Feb
Starting with the Chewy Center
I have a friend who always reads the last few pages of a book first. Then she goes back and reads the whole thing from the beginning. She says she can more fully enjoy the book if she knows what’s coming.
I would never do that - and I am not going to spoil anything for you here, either - but I do sometimes go early to the multi-plex movie theater. While I am waiting for my chosen movie to start, I pop in and out of the other viewing rooms to see if there is anything else I want to see from the beginning.
It’s a little like crunching down on a new kind of hard candy to see if there is something surprisingly good inside. Five minutes of boring is not necessarily enough to turn me off of a movie - sometimes you really do need to start at the beginning to fully appreciate a piece - but five minutes of hey! yowza! is enough to make me come back another time for the whole thing. In other words, to buy a whole bag of the candy and enjoy each piece the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
Well, I don’t know if this analogy really works, but maybe you get the idea.
On Sunday afternoon I headed for Franklin to see the Our Town Players’ presentation of “Apt 3A,” by Jeff Daniels. Unfortunately, I turned left at a point where I should have turned right and I was almost to Shelbyville at showtime. By the time I found my way back to the theatre, it was too late to go in.
So…I read a book in the lobby until intermission and then I snuck in at the beginning of the second act.
Actor Molly Bellner was on stage. Actor Jeremy Tuterow entered, and everyone else in the audience laughed appreciatively. I wondered what had happened right before intermission?
Pretty soon there was another man on stage, actor Doug Powers. At first I didn’t have a clue what was going on - some kind of love triangle? - but it was immediately clear that the show was something special: funny, stimulating, thought-provoking, risky, successful. It looked good - attractive characters and a pretty set - and the energy between the actors positively throbbed. I loved being part of the audience that was responding to it, even though I didn’t fully understand the details of the story.
The center of the show tasted not just chewy, but juicy-chewy. Succulent. Like a chocolate-covered cherry? Yum…
I can’t wait to see this show from the beginning next weekend.
(I’ve got my reservation. If you would like to see “Apartment 3A,” too, please call 317-736-3689. The show closes on Sunday, March 1.)
Hope Baugh - www.IndyTheatreHabit.com
