7 October 2019

All four of us were running around to various bits of entertainment this weekend.

Of course Walt and I started with Downton Abbey.  I was mistaken.  I thought it was the first movie we saw this year, but it was actually the second, when we were in Santa Barbara, we saw Toy Story 4 with Walt's sister and Lacie.  God willing, Judy will come to Davis before the end of the year and we can rack up three movies for 2019.  We saw only one in 2018.

On Friday we went to see an odd play called The Viewing Room.

It was apparently produced in Sacramento recently and won a nomination for an award, but I found the play itself needs work.  It all takes place at the wake of a guy, who somehow manages to hop out of his casket to try to amend his relationship with his dysfunctional family.

It was enjoyable but I had some problems with it.  For instance this is his WAKE and since his death his wife has (a) sold their house, (b) bought a condo in Florida and bought a new Mercedes.  Not only that, but she sold the house to her daughter, who tells Dad how she has fixed it up.  The corpse is not even in the ground yet!

But I think the biggest problem I had was that it was supposed to be his big chance to reconcile with his kids and all he did was bluster that he had to act that way because he grew up in the Depression and worked several jobs to make money for the family. 

It was both a comedy and a drama and I think it worked better as a comedy because the drama parts left me cold.

While we were doing that, Ned and Marta went to something called the "Hoes Down Harvest Festival," an on-farm community fundraising festival.  It was held on the "Fully Belly Farm" in Capay Valley.

Ned's friend Jon is one of the organizers and by going a day early and spending the night Ned and Marta avoided the $40 admission fee.  Ned helps with all sorts of things and it looks like in this picture he is working the sound board.

The festival looked kind of interesting.  They had workshops on seed saving, raising goats, free range poultry, cow milking, medicinal plants, and fermenting foods.  There was live music and dancing, and lots of things for the little kids (like a petting zoo).

And of course there were farmer's markets and crafts.  Marta came home on Saturday morning, but Ned stuck around to help clean up and didn't get home until late-ish Sunday, and then fell asleep and was not seen again that night.

Our second play was called Northanger Abbey, a dramatization of Jane Austen's book by the same name.

Naturally, I had not read it, nor did this play make me eager to read it, but the production was very good, especially the actress who had the lead role and was pretty much on stage throughout the entire play. She alone was worth seeing the play, though everyone was good.

It was nice to have two good reviews to write, rather than struggle to figure out how to say "this is a bad play" without saying "this is a bad play."
 

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