Houston Gilbert and Sullivan Society's The Sorcerer!

At six o'clock in the morning on Saturday, we stumbled out the door to drive to Houston for what is becoming our yearly pilgrimage to Gilbert and Sullivan.  As anyone who knows us already knows, da Creature is obsessed with G&S and Houston is the closest place I could find with regular performances of the repertoire.  It was a happy find, by the way, as the company has been incredibly kind to my little angel and for that, I will be forever grateful.

I'd like to thank, especially, Alistair Donkin, who has been so giving of his enthusiasm for Eric's love of the G&S and so encouraging both last year and this year.

On to the fun... (after the eight hour drive and a brief stop in NOLA to pick up da Boyfriend of da Offspring, the long-suffering Mr. Bryan Tibbetts, who, as a favor to Offspring, agreed to ride out to Houston with us to make the drive safer and easier.  Bryan, thank you so VERY much!):

First, we had to turn into respectable appearing people

Again this year, we availed ourselves of the Birraporreti's coupon that comes with your tickets for some pre-show Italian cuisine.  It was great again this year!

I can haz "dat Face"

There was still about twenty minutes to kill before we could go up to the pre-show lecture, so we killed it by playing with the giant balls again.




Before the lecture, there was a five minute or so moment of "I'm going to pretend to sleep because I'm bored and a little cranky that TIME exists and "the hours creep on apace..."




Dat face with dat Mama in our seats, excited to be here, and really wanting the show to start!

The opera itself (aside from being Sorcerer, which has an excruciatingly long expanse at the beginning of songs that are, well, to be honest, a bit dull) opened up and hit full throttle at song 13, the song where we finally get to see the Sorcerer (Alistair Donkin himself) and the plot reveals itself and things start to get super funny and super exciting.  By the time we got to the finale of Act I, da Creature was doing everything he could to not sing along with "the eggs and the ham and the strawberry jam."  Singing about food is just too much fun to repress apparently.  :D  He utterly failed to repress it at the finale of the second act and I could hear him singing along in spite of himself.  It was pretty awesome for da Mama, and I hope the patrons around us forgave him for all that unbridled enthusiasm there at the end.  It had been, after all, a rather long day.

In the green room, after the show, the cast were as kind as ever!!!  They signed his score, and posed with him for pictures, and those who had seen his video of him singing Sir Joseph Porter for his elementary school had fabulously kind things to say to him, and it REALLY DOES MEAN THE WORLD TO HIM that you guys do that.  He thinks you're all rock stars, and nothing will ever shake tha opinion of you... You ARE his HEROES.

hmmm...the grammar nazi in me notices I switched pronouns in that last paragraph, but so be it...I DO want the cast to know I appreciate them more than they will ever know.   For an autistic child to love something as much as he does that is, honestly in this day and age a bit obscure, especially in our little neck of the woods, and to be able to drive a bit (a bit?#?#?!) and have his dreams brought to life by living, breathing, singing artists, is a miracle for him.  Thank you ALL so very very much.

Here are his treasures... the pictures he will keep, the memories he will cherish:

Mr. Alistair Donkin, as The Sorcerer!

I will update this post later when I unpack with artists' names and character names.  Right now, I just wanted to get the post roughed out and up. 

Thank you again, Houston Gilbert and Sullivan Society!  That smile up there says it all. 





NOTE:  The companion post to this one (Last year's) was apparently never actually published!  ACK!!! I went looking for it and it was listed only as a "draft".  Apologies to everyone.  I was SURE it was out there.  I went ahead and put it with the date I thought it published on.  D'oh! Link HERE