For all three of you that like Chinese opera, my more substantial review is now available online. I'm afraid writing it this morning might have made me a bit late for work, but, in fact, I made it in on time. Yay!

For the two of you that are keeping track of my Proust adventures, I'm at page 472 of The Prisoner and The Fugitive. The narrator is still grieving, but also reflecting on the randomness of love, how it might be someone not showing up somewhere that leads you to fall in love with someone else, or how someone might console you for being ignored by another and either of these two people might become your eventual love. He also had a fantastic metaphor about how there are many different gates to a memory, and sometimes you are led to think about something through a completely unexpected avenue.

I am guessing at this rate that I will wind up just completely taking Thursday night off - the event I had blocked out on my calendar isn't happening (at least not with me), so, rather than seeing a movie, I think I might just have a night to recover from two solid nights of Chinese opera and actually get some sleep.

Well! This was a good night out. I was really drawn in by the great acting and found myself not even reaching for the bag of fortifying candy I had ready to help get me through the show - all the way through the TWO HOUR LONG FIRST FIVE ACTS. I have to say, if you didn't understand Chinese culture at all, it probably would have been a bit of a frustrating show - there were no acrobatic bit at all, just a starry eyed teenager mooning away for her dream love. But, you know what? I totally bought it. And the little bit of Chinese I've still got stuffed in my head helped me read about a third to a half of the characters (with the translation in English to point the way) and I was able to get a lot of enjoyment out of the really impressive poetry. The whole thing was basically done in sonnets - not just iambic pentameter, but proper Chinese poems (except for the maid's talk, which seemed to be more vernacular). Two more nights to go, and while I _will_ be getting hot tea prepared for us for intermission, I'm actually pretty enthused about it - though I wish they'd actually stuck to the schedule and let us out a little closer to 10:30 instead of at about 11.

I'll try to do more of a writeup on my theater blog tomorrow, but just a note: tomorrow (and Saturday night) takes place in hell, and you can get 15 pound tickets for stalls seats if you're interested! Our seats were GREAT and I was able to count the flowers on the fairy costumes in the third scene (my favorite of the night).