Carleigh's Catastrophes: H. M. S. Pinafore!

UPDATE 2014--- Major OOOOPS!!! I never actually published this blog post. I had it ready to publish and assumed I'd done it, and I went looking for it to link it to the new one and found it listed as "draft". I get the big D'oh for today! Argh. So here it is, and I put its original date with it, too.

What a whirlwind of a weekend! The original plan had been that we would drive to Houston to see

H.M.S. Pinafore, which da Creature was ever so counting on, but da Mama got super sick (actually, I've been super sick and no one seems to be the wiser as to why, which is super frustrating) so we got to have an EXTRA special surprise and go on a AIRPLANE to Houston (special surprise number two? have you booked airline tickets three days ahead of a trip before? don't....just....don't... cha-ching!).

Fortunately, United still has non-stop flights to Houston from Jackson, so it was quick and a shuttle ride later had us at the Doubletree safe and sound where I could recover a bit before we'd go to the show the next day.

First, let me say how amazing the folks are over at the Gilbert and Sullivan Socieity of Houston. They were able to seat us where we needed to be, and let me know they'd put together a goodie bag and he could get his score signed.

So...we got all spiffied up, and headed out for the show.

We had reservations at a restaurant near the theatre, Birraporetti's (an Italian restaurant), and I had promised Eric he'd get to eat there, so we went, even though I couldn't eat. I got him all his favorites (which we had planned to split) and he had such fun eating all that great looking food, he was just stuffed. We sat near the back, and he found a poster for Pinafore on the wall behind him, and couldn't get enough of turning around and pointing and telling everyone who came by that he was going to see it in a few minutes and were they going too and it's about.... (at which point I'd have to gently focus him back on the food so as not to give a detailed summary of Pinafore to passerby's).


"Mama, why are you taking pictures of me eating?"

Then we realized we had a LOT of time to kill before the show. We wandered around the front of the Wortham and found these giant balls, which were fascinating to Eric, and he madly danced from one to the other and we took a LOT of silly pictures and I did not snicker, not once, I promise, not even a little at the Wortham's giant balls...not a peep outta me, I'm respectable, you know. *snicker*

Such a little boy, with such big dreams

MY score. MY score. It's MINE.

Finally, they let us go in, and we attended the pre-show lecture. Eric was so giddy, and happy to hear someone talking about things he REALLY understood that I fear he aggravated the man giving the lecture a bit. Sad, really, since if the man had only really known him, he'd probably have been delighted to be talking to someone who followed every word and could even add details that many adults might never have encountered. His working knowledge of the period and the corpus of G&S is really extraordinary, I mean, "Rain Man" extraordinary, but he can be a bit of an ass about it at times, but he's only 9, so the fact he knows all of this stuff is kind of cool, if you think about it.

At the lecture before the show!

He has three operas memorized already and is set to learn another one (or two) next year. He LOVES Gilbert and Sullivan. And American and British history. And snarky sarcastic humor. It's all a match made in heaven. (...at least he didn't get all the ball jokes I didn't make. Really, I kept it to myself. Mostly)

Before the show, we talked for a while about how theatre works, and he wanted to hear all my silly stories from being in theatre in my much younger days, and we sat in our seats and I tried to not let my dizzy, nauseated self be too distracted and I told stories of falling in the orchestra pit and being fallen on (Papageno straight-up dropped Papagena on the timpani one time during Magic Flute. I was playing Glockenspiel, so she missed me by about two feet)!

A nice lady in front of us took our picture. Thank you so much, it's the only photo I have that proves I was there!!! :D

Afterwards, we went to the Green Room. He got to meet the cast and get his score signed (a huge big giant deal for Eric), and I took as many pictures as I could. I was sad to discover when I uploaded them, that I had failed to get some pictures, even though we got everyone's autograph. *sigh* (Next year, I'll do better).