Plans

Other than a football game (Minnesota’s season-opening win over U.N.L.V.), Joshua and I have seen and done nothing since returning from Canada more than six weeks ago.

We skipped Bloomington Civic Theatre’s presentation of “Singin’ In The Rain”, a production now closed. I have never seen any of the stage adaptations of the musical film, and I doubt I have missed much; the very notion of turning one of Hollywood’s greatest musicals into a stage vehicle strikes me as wrong-headed. In any case, we were told that the B.C.T. “Singin’ In The Rain” was not good.

We intend to skip Jungle Theater’s current production of “Fool For Love” because we are not in the mood for a Sam Shepard play. A couple of years ago, Josh and I saw an exceptional production of Shepard’s “True West” at Minneapolis Theatre Garage, but we are not keen on more Shepard at present. I have to be in the proper frame of mind to tolerate Shepard’s fundamentally ugly view of mankind, and at the moment I am not in that frame of mind.

Everything else on our list has been saved for this coming weekend, when Josh’s sister will come for a visit.

Despite the fact that Josh’s sister has no interest in sports, we plan to take her to the Minnesota/Iowa game. For us, this is the most important game of the year—we seldom miss the Minnesota/Iowa game—and we hope she will find some enjoyment at the stadium. Saturday will be Homecoming, and extra festivities will be on offer in addition to the standard game-day attractions.

We have tickets for Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at Minnesota Opera, and we are confident that Josh’s sister will enjoy the Puccini.

We also have tickets for Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at The Guthrie Theater, and we have tickets for David Auburn’s “Proof” at Bloomington Civic Theatre.

Further, we have tickets for Molière’s “The Imaginary Invalid” at Theatre In The Round, but we shall not use them. We had looked forward immensely to the Molière, but our former landlady warned us off the production, telling us that Theatre In The Round’s “The Imaginary Invalid” was the worst thing to hit the Upper Midwest in decades.

Instead, at our former landlady’s insistence, we shall see a production that had not even been on our list: David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People” at Park Square Theatre. Our former landlady says that “Good People” is the finest production in town, and must not be missed—and we have decided to heed our former landlady’s advice.

Consequently, between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon, we shall be dragging Josh’s sister to three plays, one opera and one football game.

However, only one of the plays, and not two, will be a classic—a slight change from our original plans.