Some Like It Hot

Saturday, October 25th, Frank and I went to a matinee performance of the musical Some Like It Hot at the Center for Performing Arts in San Jose. Our outing went smoothly without any of the ticket confusion we experienced when we went to & Juliet — twice! We got the theatre early enough to pose at the posters beforehand when the crowds had not yet accumulated.

Once inside, we enjoyed our programs. However, unlike my usual custom, I did not take any photos of the stage. It was gray curtains, nothing exciting.

Since we are season patrons, we had our regular Seats 43 and 45, in Row 12, pretty close but somewhat offset from center. Our only mishap with this show was that at intermission Frank and I went to restrooms in separate locations. Waiting for each other at different locations before joining each other to re-enter the theatre together, we barely got into our seats as the lights were dimming for the second act. Whew! All that rushing around. However our fast- paced scurrying was nothing compared to the antics of the second act. Actors were running back and forth in all directions, in and out of multiple free-standing doors leading who knows where, changing costumes at the wink of an eye, and doing about faces at the drop of a hat.

The show was pretty fast paced with men dressed as women, gangsters disguised in various ways, and the ambiance of a Prohibition era of the 20's/30's. We loved the phenomenal dancing with lots of precision syncopated tap dancing, large portions of it in group unison. The singing was loud and boisterous, but alas, we understood very few of the words. We got the gist however and enjoyed the enthusiasm if not the enunciation. We need to figure out if the sound issue is because of our age and hearing or because of seat location. Never the less, these outings are well worth our effort, time, and money — money only if we buy the tickets just once.

Ponder: The Listeners

The Listeners ©2025 by Maggie Stiefvater was the selection this month for the Good Books club at my local library. It is set in West Virginia in the months following the bombing of Pearl Harbor during WWII. A very luxurious hotel is asked told to house diplomats from enemy countries as a holding type detention camp. Staff must serve the very people who may possibly responsible for the death or maiming of their loved ones. It is a powder keg type situation.

Maintaining the luxuries and handling the tempers is the hotel manager June. Establishing and handling the security of the hotel is Special Agent Tucker with two other G-men. Both June and Agent Tucker  rise from humble beginnings, and yet each is quite capable of navigating the complexities of luxury, wealth, and tact. The cast of characters is large, and many of them have more than one name, so following along requires concentration; it was not an easy read for me. Plus the author's style is one of creating suspense via confusion, rather than via intricacies of plot. The premise was good. The characters were multidimensional. The setting was bizarre. An enjoyable plot twist near the end made me pleased I had stuck with the book. 

Intertwined throughout there was an air of fantasy flowing waters from springs at the hotel that seem to have healing or hurting powers. The water made me think of the plant Audrey II from musical Little Shop of Horrors and its insistence to "Feed me." Another idiosyncracy of the hotel was the abundance of live snails that abounded. The hotel had turned the (gross?) presence of the snails into a namesake signature, incorporating carvings of snails into pillars, on fountains, and along railings throughout. After reading the book I was curious about this snail oddity. Apparently, snails are very prevalent in West Virginia due to its climate and eco system. I even found a book published on this very snail topic. 

There are currently 168 native land snail species confirmed from West Virginia, 11 of which are endemic (more than any neighboring state). Eighteen species are restricted to the borders of West Virginia and Virginia along the Ridge and Valley region.

If you would like a slow, closeup visual of snail activity, in addition to the book, check out this YouTube video.

There are more than 150 kinds of land snails in the “Wild and Wonderful” state, ranging from the size of a quarter to the size of a pinhead.

This book was an odd combination of characters, nature, and fantasy, making it a truly creative novel to explore, but one that may not be to the taste of some readers. I do not regret reading it, but I will not be seeking out other works by Maggie Stiefvater. On Amazon, The Listeners was rated 4 stars, with only 50% of the readers giving it 5 stars. Although it got high literary ratings, per the book club discussion, I rate The Listeners three stars.

★★★☆☆ Better than average; not a waste of time

& Juliet

Frank and I are season ticket holders to the Broadway San Jose musical season. I had heard & Juliet was good but, since I thought it was outside the selections in our ticket package, I would need to buy us two seats as a separate purchase, which I did. We went to the Saturday, October 11th matinee performance. 

At the entry, as the usher scanned the tickets on my iPhone for Frank and me, he said "Only two?" Yikes? I had four tickets on my phone. They are not cheap. He pointed me toward the information desk to figure out what had happened. Apparently, Broadway San Jose sends out a reminder email to sell more ticket packages later in the season. As the season continues, there are fewer shows in the package. I possibly read a later email in which & Juliet was missing and bought us two tickets. There are no refunds. Perhaps they could exchange those two tickets for another performance of the show? While staff was looking into that, Frank and I went in to the show. We had our customary seats in row 12, which have a fairly close but not quite straight on view of the stage.

We enjoyed the show a great deal. The actors were energetic; the bickering exchanges between Ann Hathaway and her husband William Shakespeare were humorous. It was fun to see Juliet in the what-if context of today's attitudes where women strive to be independent and seek out their own dreams, rather than feeling obligated to follow the desires of their husband. The staging was colorful and surprisingly not what one would expect in the Shakespearean times or the Globe theatre. The music was upbeat throughout, the harmonies tight and pleasing. According to Wikipedia

& Juliet is a 2019 jukebox musical. ... In the plot, Anne Hathaway negotiates with her husband, William Shakespeare, to change the ending to Romeo and Juliet so that Juliet does not kill herself. (A jukebox musical is a stage musical or musical film in which a majority of the songs are well-known, pre-existing popular music songs, rather than original music composed for the musical.)

The music was parodies or re-sung melodies of the Boy Bands or other artists of that era. The boy band names that came back to me from the era were *NSYNC, Boyz II Men, The Backstreet Boys, and New Kids on the Block, all popular when my kids were in middle school and high school, a little before and after the 1990's. An entertainment article in Good Housekeeping names twenty boy bands and where they are now. The musical spoofed the familiar sounds and dress of that time and brought back pleasant memories to me. I may not have known the specific songs but the gist of the overall tone was undeniable.

So what about those two extra, non-refundable tickets? We were allowed to exchange them for two tickets the next afternoon. Our Sunday, Oct 12th tickets were in the balcony. As soon as we got home we dialed a list of friends offering to give away two tickets. There were no takers. The notice was too short (the next day) and the number of candidates to phone was depressingly few.

 
The next day I decided to take Alex. I did not have parking pre-arranged, and I did not want to chance where I could get a space and how far away it might be for Alex and me to walk. Frank's suggestion, which I took, was to drive to Alex's home and take an Uber to the theatre. Alex seemed a bit befuddled getting into a strange car with me but I played iPhone music for him during the ride and he was content, even happy. The driver dropped us right at the entrance door. It was so easy peasy.

Talk about making lemonade out of lemons... Alex LOVED the show. He took great joy in thumbing through a program. Our seats had a great view from the balcony and the seats had a steep enough angle that we saw clearly over the heads of other theatre goers. Upbeat and peppy, the music also had a lot of harmonizing which almost alway causes Alex to clap.

Alex and I were there early enough to see some of the pre-show on stage antics of setting up. Photos were allowed then but not during the show. Alex stayed intently engaged the entire first act. We took a walk break at intermission and Alex got enough wigglies out, he was a polite theatre goer for the second act, as well. I had to intervene and tone down his clapping and exuberant fist pumping occcasionally, but overall I was so glad I'd brought him.

An Uber came quickly, picking us up right outside the theatre, taking us back to Alex's home. I drove myself back to Livermore. I was tired. After all, the day before had also been an energetic outing for me. Ignoring the cost for the Uber, offset somewhat by no parking fees, my mistake with those two extra tickets turned out to be a happy happenstance.