Guys & Dolls

My favourite musical, bar none, is Frank Loesser's Guys & Dolls. My parents took me to see it at the National Theatre in London, it must have been in the early 1980s, and it was superb.  I loved it so much that in 1990 when I noticed posters advertising a student production of it in a small town in Korea (where I happened to have wound up), I leapt at the chance to see it again - and even performed entirely in Korean it was still superb.  My biggest regret is that I never got my act together to go and see the West End revival (starring Ewan McGregor, no less) a few years ago.

Naturally, then, when I found out Guys & Dolls, Jr would be playing at the Middle School, I had to have a ticket.

So - how did a cast of 11-14 year olds make out with the world's best ever stage musical?

Were they as good as that National Theatre production?  Nope.

Were they as good as a bunch of Korean college students?  Hmm - not quite.

But did those kids put their hearts and souls into every number?  You betcha!

And did the audience raise the roof cheering at the end?  Hell, yeah!

Star of the show?  Ever-lovin' Adelaide, by a Broadway mile.  But all the lead players did a fine, fine job.

And given that it was a musical and that I famously have trouble keeping it together during songs, one more question...

Not knowing a single one of these kids: did I cry?

Well, what do you think?

Talk of angels

The Boy and I walked to school this morning with our tongues hanging out - to catch snowflakes. Although it didn't last terribly long, more snow fell through the morning, and it was proper fluffy stuff that those romantically inclined might call "angel feathers".

Speaking of angels...  At the end of our tour of the Hyde Collection on Saturday the guide (here they call them "docents") asked if we had any questions.  I started wondering about the painting of an angel in the doorway of the music room.  "Ah!" said the docent, "You mean the angel with attitude?  Yes, that's an interesting one, isn't it - one of the oldest paintings in the collection [c1350].  Not what you'd expect of an angel at all, is it - arms folded and an expression like that!"

Though the docent couldn't enlighten me, and I suppose it's lost in the mists of time, I wonder what her story really is?

Just desserts

The day started cheerily with our friends' annual Ice Cream for Breakfast Day celebration.  Suitably stuffed with too many treats too early in the day, we headed on from there to Willard Mountain to ski off the excess.

Oh here we go, you may be thinking, jolly old skiing again.  Ok for some....  Well, today's the day you get to enjoy a dash of schadenfreude for a change.  We turned up and had ourselves all kitted out by the appointed time, only to learn that the lifts - all of them - had stopped working.  A catastrophic power cut.  

So, no jaunts down the mountainside for us this week.  We hung around.  My teacher gamely gave half a lesson on turning style to his small class on a very (very) slight slope, but otherwise classes were cancelled.  A few people trudged halfway up the mountain on foot.  Our kids made the best of it and messed about in the snow for a while, but all in all it was a disappointing shortened afternoon. 

And now Sunday evening, which would usually be given over to conking out on the couch, stretches ahead of us full of time and energy we're not accustomed to having.  

Seek-and-go-Hyde

I'd only heard about the Hyde Collection in Glens Falls quite recently.  Finding ourselves without children (they'd made their own arrangements) for the afternoon, the Man and I went to seek it out.

What a perfect place!  The collection is housed in the former home of Louis and Charlotte Hyde. It's a substantial house, but not ostentatious, and close-by the papermill from which the Hydes made their fortune.  It was built in 1912 in the style of an Italian villa, featuring a Florentine courtyard at the centre with an American twist: a glass roof.  None of the rooms are enormous, all are tastefully furnished with modest amounts of antique furniture from all over the world.  In each room the real focus is on the artworks, collected by the Hydes themselves and spanning almost 6,000 years of creativity.

Every room contains treasures by some of the best-known European and American artists - a Degas here, a Renoir there, over there a Picasso, here a Whistler and a Winslow Homer.  There are paintings by Reubens and El Greco.  There are fine examples of religious art, landscapes, portraits, sculpture...  Most are rather small, many are studies for bigger artworks.  Everything was chosen to fit with the scale of the house. 

We toured the house by ourselves (almost the only visitors), then with a guide - we had her to ourselves, and enjoyed her genuine enthusiasm for the collection.  Sometimes visiting a gallery can be an exhausting business - too much to see and take in.  But we left the Hyde in a very happy mood, as if we'd just been treated to a well-proportioned meal made with quality ingredients - we'd enjoyed everything, and felt entirely satisfied.

Art for hearts' sake

As I mentioned back on MLK Day, the kids and I spent part of that day-off working on a craft project. Well, to be honest, it was mostly the Girl and me.

A lot of people here are into gift presentation in quite a big way, and things often come in gift-bags well packed with colourful tissue-paper.  Being the hoarder that I am, I never throw any of it away (I can't shake off my that'll come in handy... mindset - I even save the paper party crowns out of Christmas crackers). I've accumulated a sackload of tissue over the years, and I decided we should put it to some use.

Using a technique I'd picked up once on a visit to the Albany Institute of History & Art children's art room, I had the kids spread watered-down glue on sheets of paper, and we overlaid it with strips of different coloured tissue.  By overlapping the tissue we got some nice effects.  With several sheets covered, we laid everything out to dry, then I flattened it all under heavy books.

A couple of days later, I got busy with scissors and cut out loads of heart-shapes.

Most of them have been turned into gift-tags.  But I also thought some would look good arranged in a frame.  What d'you reckon?

Boy story

It has been a big week for the Boy.

On Tuesday, the 4th Graders performed "Kidnastic" gym routines.  Parents weren't invited, but the "kidnasts" had an audience of each other and all the 2nd Graders.  Our Boy was in a team with a bunch of his mates and was, in his own words (and rather to his surprise, I think) "kind of like the star of the show".  It sounds like they did some vaulting and some forward rolls and that sort of thing, to the tune of Party Rock Anthem, and their grand finale was...a human pyramid!  And the Boy, being smallest kid in his group (in fact smallest in the whole class, if not the entire 4th Grade), was selected to stand on top!  They pulled it off successfully, and the Boy was buzzing with excitement when he got home that afternoon.  I'm rather hoping he'll invite his friends round for a re-enactment.

Tonight he has been performing again, at the 4th and 5th Grade Winter Concert.  He was quite nervous about it, even though he was just one small voice among 210 in the combined choir.  During the first couple of songs we couldn't even see him.  Normally it is the lot of our children to be stuck right in the front row with the other, hm, less tall people.  But somehow for this concert the Boy managed to wangle a place in the second row, rendering himself completely invisible.  Just as well, perhaps, as we had somehow missed the "appropriate dress" memo for the event and he was one of the only children wearing a t-shirt (ah well - at least it was a clean t-shirt.  And he had brushed his hair).

The concert was good, especially the South African freedom anthem that provided the rousing final chorus.  Bravo to the excellent and ever-enthusiastic choir teacher, to the kids who put on a great show, and to our Boy for being part of it.

Kneadlessly simple and/or exceptionally dense

Every now and then (really, very seldom) I come over all domestic goddess.  The last couple of days I've had it bad - cooking up a complicated multi-Asian meal yesterday, and today baking cookies and bread.

The bread was inspired by a book from the library, Kneadlessly Simple.  The idea is that, just by leaving it standing for long enough, dough will rise by the action of yeast alone.  So in fact I made oat-bread dough yesterday morning, and only got to the baking stage tonight.

It has turned out to be a little (ahem) dense - though perhaps not the densest thing in my home.  I hadn't properly appreciated that when she instructed me to "leave the dough to rise in a cool place", by cool the author meant around 70F.  Not cool as in the normal daytime temperature of my house (around the 62F mark).  Hence not much rising went on.  The bread is as light as a brick.

Ah well.  If it proves to be inedible I can always use it to pelt the pesky squirrels who've destroyed yet another of our birdfeeders this week.