Month: February 2024

🎭🩰 An Unexpected Love Story | “Bourne’s Romeo + Juliet” @ Ahmanson

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Matthew Bourne's Romeo + Juliet (Ahmanson)When the 2023-2024 Ahmanson season was announced, I saw the inclusion of Matthew Bourne’s Romeo + Juliet and thought: Ugh. Ballet. I had seen his Cinderella back in 2019, and had a very mixed reaction. About that Cinderella, I wrote: ” I found it difficult to get into the story of Cinderella, and I identify who the myriad of characters were. The dance itself was beautiful, and the dancers were highly skilled, and much emotion was conveyed. But what who did what? I wasn’t always sure. Which of the Pilot’s friends was Tom and which was Dick — I have absolutely no idea. In fact, other than seeing the characters as their “role” (pilot, stepmother, child), I couldn’t tell you who was which name. Although there was theatricality, the notion of conveying more than the gist of the story to the audience was lost.”

Given this experience, I went into the 2024 Romeo + Juliet very apprehensive. I’m not a ballet or dance fan, and Bourne didn’t work for me last time. I’m pleased to say that this time I was pleasantly surprised. The music had energy; the dancing was entertaining; and I roughly knew who people were. I say roughly, because unless you are really familiar with the characters in Shakespeare’s story, you would be hard-pressed to tell a Mercutio from a Balthasar, a Dorcas from a Lavinia, or a Sebastian from a Fabian. Romeo and Juliet, on the other hand, you can identify. So you just watch the dance.

So, setting aside identification of which ancillary character was which, the story was great. Bourne resets the action to some sort of Juvenile Hall or Facility in the future–seemingly some sort of prison with guards and such. But there does seem to be some way for parents to check their children into the facility, so perhaps it isn’t quiet a jail. It’s harder to identify the factions in the story. There is one clear bad guy (he’s the one in black with the tattoo), but the motives of the others in the facility are less clear. I’d say you can’t tell the families apart without a program, but the program doesn’t help here. So I think if you want to really understand the story being told, you would be best to brush up your Shakespeare before seeing the show; or lacking that, at least read the Cliff Notes.

The staging was interesting. The Juvie Hall was imagined as a white tiled facility, with a railing above, stairs on the side, and gated entrances for boys and girls. it was white. The costuming was white. The lights were white. This made the few characters who were not in white–the Reverend, the Senator, the Governor–really stand out. If you see this, I encourage you to watch the reflections and the shadows on the stage, which were as beautiful as the dancers themselves.

The dancing was energetic, with moves that were much more modern dance than traditional ballet. There was humor at times, and some of the dancers even smiled :-). Looking back without any notes, it is hard to recall any specific moves, only the overall visual effect. Suffice it to say it was unique enough to draw my interest and keep my interest. Rarely did I find myself looking elsewhere in the auditorium or getting drowsy.

In summary, this changed my opinion of ballet. I still find it hard to get into the story, and believe you need to really understand the story well beforehand to understand the dance. However, with the right music and staging, appreciating the beauty of the dance itself is easy. This show had the right music and staging to make the dance really enjoyable.

Matthew Bourne’s Romeo + Juliet continues at the Ahmanson through February 25, 2024. Tickets are available through the CTG website.

Matthew Bourne’s Romeo + Juliet . Directed and Choreographed by Matthew Bourne. Music by Terry Davies based on the original score by Sergei Prokofiew. Cast at this performance:  Jackson Fisch Romeo ; Hannah Kremer Juliet; Adam Galbraith Tybalt; Cameron Flynn Mercutio; Leonardo McCorkindale Balthasar; Euan Garrett Benvolio; Daisy May Kemp Rev. Bernadette Laurence, Brie Montague, Nurse; Paris Fitzpatrick Senator Montague, Guard, Orderly; Anya Ferdinand Frenchie; Eleanor McGrath Dorcas; Tasha Chu Magdalen, Governor Escalus; Blue Makwana Lavinia; Kate Lyons Morgan; Kurumi Kamayachi Martha; Matthew Amos Edmund; Eve Ngbokota Lennox; Louis Harris Sebastian; Dylan Jones Fabian; Lyra Treglown Faith. Production and Creatives: Bryony Pennington Dance Captain; Lez Brotherston Set and Costume Design; Paule Constable Lighting Design; Paul Groothuis Sound Design; Terry Davies Orchestrator; Sergei Prokofiev Composer; Etta Murfitt New Adventures Assoc. Artistic Director; Arielle Smith Assoc. Choreographer; Neil Westmoreland New Adventures Resident Artistic Assoc.; Alan Vincent New Adventures Resident Director; Daisy May Kemp New Adventures Asst. Resident Director; Duncan Parker Stage Manager; Ian Wheatstone Company Manager.

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Administrivia: I am not a professional critic. I’m a cybersecurity professional, a roadgeek who does a highway site and a podcast about California Highways, and someone who loves live performance. I buy all my own tickets, unless explicitly noted otherwise. I do these writeups to share my thoughts on shows with my friends and the community. I encourage you to go to your local theatres and support them (ideally, by purchasing full price tickets, if you can afford to do so). We currently subscribe or have memberships at: Center Theatre Group/Ahmanson Theatre; Broadway in Hollywood/Pantages Theatre; Pasadena Playhouse; Geffen Playhouse (Mini-Subscription); 5-Star Theatricals. We’re looking for the right intimate theatre to subscribe at — it hasn’t been the same since Rep East died (it’s now The Main, and although it does a lot of theatre, it doesn’t have seasons or a resident company), and post-COVID, most 99-seaters aren’t back to doing seasons (or seasons we like). I used to do more detailed writeups; here’s my current approach.

Upcoming Theatre – Next 90ish Days:

On the Theatrical Horizon:

There are a few shows for which announcements have crossed my transom that may be of interest: The CSUN Theatre Department in Northridge will be doing the Spongebob Musical in April 2024. We really wanted to see this when it was on tour in 2020, but the tour was killed by COVID; we did drive up to Woodland CA to see a friend in a community theatre production of it. It is a great show about science and climate denial. Charles Stewart Howard Playhouse in Woodland Hills will be doing Hands on a Hardbody in May 2024. CSH announced this back in 2020, but it was killed by COVID; I’m glad to see it will be back (and with a friend in the cast, even). Morgan-Wixson Theatre in Santa Monica has announced their Mainstage 2024 Season, and it includes Bat Boy the Musical running Sept 28 through October 18. We saw Bat Boy back when CSUN did it in 2014; it is a wonderful musical about how a society treats outsiders. Conundrum Theatre Company will be doing Urinetown The Musical in mid to late March 2024 at the Broadwater; this is a great musical, but we can’t fit it into the schedule (nor does my wife care to see it again). However, if you haven’t seen it, it is worth seeing. I also just learned about a theatre company in Fullerton, Maverick Theater. They are doing Evil Dead: The Musical , which is a hoot if you’ve never seen it (we’ve seen it twice). They also have some interesting other stuff on their season, and we might drive down for Santa Claus Vs The Martians in November.

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🛣 Headlines About California Highways – January 2024

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Welcome to 2024, and your first headline post of the year. For those unfamiliar, this post generally contains headlines about California Highways that I’ve seen over the last month. It also serves as fodder for the updates to my California Highways site, so there are also other pages and things I’ve seen that I wanted to remember for the site updates. Lastly, the post also includes some things that I think would be of peripheral interest to my highway-obsessed highway-interested readers.

The end of 2023 saw the posting of the next batch of website updates.  This meant that, on the update front, things have been quiet as they are normally built starting with the headline post. With this posting, I’ll start work on the next round of updates. The end of 2023 also saw my posting of my plan for theatre reviews/writeups going forward; indeed, we’ve already seen three shows in January (Kate, POTUS, and Sukkot) and shows continue every weekend until late February, when there is a little break. Of course, that may change if something interesting comes across the transom.

Also on the horizon, posting-wise, will be my analysis of the Spring 2024 Sample Ballot. Having read through the Senate candidate statements, all I can say is that “Hoo-boy, this is going to be a doozy”. As a preview, the Voter Information Guide included a statement (and a disclaimer from the state) from an clear and unabashed racist. Welcome to California Primary season, where the kooks and nuts are on the ballot, in addition to being on the roads. But I will get to do my exploration of the Schiff vs Porter vs Lee. Given the offices I’ve already started to get advertising for, I expect this to be a multi-part post, although there is only one state proposition.

California Highways: Route by Route logoThe podcast continues apace. We’ve recorded and released a few episodes, and will be recording another one next Monday. The scripts for the last two episodes in Season 2 are done (they are on Route 2). A short break, and then I’ll start researching and writing Season 3, covering Route 3 through Route 7. The most recent episode also prompted a friend at Caltrans to offer to do an interview to talk about Fastrak and tolling in California. We’ll likely do that as a bonus episode. As I write this, the most recent episode (according to Spotify, which doesn’t count direct downloads from cahighways/caroutebyroute) had 36 listens; the most popular season 2 episode (2.02, Route 1 in LA County) had 77 downloads, and the most popular episode overall ((1.01, the start of the chronology) had 154. Please tell your friends about the podcast, “like”, “♥”, or “favorite” it, and give it a rating in your favorite podcatcher. Yes, the sound quality of the episodes does get better — we were learning. As always, you can keep up with the show at the podcast’s forever home at https://www.caroutebyroute.org , the show’s page on Spotify for Podcasters, or you can subscribe through your favorite podcatching app or via the RSS feeds (CARxR, Spotify for Podcasters) . The following episodes have been posted this month:

  • CA RxR 2.05: Route 1: Monterey, Santa Cruz, and the Santa Cruz Coastline. Episode 2.05 of California Highways: Route by Route, continues our exploration of Route 1 by exploring everything about the segment of Route 1 from Carmel in Monterey County to just N of the Tom Lantos Tunnels near Montara (in San Mateo Couny). This includes communities such as Carmel, Monterey, Seaside, Watsonville, Castroville, Aptos, Santa Cruz, the Santa Cruz Coastline, Half Moon Bay, and Montara. As always, we go over the history of this segment of the route, the history of the route through various communities , the freeway plans, discuss relinquishments, names, and some current plans. We also talk in detail about the Devil’s Slide and the Tom Lantos Tunnels, as well as projects in Santa Cruz.  (Spotify Link)
  • CA RxR 2.06: Route 1: Pacifica and San Francisco. Episode 2.06 of California Highways: Route by Route continues our exploration of Route 1 by exploring everything about Route 1 from Pacifica, just N of the Tom Lantos Tunnels near Montara (in San Mateo Couny) to and through San Francisco up to the Golden Gate Bridge. This includes communities such as Pacifica, Daly City, and of course, San Francisco. As always, we go over the history of this segment of the route, the history of the route through various communities , the freeway plans, discuss relinquishments, names, and some current plans (although there’s not much in the relinquishment or plans area). As part of the freeway plans in the area, we include a discussion of the freeway revolt and some broader plans for San Francisco.  (Spotify Link)
  • CA RxR 2.07: Route 1ish: Golden Gate Bridge. Episode 2.07 of California Highways: Route by Route continues our exploration of Route 1 by exploring an interesting gap in the route: The Golden Gate Bridge (GGB). The GGB is not part of the state highway system, and thus (from the point of view of the state) not part of either Route 1 or US 101. It is part of US 101 per AASHTO, and is run by its own district. We’ll cover what was there before the bridge, the construction of the bridge, and current projects along the bridge (such as the singing bridge retrofit, the suicide barrier, and the earthquake retrofit. We’ll also discuss how one pays tolls on the bridge. (Spotify Link)

Looking forward, episode 2.08 will continue our exploration of Route 1 moving northward from the Marin Headlands to the Redwoods.

Well, you should now be up to date. Here are the headlines that I found about California’s highways for January:

Key

[Ħ Historical information | ＄ Paywalls, ＄＄ really obnoxious paywalls, and ∅ other annoying restrictions. I’m no longer going to list the paper names, as I’m including them in the headlines now. Note: For ＄ paywalls, sometimes the only way is incognito mode, grabbing the text before the paywall shows, and pasting into an editor. See this article for more tips on bypassing paywalls. 🎧 indicates an primarily audio article. 🎥 indicates a primarily video article. ]

Highway Headlines

  • Upcoming Roadwork on Area Highways (Redheaded Blackbelt). The following scheduled roadwork [in Caltrans District 1] has been verified at the time of release. Please keep in mind work is weather permitting and subject to change.
  • Highway 1 Closure: How Long Can Big Sur Businesses Endure? (SF Standard). About 100 miles south of San Francisco lies one of the most beautiful places in a beautiful state. Of all of California’s scenic highways—State Route 120 through Yosemite National Park, U.S. 395 behind the spine of the High Sierra, the 405 through Sepulveda Pass with nobody else on it—perhaps nothing compares to the stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway from Carmel-by-the-Sea south to Santa Barbara. And the most beautiful section of this is Big Sur, which has been cut off from the south for the past 11 months. On Jan. 8, during a period of atmospheric rivers, an enormous movement of earth at a spot called Paul’s Slide near the town of Lucia buried a two-mile segment of the coast highway. The landslide some 40 miles south of Big Sur’s lodges and redwoods forced not only the highway’s closure but, eventually, also required workers to terrace the slope and move the roadway itself.
  • ＄ A new wildlife bridge is in the works across Interstate 8 for Peninsular bighorn sheep (San Diego Union-Tribune). Over the past decade, more than two dozen Peninsular bighorn sheep have been struck and killed while trying to cross I-8 in the rocky, mountainous region where San Diego and Imperial counties meet, though for various reasons that number is likely an under count of the actual death toll. In recent years, state wildlife officials identified that 13-mile stretch of freeway where the eastbound and westbound lanes split through a steep grade as one of the state’s most problematic barriers to wildlife movement. An effort is now underway, with a key first step completed earlier this year, to build one of the state’s first wildlife bridges along that stretch of I-8. The envisioned overpass, now in the planning stages after securing grant funding, would facilitate the natural movements of the estimated 790 or so members of the federally protected Peninsular bighorn species, which live between the U.S.-Mexico border and Palm Springs in the California desert.
  • ＄ ‘Turbo roundabout’ south of San Jose is second of its kind in US (Mercury News). In the coming months, drivers in San Benito County will face a traffic pattern unlike anything else in the state: a three-lane rotary shaped like a stunted ninja star. This is only the second time the new design, called a turbo roundabout, is being implemented in the U.S. But if it meets its goal of reducing accidents at a crossroads with a history of harmful crashes, drivers across the country could be seeing more of them. The intersection of highways 25 and 156 near Hollister has been notoriously dangerous — the site of more than twice as many accidents as similar intersections in the state, resulting in multiple injuries. In particular, there have been an unusual number of rear-impact and T-bone collisions there. Caltrans had previously attempted several small fixes, such as changing the timing on the traffic signals and adding rumble strips going up to the signal. But after these failed to resolve the problems, the agency opted to create a special roundabout.
  • A love letter to US Route 50, America’s loneliest highway (SF Gate). The essence of lonely is embodied after peeling off Highway 50 into a dusty parking lot at Middlegate Station, a pit stop in the Nevada desert about an hour from any cities in both directions. There’s a small wooden building that appears to have been standing for at least 100 years and near the front door a wooden plaque announces the official population — 17. (Although it’s clear that the number 18 has been scratched out.) I have a feeling the bar and restaurant may be keeping an accurate tally. Stepping inside, I simultaneously step back in time and saddle up to the bar for a drink and a burger. It could be some time before I see another opportunity to stop on the lonesome highway
  • California debuts ‘turbo roundabout’ to fix troubled intersection near Bay Area (SF Gate). A troubled California intersection is now the site of a new, spiral-shaped road feature called a “turbo roundabout” — the first of its kind in the state, and only the second in the country. The new turbo roundabout appeared near the city of Gilroy at the intersection of highways 25 and 156, two roadways frequented by interregional commuters, travelers and agricultural workers. Caltrans told SFGATE that the intersection has an unusually high occurrence of collisions, even when compared with similar intersections across the state. Installing a roundabout was a natural solution, Caltrans spokesperson Jim Shivers said. “Wherever we have installed a roundabout, the number of collisions drastically decreases,” he said. “And this is pretty much true for roundabouts around the country.”
  • Did You Know: Navigate Your Way to CSUN’s Massive Map Collection (CSUN Today). Did you know that in addition to more than 1.5 million books, 250,000 periodicals and 60,000 photos, CSUN’s University Library also boasts a Map Collection with more than 400,000 maps? They include geologic maps, traffic maps, tourist maps, zoning maps, topographic maps and planning maps of California, Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. There are even maps of areas and territories that no longer exist. Emilie Ducourneau is the curator of the collection that includes maps dating back to the 1700s. She notes that these documents serve as a snapshot in time — showing what was happening in a particular area at the time the map was drawn. [✒ Given that CSUN is about a mile from my house, and my wife is a CSUN Alum, I really need to make an appointment and go see this collection]

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