Weather or Not

Due to a weather scare we changed our date night from Saturday to Friday night. We made good on a Christmas gift from a couple in our Sunday school class and they showed up to watch the kids in plenty of time for us to drive to Hendersonville to eat dinner at Fulin’s and see a play.

Now Kris is not usually the kind of guy who goes to see plays, but in an effort to bring me joy he made plans to take me to see a play of my favorite Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice. It was performed by an organization called Lamplighter’s Theatre and we really enjoyed it. Our friend Christina was one of the performers and our friend Greg was the director and the event was held at the church of our friend’s Aaron and Beth Allison. As you can imagine we were able to see a lot of old friends in the audience as well. It was a very enjoyable evening.

I was impressed with a lot of the aspects of the play. The lead role of Elizabeth Bennet was very well played. The actress was unknown to me but Kris and I were both struck by her resemblance to our friend Christy. She looked similar and her mannerisms and laughter were very much like Christy’s. Of course the fact that she was performing and doing a spot on English accent gave her a bit of a Christy-esque quality as well. I had to get a picture of her to pass along to other fans of Christy. I know it’s not that overwhelmingly evident in the picture, but she really did resemble you Christy.

Of course I have to give my critique of the play as well. Here and there it was glaring to me that the writer had zipped up the story in order to make it fit into the allotted time of a play. This is good in that we don’t want to sit in a not so comfortable chair late into a Friday night to get every detail of the story. The zips however were a bit off of the original feel of Jane Austen’s writing and a little too quickly brushed onto the page in my opinion. The writer did a fabulous job over-all and my only other complaint in that regard may need to go to the director rather than the writer. I felt the play reflected less on the book and more on the BBC movie. A wonderful movie no doubt, but I felt a little cheated by the interpretation, as I’ve seen the movie enough to know how it goes…and wanted something new.

The acting for the most part was excellent. Our Christy look-alike was especially talented and carried each scene with clarity, integrity and wonderful timing. Her counterparts were well versed, some found it more difficult to overcome their southern accents than others, but each one fit their characters well. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet were especially entertaining (her part was an exact portrayal of the BBC classic…maybe it wasn’t original but I admit it was wonderful) and Lady Catherine DeBourgh was positively horrible (in a good way). She really made the audience enjoy hating her. I have to add that the part of Mr. Collins was also a very entertaining and well played. The actor seemed to take on his own version of the character and though it was very true to the book, it was not an exact copy of the movie. Very well done.

Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingly were both a bit weak. Mr. Bingly at least had a bit of a character to work with, but poor Darcy seemed to be a lifeless piece of script walking about the stage. In most scenes I simply looked past him and waited for Elizabeth to astonish me. He was not horrible, he was not annoying…he simply wasn’t there for most of the performance. Greg told me later that it was his first play with them and my hope is, that with further experience and some good training he will improve.

Now…moving on to the rest of my weekend. We went out Saturday in search of patio furniture for our back porch. Not an easy task if you are looking for something quality but not wanting to spend $300.00 for a chair. It was a cold and rainy day and a lot of places have their inventory out doors or in large warehouses with no heat. It wasn’t a good day for that sort of shopping I suppose but we were determined and our poor kids endured it. We decided to go to one last shop downtown and as it was lunch time we took the kids to Pie In The Sky Pizza off of West End. We had been to Pie in the Sky years ago for a birthday party but it was a different location. When they seated us the hostess immediately started pulling down these bar stools at a bar which sat against a window to the kitchen. She explained that it is a dough bar where the kids can pound dough like the lady behind the glass. The boys loved it. The little lady on the other side tossed a couple of pieces of dough through a hole high up on the glass wall and the boys made all sorts of things with it. It really was fun for them and I did get a picture…

The pizza was good…a little greasy…but that’s because I got one loaded with really good meat!!! And the service was great.

We finally made it home and lit our last fire of the season. We had four pieces of wood left so that will have to be it. The weather is welcome to warm up for us now. It’s beautiful outside today. It’s very sunny, but very cold still. March is here…surely that means Spring will make it’s way to Tennessee soon.

The promise of a horrible snow storm had us wondering if we would find ourselves at church on Sunday. I know that parts of the state were pretty covered up. 8 inches in Columbia I heard. How did you Franklin people fare? We had white rooftops here, but nothing to keep us inside. So…after a great service at church and filling lunch at home, we took another trip out to look at patio furniture. We had narrowed down our search quite a bit, so just two stops and we may have a winner at JCPenney. Their stuff is a lot more sturdy than Target (still not as substantial as we’d like, but close) and the prices are not a lot higher. There is still a little store in Mt. Juliet that I would like to look at. I doubt it’s affordable, but I’d like to check it out.

Today is going well. The boys are all fed and napping, and the laundry is almost done. The kitchen is almost clean and my list is…well…almost as long as it was when I started. That’s okay though. I’m feeling refreshed as I write.