Spring Awakening at the Colonial Theatre Boston

On my Saturday night in Boston, I decided to pay a visit to the national tour of Spring Awakening. It is a show that I love, and could see repeatedly. Also the allure of seeing a historic old Boston theatre was also very tempting.

The Colonial Theatre was one of the Pre-Broadway stops for Oklahoma! (or Away We Go! as it was called then) in 1943. There is a plaque commemorating this up by the women's lounge on the mezzanine level. (I'm not sure if there is any significance to its placement or not)

As for Spring Awakening, the show holds up well on tour. In fact I think the band sounded better on tour than on Broadway. I had seen the male leads before in New York, but was looking forward to seeing them again. Sadly I saw the understudy for Melchoir who was fine, but slightly disappointing. Oh well at least I can now say that I have seen four actors play the role.

So I've started doing something questionable. We all know that I am obsessed with theatre architecture and design and that I love taking pictures inside theatres. Well that is all well and good when you are performing in the theatre, but otherwise it is frowned upon. And understandably so. There is nothing worse than flashes going off during a show. But I'm interested in the decoration of the theatre not the show itself so really what is the harm if I use my phone's camera to snap a few covert pictures of the theatre. I mean really? The quality is not great, and it is impossible to set up a shot the way I do it so mostly I have been getting pretty bad pictures. Here are a few of the better ones:

MIT

Before I arrived in Boston, I purchased a Time Out Guide book. On the cover was a picture of a very bizarre yet cool looking building. After doing a bit of detective work I discovered that it was a Frank Gehry designed building on the MIT campus. Since one has to walk through the MIT campus to get from Boston to Harvard (Cambridge), I decided to see if I could find the building.

I did manage to find the building. And it was as wonderfully bizarre as I hoped it would be!

Harvard

To continue on my tour of colleges that I would never have been accepted to, I made sure to pay a visit to Harvard while in Boston. Sadly I had such limited time to visit that I really only saw a small portion of the campus, but what I saw made up for my disappointment with Yale.

Sadly I did not have time to seek out a sign saying Harvard. Everything says, "Veritas" or truth for those like myself who do not know Latin.

I believe that this was the area around the Freshmen dorms. If not, there sure were a bunch of clueless looking kids around!

I love the doors.

Get it?

Sadly I did not feel any more wise after entering. I guess you have to pay the $33,000 tuition before the wisdom grows inside you?!

Almost Picture Perfect

The fire hydrant pretty much ruins this picture for me!

1 + 1 = 1

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Boston for the first time

For months before our final layoff, I knew what I wanted to do with my time. A friend of mine got cast in the Boston production of Jerry Springer the Opera as Shawntel the poledancer. Since I happen to love Jerry Springer the Opera and the dates coincided with my time off, I decided to take my first trip to Boston. The fact that I have never been to Boston is not significant for any reason other than I have never made it there. I seem to always be distracted by New York! Plus the likelihood that one of our non-union tours would play there is pretty small because it is a strong union theatre town. In fact Boston was on an early schedule for The Wedding Singer I unearthed on Playbill.com, but it was long off of the schedule when I joined the tour.

As I did research into hotels and flights, I began to realize that Boston is a really expensive city much like New York. The difference is that I know no one in Boston, so I needed a hotel room. Sadly Boston is not like Chicago which has a ton of hotels meaning one can usually find a good hotel bargain. I was going to have to pay, but the prospect of hearing Joelle sing "I Just Wanna F#$&ing Dance" was too irresistible to pass up. So I decided to spend just a couple of days in Boston and minimize the expense. (Well I guess that I made up for it by going to Disney World. Details!?)

I had booked an early flight on Saturday from West Palm Beach to Boston. Unfortunately the weather was still not cooperating (much to Glenn's amusement), but the plane did eventually take off getting me to Boston. So that left me with Saturday night, Sunday, and Monday morning before I had to rejoin the tour. In traditional fashion, I made the most of my limited time and saw more than more sane people would think possible. I will break it up into a few posts. Here are some of the highlights of Boston:

Massachusetts State Capital Building

Boston Common

Trinity Church

Old South Church

BosTix booth in Copley Square (the Boston 1/2 price theatre ticket booth!)

View of Boston from the Massachusetts Street Bridge over the Charles River

Pineapples

So Glenn's latest thing is growing pineapples. Apparently you can take the top piece that you cut off of a pineapple, put it in water, and it will sprout roots. Who knew?! And I have to say that having tasted freshly grown pineapple, it is quite a bit better than what you get from the store. Here is his collection. There is one that had already been picked which was "planted". You can probably guess which one.

As we were admiring the pineapples and taking pictures of them, I noticed a little critter hiding out in one of them. I asked if it was a fake, but no it turned out to be a real toad or frog (I guess that I don't know the difference!)

Excuse me,

You appear to have a little something on your nose.

Disney Deluge Day Two

Given my experience the previous day and given the weather forecast, I did not have much hope for good weather on my second day in Disney. As it turned out, the weather was not so bad. It was overcast and dreary most of the day, but it really did not start raining until late in the day. Wonder of wonders!

I started off at the Hollywood Studios in the morning. I was feeling the need to try my hand again at the Toy Story Mania ride. Plus I was meeting cousin Cathy for lunch at Downtown Disney and Hollywood Studios is the closest park to Downtown therefore giving me the maximum park time.

Hollywood Studios may be the smallest of the four parks, but it has some of my favorite attractions.

Unfortunately I just missed out on the Star Wars Weekend. I suppose that I could have stayed another day, but given the weather I decided not to chance it.

My absolute favorite!


I enjoy Star Tours also, but it could really use a bit of modernizing! In fact I read on a Disney Rumor website that it is scheduled for an update to make it 3D. That would be fun!

Flying Monkeys! (I just cannot get away from it!!!!!)

After a fun lunch at Raglan Road Pub in Downtown Disney, Cathy took me backstage in Disney World to a special shop for Disney Cast Members. The shop sells out of season and overstock items at a rather large discount. They also sell housewares items like coffee makers and silverware to Cast Members. It was a bit like being back in college and I'm sure that is the age group that section of the shop is intended for. After making a few select purchases (including a very obnoxious High School Musical 2 back sack), Cathy dropped me off at the Polynesian Resort so that I could catch the Monorail to the Magic Kingdom.

When visiting the Magic Kingdom, I try to make sure that I include a healthy mix of fun attractions and cheesy attractions. I mean sure Splash Mountain is fun, but so is The Hall of Presidents (well in it's own way).

Any little thing to aggravate Toni.

I was a bit disappointed that Space Mountain was closed...

but not as disappointed as I was that The Hall of Presidents was closed. Oh well I felt that so long as they remove George W Bush, decapitate him, set him on fire, stick him all the way in the back and replace him with Obama I could survive.

It had been a few years. I had forgotten just how creepy the Country Bear Jamboree really is!

I admit having a soft spot for the Tiki birds.

As my day was waning I had planned on staying in the Magic Kingdom to watch the Spectromagic Parade and then running over to Hollywood Studios again to catch the second Fantasmic show. (Of course knowing that I had to drive back to Glenn's place in Wellington that night) Sadly as it got closer to parade time the rain decided to start back up again. Since I had a Fast Pass to the Jungle Cruise, I decided to go ahead and ride despite the rain. Of course I ended up in the awkward middle seat which has no overhead covering so I got rained on for the whole ride, but it had been so many years since I had taken the Jungle Cruise that I was going to ride no matter what. After getting that out of my system, it was Parade time. As it was raining I assumed that the Parade was not going to occur, but I headed to the park entrance to find a spot anyway. At this point I had nixed the Fantasmic idea. (There is always next time right?!) After finding a spot outside the Emporium, the rain let up enough and they started. Thankfully Spectromagic occurred with no electrocutions, so I called it quits and headed to the car. Plus Glenn called and said that there was Chinese food awaiting me when I returned which only helped to reinforce my decision to leave!

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So on the whole my trip to Disney was not a complete washout (wah wah), but I the next time I visit...

Totally Pop Century

As much as it may seem otherwise, I do have ambitions in my life. One of my dearest ambitions is to take a trip to New York during which I see every Broadway show that is currently playing. (I would even go so far at to start either at the Nederlander on 41st or Studio 54 on 54th and move incrementally theatre by theatre.) Another of my greatest ambitions is to stay in each of the Walt Disney World Resorts. Sadly these are both terribly cost prohibitive, but I did get a step closer to realizing the latter goal with this latest visit to WDW.

Since I had already dropped quite a lot of money on hotels for my upcoming trip to Boston, I decided to book one of the cheaper Disney hotels: in other words the dreaded "Value" Resorts. I say dreaded because these resorts are designed for families with millions of children not single men who aspire to staying at the W hotels. The rooms are very basic with paper thin walls. Everywhere you turn there is a swimming pool filled with screaming children. In fact everywhere you turn there are children, and I won't even get into the horrors of the bus to and from the Value Resorts! The Pop Century Resort is the newest of the Value Resorts so I decided to give it a shot.

Each section of the hotel is themed like a different decade from the 50s through the 90s. They put me in the 60s.

I wanted to be in the 80s. Alas!

Apparently Disney began work on a sister Pop Century Resort to be know as The Classic Years which would be the 00s to the 40s. You can see the beginnings of the Resort across the lake in the back of Pop Century. In fact there is a bridge that will presumably connect the two. Work has obviously been halted, but that did not stop me from taking some pictures!

My Pop Century experience was just about what I expected. It took forever to get a bus to the resort after my day in the parks, and the bus was packed full of unhappy children. (And apparently a medical emergency which was a bit unsettling!) I was awakened in the morning by the loud family next door. It would have been okay except that these people were very annoying and I'm pretty sure that I hated them. Oh well at least I can check it off the list. So let's see:

Resorts Checked Off The List

All Star Music

Pop Century

Port Orleans Riverside

Coronado Springs

Animal Kingdom Lodge

Remaining Resorts

All Star Sports

All Star Movies

Port Orleans French Quarter

Caribbean Beach

Swan

Dolphin

Beach Club

BoardWalk

Contemporary

Grand Floridian

Polynesian

Wilderness Lodge

Yacht Club

And that does not include the Villas and Cabins. (I refuse to go to Disney World and camp so forget the campsites! In fact I refuse to go anywhere and camp) Looks like I have a long way to go!