Today

I took today off, because Sebastian was going to see a production of Doctor Dolittle with his school, and I couldn't resist.

What a day.

We got to his school at 9 AM. Got onto school buses - which felt pretty strange, I can tell you - and drove to the Stadium Theatre downtown. We had to wait for around 45 minutes before the seats all filled up and the performance began. The whole place - all 1,000-plus seats - were filled with kids from local schools, apparently from kindergarten (or possibly preschool) to third grade.

Now as you may know, I've already read most of the Doctor Dolittle series to Sebastian (by coincidence, a copy of Doctor Dolittle In The Moon just came in for us at the library today - Sebastian has really been looking forward to it). I'm a big fan of the books. I never watched the whole Rex Harrison movie all the way through, but I will admit to liking that "If I Could Talk To The Animals" song from it. As for the Eddie Murphy and post-Eddie-Murphy movies, I regard them with all the joy and pleasure that I would normally reserve for a fatal case of dysentery. I suspected that the show would be based on the Rex Harrison movie, since there's something of a boom in redoing old musical movies as theatrical shows; but I just didn't know.

I'll reserve my one-line review for a friends-only post. It's necessary. Trust me.

It turned out that the show was something new to me: it was theatre for the deaf. All the actors signed their parts, and most of the spoken dialog was played on speakers. It was quite geared to young children, with lots of audience interaction. The kids loved it.

But I have to say that they took many liberties with the books. The plot was a sort of mish-mash from the first two Dolittle books. The cast of characters was drastically pruned down, even more than I would have expected. The script takes many liberties with the characters and plots, of course.

Interestingly, Doctor Dolittle was played by a woman, and Polynesia and Sarah Dolittle were played by men. None of the kids seemed to notice the Dolittle gender-change (perhaps because the spoken dialog was done by a male), but they caught on to "Sarah" right away. All in all, the production rather reminded me of something from the 1960s. It was really quite simple and plain, but that worked well for the kids.

It was quite interesting being in the Stadium Theatre; it was my first time. It's quite the grand little old-fashioned place, with gold trim and fancy wooden scrollwork. The kids caught sight of some nudes painted on the ceiling (just topless), and got all excited, of course.

I felt rather uncomfortable throughout the show. I'm definitely sick...probably a stomach bug, I'm starting to believe. They told us at the hospital that there was a nasty one going around.

Today

I took today off, because Sebastian was going to see a production of Doctor Dolittle with his school, and I couldn't resist.

What a day.

We got to his school at 9 AM. Got onto school buses - which felt pretty strange, I can tell you - and drove to the Stadium Theatre downtown. We had to wait for around 45 minutes before the seats all filled up and the performance began. The whole place - all 1,000-plus seats - were filled with kids from local schools, apparently from kindergarten (or possibly preschool) to third grade.

Now as you may know, I've already read most of the Doctor Dolittle series to Sebastian (by coincidence, a copy of Doctor Dolittle In The Moon just came in for us at the library today - Sebastian has really been looking forward to it). I'm a big fan of the books. I never watched the whole Rex Harrison movie all the way through, but I will admit to liking that "If I Could Talk To The Animals" song from it. As for the Eddie Murphy and post-Eddie-Murphy movies, I regard them with all the joy and pleasure that I would normally reserve for a fatal case of dysentery. I suspected that the show would be based on the Rex Harrison movie, since there's something of a boom in redoing old musical movies as theatrical shows; but I just didn't know.

I'll reserve my one-line review for a friends-only post. It's necessary. Trust me.

It turned out that the show was something new to me: it was theatre for the deaf. All the actors signed their parts, and most of the spoken dialog was played on speakers. It was quite geared to young children, with lots of audience interaction. The kids loved it.

But I have to say that they took many liberties with the books. The plot was a sort of mish-mash from the first two Dolittle books. The cast of characters was drastically pruned down, even more than I would have expected. The script takes many liberties with the characters and plots, of course.

Interestingly, Doctor Dolittle was played by a woman, and Polynesia and Sarah Dolittle were played by men. None of the kids seemed to notice the Dolittle gender-change (perhaps because the spoken dialog was done by a male), but they caught on to "Sarah" right away. All in all, the production rather reminded me of something from the 1960s. It was really quite simple and plain, but that worked well for the kids.

It was quite interesting being in the Stadium Theatre; it was my first time. It's quite the grand little old-fashioned place, with gold trim and fancy wooden scrollwork. The kids caught sight of some nudes painted on the ceiling (just topless), and got all excited, of course.

I felt rather uncomfortable throughout the show. I'm definitely sick...probably a stomach bug, I'm starting to believe. They told us at the hospital that there was a nasty one going around.