Funny things I watched this weekend

On Sunday, police ousted some squatters who had been living in the abandoned building next door. Or so I came to understand fairly well after the event. My Sunday evening perspective was more "four police cars and a fire truck showed up on our block and lingered for a long time while officers wandered around with flashlights and - oh yes - a ladder, before eventually emerging with an elderly gentleman in handcuffs who was politely searched and then taken away in a car. And no, the elderly gentleman was probably not Randy Quaid, but I won't say that with absolute certainty. Andrew and I naturally turned off all the lights and spent a good forty minutes peering out of various South-facing windows trying to guess what on earth was going on. I hadn't even known the house was abandoned, although I suppose that explains the plywood curtains upstairs. Gee, if I'd known, I could have been wandering around naked in my kitchen with the blinds undrawn...! Well, I'm not sure my relative levels of modesty would have changed much actually, but in theory knowledge is power (power to hang around sharp objects and hot things without any protective layers, that is).

Anyways, that comes close to being the xenith of my weekend for sheer oddity. There were other opportunities for observation of some lunacy, but the sort divided by a fourth wall and/or perhaps a number of production editors.

The evening before, I saw opening night The Barber of Seville at the Seattle Opera with my dad. We usually go to the matinee, but in this case, the Gold Cast (because performances are so demanding that singers do not sing two days in a row, many American opera productions schedule simultaneous nights by having double casts for the major roles - in Seattle, there's a Gold and Silver Cast) was performing a particularly difficult and rarely staged tenor area that the Silver Cast dared not do. After much chagrinning from my father about missing this opportunity, I suggested we see both. We compromised at switching our tickets.

It's the second time I've seen The Barber, and usually at least one comic opera gets peppered into the schedule to great effect each year. This, however, we handsdown pitch-perfect (har har) sheer and utter comedic brilliance as well as perhaps one of the best produced, choreographed, and directed operas I have seen. It would be difficult to encapsulate the experience of sitting through it, so I won't venture too heartily to do so. Naturally, the singing was extraordinary and the three-piece rotating set was impressive to say the least, but what really sold it were all the tiny details - a stage leaf "falling" in perfect synch to the opening trills, Figaro leaping up from a seat in the audience before leaping onto stage and dancing some sort of flamenco-jig mid-area, dragging musicians up from the orchestra pit, incredible physical comedians and choreography, and head nods to everything from Happy Days to the Marx Brothers... I'm always impressed, but I was really impressed.