Word: grateful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...make matters worse, the orchestra--at least on opening night--sounds about as professional as a high school band. Squeaky horns and missed notes grate on the ear, and the entire orchestra seems disjointed and badly synchronized: throughout the ballet, one can hear different sections starting and stopping where the transitions should have been smooth. Though easily overlooked, a good pit orchestra is absolutely essential to a good ballet, because the music truly is half the performance. A dancer draws energy from the music; when it's off, so is the magic...
Mariner is not happy with Flinn's negotiated discharge. Like many in the military, she believes that the bomber pilot manipulated public opinion to bypass an established if flawed system of justice. But as the military rules of romantic engagement grate repeatedly against our current excruciating sensitivity about gender and power, the rulemakers may increasingly find themselves factoring the public into their deliberations...
Although most of the humor in Punch and Judy Get Divorced is clean, this musical does have underlying sexual themes. In Part One, the two Pollys (the musical's term for unmarried Judys), played well by Pashalinski and Grate, titter about their sexual exploits in "The Polly Song." Part Two reaches a new level of sexual complexity, as Judy baby's husband runs away from her to be with another man. (Of her husband's male friends who used to come visit, she sings bitterly that they were "envying me and flirting with him" instead of the other way round...
...rather with the Devil (Charles Levin). He runs down an aisle through the audience to the stage, introduces himself as a troublemaker and marriage-breaker, and announces the topic of the show: marriage and relationships. The scene then shifts to Punch 2 (Benjamin Evett) and Judy 2 (Gail Grate), a modern-day couple with a young daughter, "Judy baby" (Alice Playten). (Part of the show's strangeness comes from the fact that most of the characters' names are some variation on Punch and Judy). They argue a bit and then go out to see a play, which happens...
...battle with the 5 o'clock shadow. Of course I couldn't be too sure about it--I only knew that "Daisy" (a kind of gene) might have caused some of her problems. But at the end of the month I craved sunshine, and it started to grate on me that I had to take off my shoes at the end of the day to avoid potentially poisoning...