So we finally ventured into Pittsburgh last night. Chels made it her personal mission to acquire Jekyll & Hyde tickets once she knew the show would be in town again. I have to admit to score is one of my favorites - so no complaints from me!
The great thing about Pennsylvania is PennDOT. They're always around (you know, like in front of my house for the past two months) and they're always tearing something apart. Yesterday's excursion did NOT disappoint. I don't know exactly when the magic happened, but it was early. TomTom was rogue from the beginning. Took us into Pittsburgh a way that owner of the TomTom didn't know. That was the way I normally go though, so that was cool. Things were good until we were ready to get off the bridge to go to Station Square for dinner. Then TomTom made the evening that much more memorable. When one doesn't update their GPS system, they do funny things. Like suggest illegal and/or impossible turns that end up putting us into the W. Liberty Ave tunnels and cause us to lose signal. Awesome! And we eventually found the hill of death, which really looked harmless. Until we were trying to drive down it, in all of it's cobblestone glory. It would be great for sled riding, aside from the fact that you wouldn't be able to stop and would continue to go over the even steeper part of the hill. And that just seems hazardous. We eventually survived the hill and eventually got turned around. Some other hi-jinx ensued, but we eventually made it to the parking garage.
Then the four of us found dinner. Some seafood restaurant that serves the good stuff. Everything is fresh. Except for the tilapia, according to our server Rick. He was a smooth, charming yet smarmy sort of individual. The server you can tell is well seasoned and knows how to flirt his way to good tips from the upper class clientele. He seemed nice enough and provided good insight about the dishes, as any good server would, so I didn't mind him. One of the younger girls, Becca, on this adventure was 20 and had just had her wisdom teeth removed last week. She seemed to be a little disturbed by Rick, insisting he was weird, and was also endearingly confused by the menu. There was a close call - she almost ordered the tuna, which would have been raw and she hasn't yet tried sushi. We'll remedy that another time though... Rick brings us warm bread to munch on while our meals are being prepared. And the Becca-isms begin. They got really good when our meals were brought out though. Having had her wisdom teeth removed, she hasn't been eating a lot of foods, other than fruit and fish. She became very self conscious of how she looked while chewing, and proceeding to cover the bottom half of her face with her napkin. Young friends at a fancy restaurant? Priceless! [Incidentally, Becca was also present at our last fancy restaurant endeavor, though Mike took the cake at that meal. A walk down memory lane ensued.]
We wandered Pittsburgh for a bit, since Chels wanted to find snacks. We eventually met up with the other group of three and made our way to the Benedum. Chels has seen Jekyll & Hyde before; I've been in love with the score ever since my older brother saw it on Broadway in 2000 (or 1999?). Everyone else was going in blind.
Kevin Gray as Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde
I sat in the middle. The married/committed ladies on my left. The single ladies to my right. Naturally the single ladies were examining all of the artist shots to see which guy was the most attractive. One of the young ones through out the comment that Kevin Gray wasn't black. Not really sure where that came from, but I'd imagine it has something to do with the fact that we all went to the same high school. I remember how Othello was shoved down our throats, so if they still do that, the black actor comment would kind of make sense, but not really. ... Anway, so since Gray wasn't black, they were trying to decide what he did look like and apparently some sort of Indian (Native American Indian) fit the bill, another Becca-ism. This Indian talk reminded me that Luke never told me my Indian (Blackfoot) name. That was a fail. All I got was "your name is in the air around you, you just have to listen." Chels tried telling him that she thought I was supposed to "paint with all the colors of the wind", but he didn't get the reference. He also didn't seem to think that, if I was able to listen to the wind, that it might have more important things to tell me, other than my Blackfoot name. Men...
Back to the musical! As I said I had never seen it before, I've only memorized the music. :-P I genuinely enjoyed seeing the characters come to life and putting pieces together that can't be communicated solely through the songs. Though the music was barely faster than the popular recordings of Jekyll and Hyde from the Broadway productions. Just fast enough to seem rushed. And the acoustics were slightly awkward. Combined with some feedback from the sound system, I imagine it would have been hard to watch the musical if that was my first introduction to the show. There are a few songs that three characters have simultaneous lyrics. I knew the songs, so I knew what they were singing. But if I didn't know what they were saying, I would have had no idea what they were singing about. I sound like a theater critic, I know! I swear the show was good though!!! Besides, we only saw the second night! Early run kinks are acceptable.
We made it back to the car, where Chels realized just how close she had parked to the lovely support pole... her mirror made it out unscathed though. :-) TomTom still didn't want to work, so again, we were wandering without any sense of direction. No worries though, Becca was preparing to navigate home by reading the stars. That girl comes in very handy! When TomTom decided to work, it still wasn't really working because it was telling us to make more illegal/impossible turns. Minor details though right?
The night had been going so well. Naturally that didn't last. More second hand stress. Which was mostly frustrating/disappointing because the behavior was so out of character and not thought through. It's one of those situations that you can only watch, like a bad accident. You don't know what "rock bottom" would imply in the situation, but you have a feeling your friend is going to find out. At the end of the day you can simply offer advice. But you can't tell other people how to live their lives...
