As we've discussed, I was in Santa Cruz last Wednesday to sign stuff at my buddy Joe Ferrara's bookstore. The night before, I was in San Jose and I went to the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. In this case, the art being performed there was the musical Something Rotten.
I first saw a different, Equity touring company do this show in L.A. in December of 2017 and I liked it a whole lot. This current troupe is traipsing from town to town — sometimes only for a night or two — all across the U.S. They open in Tucson next Tuesday.
Sometimes, I see a show like this and I can't help but think, "People this talented ought to be able to make a living doing shows without spending their lives on buses." The brutal life of Renaissance times they were singing about might be nothing compared to playing that show on a Wednesday night in St. Louis and getting to Muncie in time to do it on Thursday night there. How they pack all those sets, props and costumes and get them set up in the next town is beyond me.
But maybe some of those players enjoy the adventure. And maybe some of them feel as a friend of mine did when I asked her about a string of one- and two-nighters she did once in a roving band performing Grease. She said, "I would rather live six months like that and get to perform almost every night than spend those six months doing office-temp work because I can't get a job acting in town."
This production of Something Rotten was was pretty darned good for a non-Equity production with several folks who I'm sure would not have been outta place when this musical was on Broadway. Maybe not everyone but several. A scan of their credits in the program indicates that a lot of them have done this kind of tour before so they knew what they were getting themselves into. Maybe I'm wrong to think they don't love every minute of it.
The San Jose Center for the Performing Arts is a big, oddly-constructed place. It was obviously built to house musicals (mostly) but somehow, no one thought to build an orchestra pit under the stage. It's in front of it instead, distancing the audience from the performers who are on a rather tall stage. In order for them to be able to see the conductor, they had to elevate him on a platform…and then they installed a wall around the pit so the audience couldn't see the conductor except, occasionally, his hands.
I somehow wound up in the center of the first row so there was this wall in front of me and I had to look up and over to see the actors — and I could only see them from about the shins up with the wall blocking the rest of them. When someone fell down on stage, I couldn't see them at all.
I think I was the tallest person in the front row. The lady next to me said she could only see of the performers from about the waist up. Still, she loved the show. Everyone did, including me. I just don't get what the guy who designed that theater was thinking.