“I’d almost forgotten what that was like”, Jean commented, as we exited the Registry Theatre after a Larry Larson’s Jazz Guys concert. And by that, he met a live musical performance of any kind.
We’d intended to attend many a live musical performance over these past and coming months, but then the Kitchener Waterloo Symphony suddenly and apparently irrevocably went bankrupt—a mere week before what would have been their first concert of the season. Our season’s tickets for various performances, from Bolero to Magic! to Back to the Future to Shostakovitch, suddenly longer worth nothing more than a tax receipt.
There are efforts underway to try to revive the local arts scene, but who knows. Government funding is tight all around. The Globe and Mail has been covering the problems that theatre companies have been experiencing right across the country (🎁 article link). Mirvish is doing fine, but others are not. I suppose the lack of audience return is due to combination of people having become increasingly accustomed to home entertainment; inflation lowering budgetary for spending on discretionary events; and some remaining concern about the health risks of crowded spaces.
But for us, at least this year, it was just mainly that the Symphony disappeared. And we’ve had trouble finding appealing alternatives. It’s been some time since we’ve been out anywhere.
February has seemed virtually packed with arts activities, comparatively speaking.
It was just a small listing in the What’s Happening Waterloo newsletter:
Agit-Pop! Musical Meditations on the Pre-Post-Apocalypse
Intriguing.
Reading further:
Superstar drag comedienne Pearle Harbour performs her doomsday cabaret. Laughs & tears through the headlines, and hits from David Bowie, to Britney Spears. A hilarious and heartbreaking cabaret for the end times. Agit-Pop! reimagines the hits of Bowie, Britney, Judy Garland, Tom Waits and more as you’ve never heard them before.
Sounded right up my alley, really. Drag. Doom. Pop.
Jean, ever the trooper, agreed to come along.
As we approached the door, I noticed that all the theatre staff were masked, which was refreshing. Then the man a bit ahead of us in line turned around to go back out, stating “I’ll just go get the mask in my car!” Huh. Then I noticed the “Please wear a mask for this performance” sign. Double huh! Hadn’t seen one of those in many a moon!
Policy was not strictly enforced, so some people remained unmasked. But, I’d say a good 90% to 95% went along with it. Peer pressure, eh. Can also be a force for good!
But. On with the show.
Though it’s not the easiest to describe, as I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Admittedly, I don’t go to a ton of drag shows regardless, but have seen a few, and I don’t think this was a typical one of those.
Pearle Harbour, accompanied by a single musician who can play multiple instruments, discusses the various challenges and problems facing our world. The need for Indigenous reconciliation. The climate crisis. The ongoing Covid epidemic. Anti-immigration sentiments.
And interspersed it with pop music, not as a distraction, but as a commentary.
5 years. That’s all we’ve got.
My loneliness is killing me.
There’s a land I dream of… Somewhere, over the rainbow
I think I just wasn’t made for these times…
But it was still drag. So it was not all po-faced. There was bawdiness, there were jokes, there was a whole lot of audience engagement and participation. A tragicomedienne, she is called, and that sounds about right.
Given all the interaction, Jean enjoyed the evening as much as I did. We did the wave—the Covid wave! We discussed the etymology of agit prop. We shared guilty pleasures. We stood en masse to do the duck and cover. To a background of Cold War era cartoons (some of which are quite something).
Bit late to tell you this now, but she also play Waterford and Fergus. Then she’s moving on to other provinces (and bigger cities—Montreal, Calgary).
I decided to go see Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill: The musical because I am a big fan of Jagged Little Pill, the album, and indeed of much of her other oeuvre. But I didn’t know anything about the musical itself, or what kind of story they’d woven around the songs.
Jean agreed to go also because, well, because he’s a sport I guess, given that he hadn’t super enjoyed the last two musicals we’ve seen, the acclaimed Hamilton and the also acclaimed Rent. Couldn’t quite follow the former (lots of plot, admittedly), and couldn’t quite get the latter.
And what I wouldn’t give to find a soul mate? Someone else to catch this drift And what I wouldn’t give to meet a kindred?
All I Really Want, Alanis Morissette
Fortunately, Alanis, Diablo Cody (who wrote the book), and Glen Ballard (who co-wrote many of the songs), were kindred with Jean. He really enjoyed this musical. As did I. Because it was awesome!
The songs are used to tell the story of a year in the life of a family of four: the tightly wound Mary Jane, her workaholic husband Steve, their academically inclined son Nick, and their activist adopted daughter Frankie. Big, heavy topics are addressed: Sexual assault. Opioid addiction. Racism. Sexism. Some moments are super uncomfortable. But there’s a lot of humour in between. And all those great songs!
The playbill includes everything from Jagged Little Pill along with some selections from other albums, like “So Unsexy”, “Uninvited”, and “Thank U”. Lyrics are occasionally modified to suit the character and the situation. They really supported the story; none seemed to be just trotted out because they were big hits that needed including! “You Oughta Know” is not necessarily sung by whom you’d expect, to whom you’d expect, but it builds to an undeniable thrilling climax nonetheless. The audience responded ecstatically, as they should have.
But I had to laugh that after the line:
Why are you so petrified of silence? Here, can you handle this?
The audience totally could not handle the following silence, and had to fill it in with random clapping.
Anyway. This thing was really well cast, with the actors playing Mary Jane, Frankie, and Jo (a friend of Frankie’s) particularly standing out. Amazing singing voices, and just outstanding performances.
5 stars. No notes.
Getting there and back
This was in Toronto, so we had to make our way there. For Jean, this trip turned out to be the day after he got back from a later-scheduled work trip, so that wasn’t ideal, but he coped! We took Flixbus again. They’re finally using proper branded Flixbuses on the Kitchener-Toronto route (previously it was a generic bus), which even had wifi, albeit somewhat flaky.
For some reason we couldn’t seem to leave from our usual Waterloo stop, and had to get on at the Kitchener stop. Not a big deal—just meant staying on the Ion (our local light rail) for four stops instead of one. Still seemed odd, though, because on the way back, we did get off at the Waterloo stop.
Waterloo Park, which is near our usual Flixbus stop
The bus was weirdly overheated for the first portion of the trip back. I was starting to wonder if I could actually handle the entire 1 hour, 45 minute trip (not that it was clear what the alternative was) when the heat finally stopped pouring out.
We managed the Toronto subway pretty well also (we have Presto cards now!), though Google kept confusing us with mentions of line outages. Took us a while to realize that said outages were occurring much further up the line than we intended to go.
Other stuff we did
It was a quick trip: we left Saturday morning and returned Sunday morning. Of course, that was long enough that we needed a hotel room. We went with the Courtyard Marriott, which was a “mere” $300 or so for the night. Was nice that the room was available despite our arriving pretty early, around 11:00 AM, and even nicer that they gave us a little bag of snacks and bottles of water. Totally worth the $300! (I joke. But it actually was nice.)
We grabbed lunch from a Freshii, which, oddly, we’ve never eaten at before. It was good. We each had a smoothie and a wrap. Quite fascinating how much stuff they can fit into those wraps.
Since we have memberships, we spent a bit of time at the AGO (Art Gallery of Ontario). Their special exhibit was featured the artist Kaws, who does stuff like this:
Which was kind of interesting. For one part, you had to download an app on your phone, then point it (the phone) at a particular spot in the gallery to see the art, as a 3D image. We took a picture after doing that, but are not clear on where that pic ended up…
And overall, we probably enjoyed the Cornelius Krieghoff room (part of the permanent collection) the most during this visit.
Our post-musical dinner was at Avelo, where we’ve been twice before. Since our last visit, though, they’ve changed things up. The beautiful room upstairs, where we sat both times previously, has been converted into a bar. Meals are now served downstairs, in a smaller, darker, noisier room. Since we had both envisioned the previous visits, we were a bit miffed.
To be fair, I think they had emailed me about these changes—it just hadn’t really registered. (I thought their new Bar Avelo was at some other location than our Avelo.) With generous table spacing and visible HEPA filters, the previous seating area felt as safe as a maskless, indoor dining experience could possibly be. And while the new downstairs room did still have a couple HEPA filters, and not all the tables in the small room were filled, it still didn’t feel as comfortable.
On the plus side, the food was still amazing from start to finish, the service was very good (though we still missed our upstairs guy), and the wine pairings were spot-on. It has lost what made special, though—other Toronto places also have good food, service, and wine.
(Not that Avelo needs me. From where I was sitting, I could overhear that the new bar was super-popular: so full that they had to turn people away.)
Swallow it down (what a jagged little pill) It feels so good (swimming in your stomach) Wait until the dust settles
Jean and I went to see Amanda Marshall’s most excellent concert at Centre in the Square on Wednesday, June 21. I wrote about it on my companion site (not too long a post!): Amanda Marshall: Heavy Lifting tour.
Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now
“That Would Be Enough” from Hamilton
A few days after my last post, about how bike helmets get the respect that masks deserve, Jean had a fairly serious bike accident—one that would have been far worse had he not been wearing his new, high-quality, full-face coverage, bike helmet. He was out mountain biking with friends when he lifted his front wheel to go over a small cliff, causing his back wheel to flip him up and over and onto his back—or something like that; I wasn’t there and he doesn’t quite remember.
I found out when I got a call from him that there had been an “incident” on the trail and that his friends were taking him to Emergency.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “You need a good mask!”
On the drive over to the hospital with his best N95, it occurred to me that I should have asked which body part he had hurt.
We dined in domes, tents, and old Victorian houses. We had five dinners but we only left two tips (and we don’t suck). In between, we walked, we wined, we saw some art.
Blog title courtesy of Jean, who was determined to have some time off after not getting any at Christmas time (beyond the statutory days). We didn’t venture too far from home—Beamsville, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Toronto, Kleinburg, which are all within a two hours’ drive. And it wasn’t, per se, designed as a culinary tour. But it did turn out that way!
Because, you see, I’m still making some efforts to avoid catching Covid. And when it came to selecting restaurants, well, it wasn’t your Mom and Pop fish’n’chips places that offered space. And clean air. Those only came packaged as “dining experiences”. Covid safe(r), it turns out, is kind of delicious.
Sunday
We left home mid-morning, headed to an appointment at Commisso Estate Winery in Beamsville. Their website promised wine tastings in a “fun, safe, private” environment. I didn’t necessarily trust the promise—so many places just didn’t bother to remove their Covid protocols page once they stopped following it—but I figured a smaller winery in February wouldn’t be that crowded. I optimistically (and pragmatically, given that dinner wasn’t til 7) also ordered a charcuterie board.
It worked out. We ended up being their only customers at this time. Not only that, but their tastings are conducted in a tent that was plenty warm, thanks to gas heaters. After we were seated, we got the history of the place, and overview of the wines.
My timeline is stuffed full of doctors, epidemiologists, public health officials, and health journalists, and they are not an optimistic bunch of late. While Ontario / Canada seemed to have had a reasonable handle on Delta, the two-week’s worth of data on Omicron is not looking promising. Seemingly quite contagious, seemingly fairly evasive of both vaccination and prior infection, it looks poised to spread at exponential rates in the coming weeks and months, once again threatening to swamp Ontario hospitals whose already limited capacity is actually worse now when this happened last year.
Been a bit quiet on my blogging front lately, but not for any major reason. Just that things have been a bit off—just off enough to prevent me from focusing on a blog post.
Canoe trip
Not mine, of course—Jean’s. He was away for two weeks in the northwest Ontario wilderness. No wifi. No cell service. Just a brief, one-way, satellite-delivered daily message giving location and brief status update.
Away from it all at Wabakimi Park
By a combination of organization and happenstance, I had enough activities booked at that time to keep me busy and stave off loneliness: barbecue with dance friends, dinner and lunch with other friends, an outing to Stratford with my sister and brother-in-law to see To Kill a Mockingbird, blood donation appointment, Canada Day fireworks, even an unusual number of meetings at work, including some over lunch and dinner.
But it was still all out of the ordinary: Jean being not only away but basically out of touch (I think “out of touch” is just harder to deal with in these days, when we expect everyone to always be in cell range), combined with so many other social activities.
I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night. Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is ‘Who in the world am I?’ Ah, that’s the great puzzle!
We had someone over for dinner last Thursday, a not-that-common event that we did memorialize in photos. However, he did bring flowers—some lovely orchids—and Jean used those to experiment with close-up photography.
As the main course, I made Garlicky Lamb Chops. This recipe (follow the link) is so simple and fast, but turns out so well: You just dip the chops in a mix of fresh rosemary, garlic, salt, and pepper, then pan-fry them in olive oil.
One of the sides was Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Walnuts & Dates, though I used raisins instead. Fortunately, our guest liked Brussels sprouts; not everyone does. This turned out well also; these do well roasted, and adding raisins, walnuts, red wine vinegar, and honey produces a tasty results.
I also roasted some potatoes—I just winged that “recipe”.
Dessert was Cherry Fool, and I can’t find the recipe online, even though it came from LCBO magazine. Basically cherries in whipped cream with icing sugar and almond extract, though. And I used mixed berries that included cherries instead of just cherries.
Friday we were supposed to go see TransCanada Highwaymen with some friends, and I was really looking forward to it. This is a group made up of Chris Murphy of Sloan, Stephen Page of Barenaked Ladies, Craig Northey of The Odds, and Moe Berg of Pursuit of Happiness. They were to do songs by all of those bands, while regaling us with tales of life as semi-famous Canadian rock star. Doesn’t that sound great?
I’m sure it would have been. Unfortunately, Northey broke his ankle playing hockey about a week before the show, which then got cancelled. (Though as I keep telling people, I don’t know why he couldn’t still sit down to play guitar and sing.)
We decided to go out anyway and revisit TWH Social, present home of a former favourite chef. We’d found the place a bit loud on previous visits, but it didn’t as bad this time, at least for the first part of the evening. And I was very happy with my food.
Squid with tomatoes and roast potatoes, a speciality of this chef
Grilled lamb chops with sweet potato and mushroom saute
So yes, that’s lamb two days in a row for me.
Jean started with a Caprese salad, then had the gnocchi with sage butter and chicken broth. This was a different gnocchi recipe than what the chef had made at the previous restaurant, and Jean didn’t think it was an improvement.
Saturday we got our live music fix. Other friends had invited us to go see Whitehorse, a band neither Jean and I were familiar with before getting tickets. But I had been listening to them since, and they are pretty good.
Before the show, Centre in the Square offered a $30 three-course dinner in the Member’s Lounge, catered by Borealis Restaurant. We decided to do that, and it was great. First was a kale Caesar, then a paella, then—I forget what dessert was. All good, though, and we also enjoyed the drink list (among us, we sampled orange wine, Pinot Noir, champagne cocktail, Scotch), though it was more premium-priced than the food.
The show was done in “On Stage” format, meaning that the whole audience, and the band, and a bar, were up on the very large Centre in Square stage, instead of the usual “band on stage, audience in theatre seats”. It was pretty cool.
Ready to rock!
It was a good show. Opening act Begonia had a lovely voice and an entertaining manner, a combination that reminded me of Jann Arden (or Adele).
Begonia
And Whitehorse did some of their best-known songs (I assume they were? At least, at this point I recognized a number of them), reminisced about the early support given them by Waterloo, and talked of causes important to them, like supporting sex trade workers.
Whitehorse are a husband and wife team, this night supported by a band
They also threw in a couple of covers. One was of AC/DC’s “Back in Black”, in tribute to Malcolm Young. Another was of Neil Young’s “Ohio”.
(Should have zoomed in a lot earlier than I did on the video. Not used to this taking videos at concerts thing.)
When the Stratford Festival decided to include Molière’s Tartuffe in their line-up of 2017 plays, they had no way of knowing how the US presidential election would turn out. But they were not about to miss the dramatic opportunities this afforded them.
Tartuffe was a comedic satire written in 1664, and was immediately controversial for speaking truth to power. It was banned after its first performances, but Molière fought for it, and five years, it was revived to great acclaim.
Stratford’s English-language production is set squarely in the present, with the characters listening to modern pop (much of it French), making lattes, and being distracted by their cell phones. The main nod to the age of the script is that all the dialog rhymes—which strikes me as an amazing feat of translation (by Ranjit Bolt).
In Tartuffe, the (white) father of the household—and his mother—are in the thrall of a recent house guest, the apparently pious Tartuffe. Everyone else—his wife, children, brother-in-law, and housekeeper—are appalled. Can’t the father see that Tartuffe is nothing but hypocrite and con man who cares for no one but himself? Doesn’t he care that Tartuffe’s rules are making their lives miserable? (That everyone other than the stepmother are played by people of colour is a clever bit of casting: so we have women, people of colour, and younger people in complete disbelief that the older white characters cannot see Tartuffe for what he is.)
For most of the play, none of the current political subtext is made particularly explicit. It’s only in the climatic final scene that a certain orange President is specifically alluded to.
The production was hilarious, and it was great to see this situation played out in purely comedic fashion. And that it all worked out in the end. If only real life were so simple.
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