What a Show!

Fiorella LOVED Georgetown's Palace Theater production of 42nd Street!  It hit all the right spots and left the audience begging for more.  Georgetown's Palace Theater has come along way from when it had to paint mustaches on high school boys and so they could pass as adults on stage.

42nd Street is a period piece, and Fio doesn't remember ever seeing it as a movie,but she did know most of the songs--notably Dames, We're in the Money, Sunny Side, Lullaby of Broadway, About a Quarter to Nine, Shuffle Off to Buffalo, Forty-second Street. The story, based on a movie based on a book, is cliche: a young, pretty hoofer comes to NY, is thrust into spotlight, and, despite setbacks, makes it big. It's a silly show biz parody in which even the villain turns sweet, but it's also somehow quite touching.

What can Fio say? The casting was great, the costumes were perfect, the settings were right-on, and the dance numbers (choreographed by Jessee Smart) were unbelievably good. Fio's favorite routines were the French farce-like scene on the sleeper car and the Agnes de Mille hooker scene at the end of the show.

Getting down to nit-picking minutia, the heroine's blonde wig turned a surprising white under "nighttime" lights, the young boy in the cast never missed a beat but seemed out of place in the sometimes bawdy musical, and Fio and her guests couldn't figure out why a happy-looking man was dressed--and danced--as a woman in the final scene.

Anyway, the show was great.  Fio's been through a lot lately and 42nd Street allowed her to escape into another world for two glorious hours. Maybe that's what show business is all about.

ANYTHING GOES Is a Winner!

It's so embarrassing when you invite someone to join you for an afternoon at the theater and the production is less than stellar.  Thus it was with a certain degree of anxiety that Husband and Fio trekked into Georgetown to meet with Nephew Barrett and his wife, Rachel, for a Sunday afternoon performance of Anything Goes, the 1934 Cole Porter musical.

Fiorella started getting nervous when the overture blared forth, over-loud as usual, but her fingers in her ears saved her,  Then she noticed what looked like bad champagne-blonde wigs on a some of the cast.  Then she met Reno Sweeny and the show went uphill from there.

Except for the black outfit the ingenue was cursed with, the costumes were great--Fio loved those slinky 1930s slip-like dresses,  And the choreography was great too--so many people dancing at once and so well coordinated. And the scenery was really good--Fio kept staring at the brig scene, trying to figure out if the background was real or trompe d'oiel.

And the songs.  Fiorella never realized the songs that came from this show: "I Get a Kick Out of You;" "Easy to Love;" "It's De-Lovely"; "Blow, Gabriel; and, of course, "Anything Goes."

Anything Goes is a silly story requiring the audience's total suspension of disbelief, and the Georgetown Palace pulled it off. All in all, the show was worthy of its standing ovation, and more besides.