Dave Page » opera house

Paula Poundstone

dave — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 01:14:49 +0000

Not sure what to expect. We have heard her on the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me radio program, and enjoy her there. But a stand up show?
It was local at the Woodstock Opera House, and only $28. Not going downtown. Worth it.

Dinner at Mixteca beforehand. I had the pork Cxxxx, Bette the Xxxx Verde soup, and Tim and Deb split the Cxxxxx. Margaritas all around. Muy bien.

We parked around the corner, and the ropes were still up on the stairs, so we milled in the lobby for awhile. Chatted, and looked at art. After sitting down, found a gentleman behind us who was involved with Bette’s Ag in the Classroom. Deb knew another person behind us. Small town, eh?

In a word, Paula was great. Engaging, funny, self-deprecating. She worked questions out of the audience and flogged them for great comedic effect. Kind of made fun of farmers, the another who owned a daylily nursery, another with an apple orchard, and another who is a psych nurse. And she worked all this material into stuff about her kids, her life. A little liberal moaning about the health care debate (nice.) Had a fun spar — the atheist woman vs. the pastor and part-time golf course greenskeeper. And she kept asking, “Who sees a show at 6:00″, and worried about the rowdy 9PM crowd.

I was sad to see it end; we could have sat through the next show easily. Just a pleasant, enjoyable evening.

High School Musical – Woodstock Opera House

dave — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 22:00:15 +0000

Bette and I attended the Woodstock Children’s Summer Theatre performance of HSM at the Woodstock Opera House in Woodstock IL. We have attended many events there, by far this was the loudest — not the show, but the audience. We went to the 2PM show with two young friends, Raea and Keefer, and to fit into their schedule we went to the same show that was a prize for reading library books. Translated — lots of younger kids, and they mostly don’t shut up for most of the show. We were in the center balcony, good seats, really. We were usually on the main floor for past shows, but these were the hottest tickets in years…

We knew Daniel Rausch, the youngest, and sadly the last, of the uber-talented Rausch boys; he was the lead. We enjoyed the PA announcer. The cast was good. Although they were miked up, sometimes the audio was not good, especially given the bad signal-to-noise ratio. But we got the jist of it, and the dancing was wonderful.

Two 10-ish-year-old girls behind us were talking and one mentioned (while the show was going on), “I don’t like this one — they are not the real people.” True, but perhaps she missed the point a bit. It was a fun visit to a new play for us, and for $6 apiece, much better than paying some adult troupe to pretend they are high schoolers for $70 each.

The young thespians constantly amaze us with their talents.

Afterwards, we headed to the Club for a nice dinner, where the kids were well behaved and enjoyed the piano player, Dean Malsack, where he regaled us with stories of his Baldwin piano with black keys.

Forum at Woodstock Opera House

dave — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 01:00:43 +0000

Mom, Dad, Bette and I went to Bull Valley Golf Club for dinner, and then were off to see “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” at the Woodstock Opera House.

The play was good. It is a bawdy farce, and some of the door slamming etc. seemed to go on too long, but the cast was great. Standouts were Kyle McCoy as Pseudolus, who mugged to the audience and Jim Crow as Hysterium. Without players for these roles of this caliber, I can see the 2:30 running time as a huge snoozefest. They engaged the audience and each other with insane energy. After seeing these two drive the show, I don’t feel like I need to see it again. I think I saw it once in high school.