one of my favorite actors, Graham Abbey. He was in the first production I saw at the Festival – he played William Roper in A Man For All Seasons. He was just a kid then, in his mid-twenties, tall and puppyishly cute. In the decade and a half since, I’ve watched him turn into a truly astoundingly effective performer. He speaks verse like he was born to do it – he tears through it neck-breakingly fast and yet it’s sharp, clear, perfectly understandable and deeply affecting. He was in the last performance I saw this weekend, playing Aegisthus in Elektra.

I love this man, and don't even act like you blame me.

            Going to Stratford with my mother and grandmother in 1998 made me feel very grown-up. I wasn’t even a teenager, so I still had a lot of growing to do, but that experience was hugely defining to who I would be as an adult. Graham Abbey was my first proper grown-up celebrity crush, and I am so pleased that one of his performances was my introduction to the Stratford Festival and grown-up life, and another was my last hurrah before I pack up my life here and move across the Atlantic. I’ve only spoken to him once (and briefly at that, at stage door seven or eight years ago), but the gentleman has been a very important part of my life. Thanks, Mr. Abbey. You’ve meant so much to me.