A Potpourri

I saw La familia Addams this weekend.  Fun show!  It was fascinating to see how an American musical was translated not only into Spanish language, but into Spain’s culture as well (including a reference to popular words and recognizable social types).  Even if you miss some of the jokes and quick twists of the tongue, you can grasp the difference between a line of plot and a line for the audience’s enjoyment.  The latter is that moment when a character breaks away from the other ones, walks towards the audience, and digresses briefly about something, often using physical cues to signal something outside the story.  This could be an eye-roll or some kind of body movement--physical comedy--something that says “this is a joke that is not related to this musical but is related to the world in which we all live in and we should all laugh about it now!”  Concise, I know.

It was also interesting to be in that theater.  The stage seemed to be very close to the audience and at eye-level.  This was quite different from some spectacles on a Broadway stage.  I was wondering if this is what performance was like way back when.  In a college course, I learned about the evolution of the physical stage-audience relationship.  The beginnings of superstardom (mostly in pop music, I believe) coincided with the separation of stage and audience.  Intimacy out, gigantic stages in stadiums in.  This theater, though, felt like it could have been used in the 1700s for a royal night of music.  The show, therefore, was a fascinating mixture of that sensation with the modern musical.

Another thing to note: the audience at the end did not go wild the way most audiences seem to do nowadays.  I appreciated that.  In the era of everyone-gets-a-standing-O-on-American-Idol and everyone-has-a-great-voice-on-The-Voice, it was refreshing to be part of an audience that was not ready to stand up for just any performance.  

The next evening for a birthday I found myself at a restaurant called Amazónico.  Prices?  High.  Quality of food?  High.  Worth it?  Yes.  For a special occasion.  I had skirt steak and it was delicious.  Though it’s easy and affordable to find solomillo here, it’s not everyday auxiliares can drop euros on a nice steak.  What better opportunity to do so than at a celebration of a quarter-century of someone’s life?  None, you say?  And I agree.  Emphatically!  Additionally, we had samosa-style spring rolls with chicken.  Delicious.  We had a bottle of moscato.  Delicious.  To finish off the meal, we had two desserts:  1) grilled pineapple with cake and coconut ice cream and 2) a stone bowl filled with warm melty chocolate.  The chocolate was a bit dark for my taste but OH MY GOODNESS someone stop me I’m turning this into a food blog!  Hard not to.  Food gets me going.  I thought I had writer’s block until I started to write about this meal…  Is anyone surprised?

Before we part...I’ve been wanting to post this video for a while.  It captures fuzzy feelings I had during one weekend-walk.  I found myself gliding through a plaza, surrounded by the chatter of people and children playing, the clinking of glasses, the smell of coffee and wine in the air, sunglasses resting on tables, cigarettes “breathing” their final stilted breaths on the ground, metal chairs being dragged from table to table, and the song of a Spanish guitar.   

[As for the Super Bowl, I do have a comment:  MY EAGLES WON!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Chicken wings are not the easiest to find ‘round here FYI, but it can be done.  It can be done.]