Prince Herbert of Swamp Castle

Is it possible to write a blog post on just four hours of sleep? I'm doing it right now, so I mean, physically, sure, I can call up the base level of coordination, concentration and effort to tap-tap-tap some grammatically diagrammable sentences for your reading... I was going to say "enjoyment," but I think it's smarter just to leave it as the spicy gerund.

If there is a problem causing me to be sleep deprived, it's exactly what your first guess probably was. That's right: musical theater.

I live on the edge of the second largest conurbation in the United States. Whether or not that edge is inclusive or exclusive depends on what kind of statistical reporting area we're talking about, metropolitan or combined, but in the end the point is: just about anything the country has to offer in a general sense can be mine, within the confines of a single day, modified only by how much traffic I'm willing to tolerate. I know Greater LA has a reputation as a cultural wasteland, but that's only if you ask New Yorkers, who start with the conclusion that NYC is both the pinnacle and the whole premise. We've had to put up with Woody Allen shitting on LA in exactly this way for years and look where that got him?

The stereotype about Greater LA is that there's no theater and what theater there is, nobody goes to it. Both of these are, of course, not at all true, but at the same time it's no effort or soreness to concede that it's not part of the proclaimed sociocultural identity of the city or region as it is in New York. The upside I guess is that it's not the same level of a crunching economic disaster out here if, say, a pandemic forces all the theaters to go dark for an open-ended period of time. The downside I guess is that we only get to see the original cast put on Hamilton on Disney+, but even that is ameliorated by the fact that at $15/month, it will take like four years before it equals the cost of one of those tickets at their peak. So I feel like I still come out ahead.

I got invited to see a production of A Little Night Music in Pasadena, which is like LA if it were scrubbed up and with way more flattering lighting. It's basically where a lot of USC graduates live, even though UCLA plays football there. I believe the current annual undergraduate tuition there is about $65,000, so that should tell you close to all you need to know.

I don't seek out musical theater myself, but that's because I want to live the clichés. Who's not that interested in musical theater? Straight, cisgender, suburban white dudes in Southern California. Ironically, it's never been more accessible than it is to me right now since a major arts initiative that has been in place out here in the far-off tumbleweed orchard of Riverside for more than a decade. But it wasn't part of my upbringing or habits as a young adult, so it's stayed off my radar except for the occasional foray to see Book of Mormon in LA and The Lion King in NYC an age ago when we happened to be there. See, you do it when you go to New York because New York screams it at you, in its inimitably subtle way, where LA just sort of, I dunno, shrugs about it, man, you do what you want, your path with reveal itself.

The show yesterday was part of a Stephen Sondheim retrospective in the wake of his death in 2021. The production was headlined by Merle Dandridge and a bunch of other singy types who have not starred in any video games or recent video game television adaptations I've heard of. So I decided she was the star, which helped get me into it.

I have a problem with all theater, musical or normal, in that the live aspect of it at some level always triggers my social anxiety to some degree. I can never be fully transported as the present-ness of humans in front of me doing human stuff that I know they practiced a lot and want to get right makes me stress for them and hyper-aware of the environment. So I'm never really capable of getting lost in a production and can't help a slight feeling of relief when it's over. Basically my experience of the theater is like every parent watching their five-year-old try the balance beam in their first gymnastics meet. You're happy to clap, but never more so when you get to the point when you're sure nobody involved is going to be injured.

I had no idea what the play was or any of the songs from it. Once I heard "Send In The Clowns" I recognized it, and it helped to hear it in context instead of the weird maudlin dirge it seems to be sung in isolation all on its own. Overall, I have to say though: this is one horny-ass musical. Staging and setting-wise it felt like it leaned Gilbert and Sullivan almost, except literally every song and every plot point is about fucking or lamenting the lack of it. Not to be the straight man cliché again, but these are ideas I can get behind, and maybe slap on the ass once if it's into that sort of thing.

I had a good time with great company, someone who really knew their shit and is both an LA native and a theater devotee. In the end, that's the best way to find out about what LA and our environs have to offer: you have to know a guy, in the utilitarian, functional and genderless sense of the word. It's too spread out to figure out by yourself. If you're going to do all that driving, it helps to have someone point out the best places to park.