File this under squeeee!
Nov. 23rd, 2022 04:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter1944I can now say I've seen Come From Away performed in person! I was still masked while doing so, and unashamedly. That did not stop me singing along in spots! XD
Considering I've had the album downloaded for ages, I knew most of what I was getting into. Nevertheless, there are all kinds of interwoven details and just-as-important scenes that are left off of the cast recording, and those are what knocked me for a loop. So much of what Bonnie got up to, her sheer dedication, her interactions both with her husband and with the animals - "They're just going to have to shoot me, then," - impressed the heck out of me, and the fact that she's based quite closely on someone real... wow. I aspire to be even half such a person.
And, I was not prepared for the abject degradation that was Ali's experience before being allowed to board his outbound flight, though considering time period and situation, I probably should have been. The scene was utterly wrenching, and the actor's delivery had a great deal to do with that. If that gentleman is not fluent in Arabic (the character is Egyptian, that's another detail I didn't know until seeing the show), he certainly mimicked both the language and the accent well.
I was also not prepared for much of the audience to chuckle over the confusion of Salvation Army uniforms with military ones the second time Darkness And Trees came around. Call me humorless, but that's never struck me as funny. Granted, I can easily imagine the passengers in question coming from, say, northern Uganda, with the LRA active as of 2001, or from pretty much anywhere in the DRC, or any number of other places, and looked at through that lens, it's no wonder unfamiliar people in uniforms would be dread-inducing. The audience started snickering and I was like... wait a second, what? :(
On a much more cheerful note, need I mention that everything that happens in the Legion is still a delight? I don't entirely know what it is, the music itself, the camaraderie, the patter and the ceremony played straight, or what, but something about that whole sequence just makes my oddly-bent throwback storyteller's heart sing. No tabletop dance drums that I could hear, however; oh well, I'm keeping that little bit of fiction for myself.
Now that I'm done squeeing, I finish out the workday, put a few more things in a suitcase, and head for the marsh for Thanksgiving. I'll still be around online, but if I'm scarce, I'm probably getting bounced on by goofy niblings.
Considering I've had the album downloaded for ages, I knew most of what I was getting into. Nevertheless, there are all kinds of interwoven details and just-as-important scenes that are left off of the cast recording, and those are what knocked me for a loop. So much of what Bonnie got up to, her sheer dedication, her interactions both with her husband and with the animals - "They're just going to have to shoot me, then," - impressed the heck out of me, and the fact that she's based quite closely on someone real... wow. I aspire to be even half such a person.
And, I was not prepared for the abject degradation that was Ali's experience before being allowed to board his outbound flight, though considering time period and situation, I probably should have been. The scene was utterly wrenching, and the actor's delivery had a great deal to do with that. If that gentleman is not fluent in Arabic (the character is Egyptian, that's another detail I didn't know until seeing the show), he certainly mimicked both the language and the accent well.
I was also not prepared for much of the audience to chuckle over the confusion of Salvation Army uniforms with military ones the second time Darkness And Trees came around. Call me humorless, but that's never struck me as funny. Granted, I can easily imagine the passengers in question coming from, say, northern Uganda, with the LRA active as of 2001, or from pretty much anywhere in the DRC, or any number of other places, and looked at through that lens, it's no wonder unfamiliar people in uniforms would be dread-inducing. The audience started snickering and I was like... wait a second, what? :(
On a much more cheerful note, need I mention that everything that happens in the Legion is still a delight? I don't entirely know what it is, the music itself, the camaraderie, the patter and the ceremony played straight, or what, but something about that whole sequence just makes my oddly-bent throwback storyteller's heart sing. No tabletop dance drums that I could hear, however; oh well, I'm keeping that little bit of fiction for myself.
Now that I'm done squeeing, I finish out the workday, put a few more things in a suitcase, and head for the marsh for Thanksgiving. I'll still be around online, but if I'm scarce, I'm probably getting bounced on by goofy niblings.
