Connecticut River & Goodspeed Opera House

Today we continued our 40th Wedding anniversary celebration with the tickets we were given to the Goodspeed Opera House. We had never been and were excited for this adventure. First we had fish and chips for lunch at this tavern.

We walked a little along the Connecticut River. The swans were not cooperative--they all would not have their heads out of the water at the same time.

Stopped at a cute gift shop. They had all kinds of types of candy that was popular years ago. George was so pleased to find one of his favorites, a Zagnut.

View of the back of the opera house.

The swing bridge had to "swing" for a tall sailboat. Glad we were early. It takes a little while.

 Birds on the bridge.

Almost there.

Inside

 View from our front row balcoony seats.

We saw "A Wonderful Life", a musical screenplay version of "It's a Wonderful Life". Those who know me, know that "It's a Wonderful Life" is my favorite movie and I watch it every year. It was hard not to think of Jim Stewart as George Bailey but Duke Lafoon did a great job. As with most plays, some events were changed from the movie. Most were minor, though there were a couple that I was sorry were omitted.

The ending of the movie is so perfect but the play continues mostly for the benefit of a finale musical number. I would rather it hadn't. In fact, to be honest, the music in the entire show was not at all memorable and therefore, we didn't enjoy the music.

It was a fun experience to see a production at the infamous Goodspeed Opera House. I recommend doing it once. It's a beautiful building but for us, we felt we have seen just as good performances at the Warner Theater for much less money. We enjoyed the performance of "Greetings" at Goshen Players last week much more than this. But we are thankful to have had this opportunity and now we can say, "been there done that". We'll stick with our local productions with equally talented actors and a lower ticket price for us.

"The Story of My Life"

Since we couldn't get away for our anniversary, we decided to make it special by going to dinner and a play. We have never been to the Goodspeed Opera House and as I was checking out the options there, we found out that Goodspeed produces plays at the Opera House and at Norma Terris Theatre. We still would love to see a play in the beautiful Opera House, but for this time we chose the Norma Terris Theatre, which is a converted factory.

This is a nice intimate theatre--about two hundred seats, but a little too intimate for us. We found the seats too narrow for our size and a little hard. We were in the third row which was on the same tier as rows one and two and therefore, I did have one tall person obstructing my view a little, but not too badly because the stage was high enough.

The play we decided to see was "The Story of My Life" which ended up being a perfect choice for me. This is a new musical with only two actors. It's the story of two boys who become friends at age six and how their friendship affects their lives forever, even when they don't realize it.

I am a "It's A Wonderful Life" junky. This play has many references to the movie and the two characters are a writer and a bookstore owner--couldn't get any closer to my heart.

Will Chase played Thomas and Malcolm Gets played Alvin. Both had strong voices and sang clearly and emotionally. My only negative critique to this play is that the songs are not the type that you would hum later or buy the CD. I wish the writers had tried harder in that department, however, the songs got the points across. I also enjoyed when Will and Malcolm sang together and that did not happen enough for me. The songs were mostly conversational solos.

That being said, the play did not lack in emotions--there were times of laughter, times of empathy, times of sorrow and for wimps like me, times to cry--from the very beginning you know one character is struggling with writing an eulogy for the other--you would think knowing that that I could control myself. Not.

Some may think the storyline corny or unrealistic. I lost myself in it and thoroughly enjoyed it. If I get the opportunity in the future, I would definitely see it again. I hope this play becomes successful and that I can say I knew it when it was new.