I’m taking a one day break here as I have to go into the city shortly to work on Anastasia and I overslept, which is throwing me off!
So I’ll be back with more of our trip tomorrow, my friends.
Thanks for understanding. I literally have no time to write a travel post. Don just woke me up and I have to leave in an hour!
Happy Saturday.
Safe travels!
Thank you!
Don’t worry. You’ve generously left us with plenty to pore over for days if not weeks! So have a great trip today and be safe…
Thank you, Eve.
Fly sweetie!
Thank you!
Then tonight we fall back an hour! Enjoy your day and more travel posts soon! Hugs!
Thank you, Linda!
Hope you got some Peet’s into you, or are carrying your travel cup!
Not a problem girlfriend…I hope that you arrived on time!
I did! The bus was late, however!
hope you arrived on time and your day’s gone well.
i overslept this morning, too, and don’t like that … even on a weekend … but need more sleep. imagine you could, too, for all the traveling.
hope you’re now home, having a good night.
kathy in iowa
I enjoyed your entry on Sir Ian McKellen and his performance in King Lear. Your description of his prowess as an actor and his personal magnetism reminded me of something that happened to my husband and me some years ago.
Out of gratitude for our house-sitting for him, a University of Maryland professor gave my husband two highly-coveted tickets to see Sir Ian in Richard III at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. This was in the summer of 1992. On the night of the performance, Sir Ian’s performance was, in a word, astonishing. By turns menacing and seductive, he brought the complex character of one of England’s most infamous sovereigns to life in a performance that held the audience in the palm of his leather-gloved hand for the entire play.
With one exception.
There’s always that one guy in every audience, both in plays and in movie theaters. You know the one. He’s the one who has to yell something, or laugh at a quiet, tender moment. Anything to draw attention to himself while the audience is quiet and attentive. One sees this sort of boorish behavior on the pro golf circuit these days, with someone in the gallery bellowing out, “Get in the hole!” when a golfer putts. There was such a person in the audience that night at the Kennedy Center.
At the end of a mesmerizing soliloquy, Sir Ian accidentally dropped a prop pistol while trying to re-holster it. It was the sort of moment the audience would have breezed right past, being in the grip of the master thespian McKellen. But no, Mister Attention Seeker In The Audience had to break the spell. The guy, who was sitting on the main floor pretty close to the stage and not far from where we were seated, broke out into a raucous “Haw! Haw! Haw!” laugh.
At that moment, Sir Ian (who had turned and was about to make his way off the stage) wheeled around and raked his piercing eyes across the audience, scanning, it seemed, every single face for the slightest hint of who might have been the joker. And in that instant, the entire audience realized something. Sir Ian McKellen was gone. Richard III, the reptilian regicidal monster, was standing before them, and he was not kidding around. He was, in fact, looking for a specific human target. Not a muscle moved among the hundreds of theatergoers. Not an eye blinked. Not a breath was drawn. We sat there, trying to be as still as stones, while the murderous king examined us. Finally, after a few minutes or a few hours, he sneered slightly, turned, and exited stage left. And no one moved. No one made a sound. Until Richard III was safely out of sight. And then we erupted in a roar.
That’s great acting. That’s the sort of thing one never forgets. That’s the power of Sir Ian McKellen over an audience.
What an amazing story! Thank you so much for sharing it here.
He is simply extraordinary. There’s no one better.