So y'all do that here too, huh?

Remember that one time I had to write a letter to the parents of L****? Well. I'm getting the mailing list together for Salt Lake County.

GH and I decided to class it up on Saturday by attending a high-school production of the Disney's Beauty and the Beast. We, for the most part, both really like going to high-school plays. They're cheap, they're usually pretty good, and you get to support a local high school drama program, thereby ensuring that another generation of choir/drama geeks will go forth with their penchant for gathering around pianos to sing at parties.

I know, of course, that when I go to a high-school play my expectations have to be modified. I expect that it won't be a professional production, that there may be some bad acting, that the audience will be extra vocal in its support of friends/family in the cast. But there's also a fun kind of energy about all of that, I think.

There were a few things I didn't expect, though. I did NOT expect that the couple behind us would carry on a non-stop dialog with their 5-year-old son.

"Look Timmy, it's the woods!"
"Oh, see how the scenery is changing?"
"Oh, look, he's walking up the stairs now!"
"Look, it's Belle!"
"See, he just went through a door!"

Um, is the kid blind? Because if he is then bringing him to a play is actually kind of mean, I think. Both to him and to us. We soon learned that the kid wasn't blind. Encouraged by his parents' style of narration, he began and maintained a steady stream of questions throughout the entire first act.

"But where did the Beast go? Where did the Beast go Dad?"
"Is he in the woods? Is he in the woods now?"
"Are they going to sing a song?"
"Is the Beast mad?"
"Is this the castle now?"
"Why are they singing?"
"Is he a candle?"

Now, I get the part where if you're a little kid and you're seeing a play for the first time, these will be things that occur to you--how CAN you tell if the scenery has changed, and where are people going when the leave the stage, and why is it that the characters look different from the way they are in the movie? All valid questions. Except the best time to talk about these things is really not during the play when everyone else is trying to watch it too. Mom made no attempt to shush him, or to tell him to wait and she would answer his questions when it's time to talk again.

I turned around eventually and looked pointedly at her. The woman on my right turned around and gave them a "shhh." The woman on GH's left turned and asked them to please be quiet.

Nothing. It never, never, never let up. Between that and the guy on the left of us who kept bringing out his cell phone to get a text update about the UofU/BYU game, I was losing my mind.

And I don't want to hear anyone bringing out the, "Hey, what's the big deal, it's only a high-school play and you only paid $7.50" excuse. Because that doesn't fly. Those students and their teachers worked hard putting that play together, and they have friends and family members in the audience who came to see and hear them, not some kid who is not yet ready to attend plays or the electric-blue glare of 8 million cell phones.

On the third offense I turned to the cell phone guy and mouthed that the light from his cell phone was quite distracting and could he please turn it off (it's kind of hard to switch out of librarian patrol mode when I'm off the clock, I'm finding). GH tried desperately to prevent me from doing this. He wanted to give the guy a pass for being at a play with his daughter instead of being at the game. Which, yes, is valid, but that doesn't mean he gets to blind me. I mean, maybe there were times during the play when I wanted to shriek like a monkey. Did you ever think about that? But I didn't. Plus, because there were so many people using cell phones it interfered with the wireless microphone system. So the sound at several points was quite bad. Can't believe they didn't think to make an announcement about that before the play started.

So by the time intermission hit, we were both done. We had planned to just move to some open seats during the break to get away from the kid and his parents, but the more we talked about it we realized that neither of us were that enthralled with the play. The girl playing Belle was great, but she was kind of the only great thing. You couldn't hear anyone who didn't have wireless mikes on, and there weren't enough mikes to pick up the sound from the big chorus numbers. So we came, we donated to the program, my brain exploded out my ears, and then we went home.

Posted in: on my crap list,things that make me stare in disbelief