That sounds like it ought to be the name of a band or something. Instead, it’s the description of Thursday evening.
There’s a small community theatre* near my apartment. It’s called Broadway West, and it’s upstairs from a charming little coffee shop. Right now, they’re doing The Crucible, and I wanted to see it. Jen and I decided to make an evening of it, so we ordered takeout from the local Chinese restaurant and ate it at my apartment. Then we went to the show.
The show started at 8 and the box office was supposed to open at 7:30. We arrived around 7:30 and waited. An old lady walked over. She had the standard old lady hair (a silver helmet of curls extending at least two inches out from her head in all directions), and she was wearing a loud floral blouse and a pin-on button with her name on it. I assumed that she was an employee of the theatre company.
She struck up a conversation, and right away, she seemed a bit off. She was pleasant and friendly, but she kept talking and talking and talking. She wasn’t an employee, just a season ticket holder. She said she liked to wear her nametag in public so everyone would know her name. Anyway, she mentioned she was in the local Rotary club.
I happen to know a rather prominent member of the local Rotary club, so I asked her if she knew him. She said that she did, and she asked me how I knew him. I said that I knew him from church. Then she asked me if I knew another family in the area. I said that I didn’t. She said, “They’re a pretty large family.”
I made some polite nod, hoping I could extricate myself from this conversation. Then she said, “Do you have a large family?” I said that I didn’t. Then she got the most confused look on her face and she said, “But aren’t you Mormon?” I said yes, and then she said, “Don’t Mormons have large families?” I replied that some do and some don’t. By now, I really wanted to end this conversation. (I take enough flak at church for the size of my family. I don’t need it from batty old ladies I just met.) Jen looked like she was about to shoot daggers from her eyeballs.
Well, Chatty Batty wouldn’t stop. She proceeded to tell a story about one of her cousins who was drunk at her wedding. Then I think she told a few other stories, but I wasn’t really paying proper attention. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the box office opened and Jen and I picked up our tickets.
The usher showed us to our seats and we settled in. The theatre is pretty small. There were about 12 rows, and each row had about 15 seats. (I didn’t count, though.) The stage was really close to the first row. Jen and I were in the third row near the center. Chatty Batty walked in and found her seat. It was one seat over from Jen!
Chatty Batty set her stuff down and spotted another victim on the other side of the theatre. She ran off at the mouth for 10 minutes. Then she returned to her seat. The person next to Jen is an actor in the company but wasn’t in The Crucible. Anyway, Chatty Batty started talking to her and talked her ear off until the show started.
The show was pretty good. There wasn’t much space backstage, so the actors were out in the audience when they weren’t on stage. The director said at the beginning of the show that we should consider ourselves to be the townspeople of Salem. So, there you have it, I took a quick trip to Massachusetts this week!
Intermission was pretty uneventful, and I didn’t see Chatty Batty after the play. They’re doing You Can’t Take it With You in the summer, and I may go see that.
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* Yes, I know that’s the British spelling. I use “theatre” when I’m talking about live performances and “theater” when I’m talking about going to the movies. It’s one of my eccentricities. I also prefer the British rule for the placement of commas in relation to quotation marks. That one is less about aesthetics and more about accuracy in quoted source material, though. I do, however, eschew the excessive use of the letter “u”.
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