Weekend of shows

Annie
A friend from the "old Cornerstone" days told me that she will be playing the lead role of her high school's production of Annie. There was no way I was going to miss that! Northwood High School's Performing Arts Department in Irvine put together a very good show. The set was as good if not better than some community theaters that I've seen. The orchestra was also outstanding, so much so that at first (I didn't see them down in the pits), I actually thought the music was recorded. Much of the casts' performances were more mature than expected and a few gave very mature performances. The make-up could have been better, otherwise it was a very enjoyable show. Darci turned in a great performance.

Singing Tomorrow.


Final scene, the Annie everyone knows...


With the orphans


Even their dog Sunny was in the play.
Sunny as Sandy


Even Brantzen (Darci's brother) was in the play.


Final bows


Wicked
This afternoon, about 5pm, I get a call from Kathy telling me that I should join them in Hollywood. They had an extra ticket to Wicked playing at the Pantages Theater. They have family visiting form New York and while roaming around in Los Angeles, they placed their names in the ticket lottery at the Pantages Theater. Well, they won 2 pairs of tickets. So now they had 8 tickets and there were only 7 of them... This is about the time my cellphone started ringing...
By the time the "smoke" cleared, I had a little under an hour to get dressed, drive to Hollywood, find parking then find Derrick. I met him at the door just as the lights in the lobby started blinking, signaling the show was about to start.
The ladies were down in the front row with the tickets won from the lottery, while the men were up in the mezzanine level seats (and we were good with that!).
There were a few highlights to the show that had nothing to do with the performance onstage. There were a couple of drunken flying monkeys in the audience. At first, two ladies got up in the before intermission and on the way out, one took a "header" behind our seats. At first, we chalked it up to 1) Clumsiness 2) It was dark and tripped 3) Clumsiness
They came back before intermission and stumbled to a pair of empty seats. A different couple of ladies thought they would try to beat the lines to the restrooms (the line to the ladies room was LONG!), coming down the steps the first one missed the last step and "took a header". When she got up and got to the aisle, her friend behind also missed the last step and also "took a header"! If you think that was the end of the floor show, one of the ladies from the first couple started taking a few pictures and made it so obvious because she had the flash on! Glenn called a manager and they were escorted out (not before stumbling and almost falling again!).
Now back to the show. There were two whole rows by us that were empty, so after intermission the ladies at the front row decided to join us. Apparently, the front row seats weren't very good, the angle of the stage made it very hard to see anything in the rear of the stage.
I had a pretty good idea of the story of Wicked but there were a few things that was unexpected. I had reservations but I'm glad I got to see it. Thank you Kathy and Derrick! It was a great ending for a weekend that I thought was already over.
Stage


Thank you Glenn for taking the picture so I could be in it.


Ticket Lottery winners!


Then the New Yorkers are taken to The Pantry!