Review: Stratford Festival - West Side Story

S and I went to see West Side Story at the Stratford festival last weekend. This was a Christmas gift from my sisters and their respective bfs. WSS is easily in my top five movies of all time and will always provoke some strange looks from my friends when I bring it up. But I watched it so many times as kid that my love for the film is ingrained in my bones. You could say its almost like my Goonies. (A film that I firmly believe can only truly be liked if you watched it as a child – which I didn’t)

Anyway, there’s not a lot for me to say about the play. The energy was up, the acting was solid and even though it was still in previews the whole play felt polished, but not overly so. Which is a good thing. You can’t watch a Romeo and Juliet rip off with frantic streetwise dance fighting and want to see a performance that’s too controlled. I think the play is more about the energy and the heart than just getting everything just right.

The thing about WSS is that when it was first preformed it was a contemporary take on a classic play. But for the most part that slant is now solidified in amber, stuck firmly in the late 50’s and early 60’s. I’d love to see a modern look at the play using backdrops and costuming from the 21st century. What would that WSS look like?

Chilina Kennedy as Maria and Paul Nolan as Tony were spot on delivering heartfelt soulful performances. And even though I freely admit I’m overly wedded to the film version of the musical it was nice to see that the play paid homage to the film but wasn’t afraid to own the space and make it their own thing. A satisfying mix of comfortable old favourites and new thinking.

My biggest complaint is that the use of the thrust stage meant that sometimes the action was blocked by other actors. On a couple occasions something ‘big’ was happening on the far side of the stage but I couldn’t see it because the chorus\dancers were filling the space in between. It only happened for mere moments, but it was jarring enough to take me out of the play whenever it occurred.

Anyway if that’s my biggest beef, I’d say you’re sitting pretty.

Trying to keep an even keel

This article encapsulates a lot of the fears that plague me these days. S and I are lucky enough (knock on wood) to still have jobs. But all around us friends are losing theirs and it’s hard not to feel nervous about the future. We’re on the verge of taking the next step, house and a fam, at time when things could change at any moment. We’re talking a lot of extra costs. S and I are budget masters but nearly doubling our mortgage and the costs of kids means increasing our risk when we should be doing the exact opposite.

Random Photo of the Day

Truth in advertising. I love this photo. To many of my ultimate pictures are boring profile photos because I'm forced to take them from the sidelines. I got lucky with this one and was able to sneak away and shoot this from behind the endzone, hence the straight on perspective.

President's of the United States of America concert

I'm covered in bruises from moshing like it was 1994, but it was a great concert nonetheless.

Unfortunately the camera wasn't charged so I only got a few photos.

list of life

Oooooooookay. Deep breath everybody, deep breath.

I’m almost there. I’m nearly 30.

30!

I’ve been flashing back to high school chemistry class a lot over the last couple of days. For reasons that have long ago been lost to the mists of time, my lab partner and I used to scream out ’30!’ whenever we had to work on an in-class project. We thought ourselves pretty amusing and we never failed to crack each other up. I’m sure to our partially formed brains we were comic geniuses, but I wonder if maybe we’d just been inhaling too many fumes from the bunsen burner.

So whenever someone mentions my 30th birthday, I hear a newly post-pubescent voice scream ’30!’ in the back of my head and away I go.

People make such a fuss over aging these days, and the importance of hitting those all important decade milestones. I feel like I should have something more insightful to say about the gravity of hitting the big 3-0.

And I’ve got nothing.

Oh, when I went to my hairdresser last night I was a little bummed out that apparently I had a bunch of grey hairs in the back of my head where I couldn’t see them.

I also know that I’ve been trying to convince myself that my opponents on the Ultimate field are insanely fast. When in reality the truth is I’ve lost a step or two.

And eating smarter became a necessity a couple years ago as my expanding waistline told me that my vaunted metabolism had finally crapped out.

So yes, I’ve certainly noticed the effects of aging and no, I can’t say that I’m overly enamoured with it.

I used to have something in my wallet called the List of Life. I made my first list in high school when I was inspired by a guest speaker who said that making a list of things he wanted to accomplish in his life helped to keep him grounded over the years. My first list was fairly juvenile and had very little to do with reality. But the list helped me set some of my first concrete goals and gave me a sense of purpose. I finally had an idea about what I wanted to get out of my life.

I kept that list in my wallet and I took great pleasure in being able to cross off some of the more mundane items on it. (Graduate high school, get into my first choice of University)

Later on, during a particularly gruelling time in University, I revised the list, dropping some of the wilder items and adding rather lofty career goals. That revision helped to refocus and reinvigorate me at a time when I was feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of post-secondary education.

(At that time I also created the first ever appendix to the list. A series of bullet points about the elements I thought were crucial to good filmmaking. A goodly portion of my university angst was centered around the difficulties in shepherding my film projects through to completion.)

The List of Life 2.0 languished in my wallet for years, becoming delicate and frail from being folded and unfolded so many times.

The last time I remember seeing it was on my first date with my now wife. In a fit of hubris I had the balls to pull that list out of my wallet and show her the many things I planned to accomplish with my life. To her credit S read the list and managed to avoid laughing in my face.

Since then the list has been misplaced, most likely to prevent further degradation to it’s worn folds. An in-depth search about a month ago failed to turn up even a trace of it.

As I approach my 30th birthday (30!) it was inevitable that I would succumb to a certain amount of reflection about how I got to where I am today. I find myself wanting to create yet another list, not just to remind me about what I want to get out of life, but also to remember what I have accomplished over the course of my time here.

The list of life meant a lot of things to me. It was a physical reminder to keep striving to reach my goals. It was the repository of the hopes and dreams of an optimistic and naïve 15 year old. It was where a struggling artist scribbled a hasty manifesto about his art. It was the first time I opened up in a meaningful way to my wife.

I intend to rewrite that list, because I can’t stop wondering what it will mean to me now.

Fitness

The new multi pronged fitness plan isn’t exactly proceeding as...planned.

As opposed to Ulti which is a fixed time, week in week out. My rock climbing and yoga schedule is much more flexible. In this case flexibility is more of a hindrance than a help. Flexibility means it can get bumped or re-scheduled because something else came up that needs to take priority. Just this one time though, I swear, we’ll get back on schedule next week.

Meanwhile I’m scarfing down rabbit food and fat free yogurt so my weight doesn’t balloon.

To recap. The rock climbing is awesome. It’s exactly what I wanted. A fun workout that doesn’t seem like a workout. I’ve only got an opportunity to do it once so far. But the plan is to make this a weekly event and I have every intent of following through with that. Next week. I swear.

Hot yoga is a more challenging experience and the jury is still out on that. My first pass saw me lose five pounds from sweat alone. It was a draining experience, but in the end I did feel very relaxed. I can’t say I enjoyed it though. That’s not going to stop me from trying it for about a month and then re-examining the matter. I didn’t like Ulti the first time either and now I can’t imagine my life without it.

Speaking of which. Less than a month before the Spring season begins. I can’t wait.

Weekend

Ahhh.

The weekend.

Those precious 48 hours where your time is hypothetically your own. With S working this weekend that last statement finally has the ring of truth to it. I could spend my time wisely, catching up on schoolwork or entering the three boxes of books I have stashed in the car (We've sold seven books in February, so we're doing extratordinarily well right now...ha-cha-cha).

BUT.

I have a new addiction. Civilization IV (with expansion pack). For the last month of my life this game has taken up every increasingly rare spare moment I have. In a bid to shake me out of my reverie my wife has threatened divorce and\or physical violence with varying desgrees of sucess.

I've always had a weakness for the Civ franchise (thank you for that Adam) but C-4 has become the perfect outlet for an overworked me.

For the most part I've suceeded in weaning myself off the game. Only that was before the prospect of 48 Chris-centric hours were streched out before me like a field of candy and free comic books.

I mean, I'm strong. But I'm not that strong.