Insert a Little Culture

To try and diversify away from attending only sporting events - which as you'll see below we still did a pretty good job of this week - we did attend two more culturally enriching events this week.  On Wednesday we were able to attend the dress rehearsal for a modern opera, "Prince of Players", at the Marcus Theater downtown.  While the opera is modern (it was written in 2010), it was set in medieval England and revolved around the transition from having men perform all the roles in operas and plays to starting to have women perform the female roles.  Interesting that this took a decree from the king to have happen, but then no one ever said history or life had to make sense.  Anyway I digress, the play examines the impact on male actors who specialized in playing females and the issues with them figuring out what they were going to do in the future as well as the impact on women now having to learn how to be stage actors.  Interesting plot line, however, the musical score was a bit discordant for our tastes.  With the choppy score it was a bit hard for us to determine if the singing was good or just average - but it did get a favorable review in the local newspaper.

Our next big cultural outing was to the Overture Center in Madison where we took in the first of our Broadway series shows, Something Rotten.  It was a well staged musical with a funny plot that made the time fly by.  The songs were enjoyable but aren't likely to catch on quite like the Hamilton score.  Still it was a fun way to spend the afternoon and we certainly enjoyed the short walk from our condo to the theater.  Afterwards, we picked up some pizza on the way home to eat quickly before we headed over to the UW Field House to enjoy our second volleyball match of the weekend - we had also gone watched a game on Friday night against Northwester.  The Badgers played Illinois on Saturday and since we could cheer on either team we came out a winner - the Badgers lost in case you wanted the actual result.  They did win on Friday night so it wasn't all bad news for the home town team. 

The other big event for the weekend was celebrating someone's last birthday with a five as the first number.  We had cake, opened some presents, and she took a deep breath to get ready for the year starting with a six.