Star Trek Novel Fic Fest

I have been really bad this year at getting out to see things, but I saw a couple of things! I'll talk about the first one here: hamsterwoman inspired me and I got to see Hadestown on tour! (The same cast she saw, even, although I didn't realize this until afterwards.) It was only here for two weeknights, clearly as a pit stop in between the two major metropolitan areas we live between. The theater was packed. The only empty spots I saw in the entire house were, hilariously, right in front of us (and must have been people who didn't show up for some reason, as the seats were definitely sold). I didn't buy tickets early enough and they were sold out when I first looked, but fortunately some opened up day of -- I wouldn't normally buy orchestra section for a show I didn't already know I'd love, but that's what I get for not planning ahead. But it turns out I did love it enough that I enjoyed the orchestra section tickets immensely, so it all turned out well.

The singers were all just extremely, extremely good, both as singers and as dancers (well, I guess Hades and Persephone didn't really dance a ton, but Eurydice in particular had a lot of parts where she had to combine with the ensemble), and really imprinted on me. To the extent where I went back and listened to the Broadway recording and was like "okay, sure, yeah, these are the same songs, but that's not MY cast." They were just really really almost scarily professional -- I really can't believe the Broadway cast is any better -- it was hard to believe that we were getting this kind of quality of cast. SO good.

Nickolaus Colón as Hades was THE standout performance of the night in a cast full of excellence. Seriously it was worth seeing it for him alone. The Persephone, Namisa Mdlalose Bizana, was also an excellent singer whose strength matched Colón's (a weak dancer, but as I said before she didn't have to do that much of it). I thought it was a great choice to have the really strong singers be the "gods" -- it really added something to it.

Eurydice (...I think we must have seen an understudy? The site says Hawa Kamara but I'm pretty sure that's not who we saw) and Orpheus (Jose Contreras) were also good but their voices were more sort of good in the way I expected them to be good, kind of. Orpheus, unfortunately, had the flaw (at least that night) that sometimes his top notes (he has a lot of falsetto notes, which is a bit weird?) were flat, and those were inevitably the notes where the song was supposed to be borderline-magic, and it unfortunately always threw me out of those bits because I'd be like "...but he's flat, augh!" The Fates (Gia Keddy, Miriam Navarrete, Jayna Wescoatt) were quite excellent -- both as singers and as an ensemble of three (as they basically did all their parts together, as one would expect). The Hermes (Rudy Foster) was also excellent. So were the ensemble. They were just all super super good.

The orchestra accompaniment was seated on-stage (it was a rather crowded stage at times) and I need to mention the pianist and the trombonist who both sometimes seemed to be participating in the action -- especially the trombonist, who occasionally got up from his seat and played his trombone mingling with the other actors, which was amazing. (I told D at intermission, "No one told me that the trombonist was the hero of this show!") I was especially watching him because now I have a kiddo who plays trombone, and he was using at least a couple of different mutes to make his trombone make a variety of sounds (A.'s trombone teacher showed us some of these at one point, for fun), and also sometimes he doubled as the xylophone player, which I thought was interesting!

I tend to operate one of two different ways with musicals. Either I go in knowing nothing or I go in having basically memorized the soundtrack. This was the former: I went in not knowing anything except that it was an AU retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, and I'd picked up from osmosis there were trains, and I'd listened to a few of the songs beforehand to make sure I liked them well enough. The pros are that I get to be continuously surprised by the real thing, and the cons are that there are lots of spots where I just don't catch the words, because I have fairly poor speech processing. This was one where I think it was a good choice to go in knowing nothing, because there are so many parts where the music and the visuals work together so well that I think the effect would have been blunted if I'd known the music really well going in. (Hamilton is one where I think it was better to know the soundtrack ahead of time, as I don't think I'd have been able to make out the vast majority of the words otherwise.)

( Vague spoilers if you're like me and have never watched it before )

I think this is a show that I admire more than that I'm fannish about. It's kind of interesting -- it's almost like it's so polished that there aren't any weird cracks or rough edges to hang a fannish hat on, so to speak. So I didn't feel the desire to see it again the next day (not that I would have, but I've absolutely been to theater events where I was like "okay, I would be very strongly tempted go to see this again tomorrow if I could spare the time") but if the tour comes back next year I'd almost definitely go if Colón were still in it, and even if not I'd strongly consider going.

The last book!

Last week: Astrological phenomena and the star of Bethlehem. Messianic (?) prophecy about Vespasian. Brutality of the siege, and discussion of the law of war protecting prisoners from the enemy army (or lack thereof). Imperator.

This week: Book 7. Wrapping up of the war. The Masada fortress and group suicide (which I think is interesting to think about given the discussion we had a few books back). The temple of Onias. (Dedicated commment threads for both of these below, for anyone who wants to join in!)

Yay book club, thank you everyone!