Phantom

On Saturday afternoon, we dropped the girls off with my mom for the day and we drove out to LA to watch Phantom of the Opera. I forgot to bring my camera, so I have no pictures to show for it. The show was a lot of fun for the most part but I had two major gripes about it. Although I could not reasonably expect to see Sarah Brightman playing Christine, the lady they did have playing Christine was not very good. At best, she would have been more fittingly cast as Carlotta. She only sings for Saturday matinee shows and Sundays so we were just unlucky about that. I don't know what the normal lady sounds like.

The second major gripe about the show was the venue. They use these big gigantic speakers that are more appropriate for rock concerts. Everything is amplified through these speakers. They seem to have one setting...loud. You could not clearly hear all the different voices and things that were going on because it was all muddled and competing with one another through these speakers. The venue (Pantages) also allows food and drink to be taken into the show...in fact, they are selling it to everyone on your way in. The family in back of us got there late (after the snow began) and proceeded to eat through the entire nearly 3 hours of the show (I am not exaggerating). All you can hear is them reaching into their jumbo sized candy bags every 2 minutes, jiggling their icy drinks in loud plastic cups and smacking their lips...not to mention kicking our seats every now and then as they shifted around and whispering to each other. They would have been annoying at a movie theatre. During intermission, I swear they just went out to get more junk food. And they were not the only ones in the theatre doing it...only the closest ones to us.

Other than that, we had pretty good seats. The best singers from the show was definitely the man playing the Phantom and the two theatre managers. They really made the show worth while.

After the show, we went back to Marian's house for dinner. It was so nice to have a nice quiet dinner with other adults! We really enjoyed the much needed time away from the kids. We picked them up on the way home from Grandma's house. They were supposed to be out doing a bunch of fun things that day with their cousins but apparently, their plans did not quite work out. They still had fun visiting with their cousins though.