It's official!

 After months of wrangling my son and his fiancée finally have an actual sign over their business:

It wasn't easy, and they seriously had to go forth and part the red tape.  It wasn't just the government, but the landlord who seemed to have endless reams of specifications and limitations.  Despite it all, it's here and it's not bad at all.

So far they have exceeded expectations for their first two months, which is nice.  Of course that leaves about 540 more months, but it's not a bad start.  

Speaking of starting a business while planning a wedding, working full time and opening their own business, I've said my son decided to join a local community theater production this fall.  Because those extra couple of hours a day that were empty had no business existing. 

Well, that has come and gone, and it was quite enjoyable.  Our town went without a community theater for many years.  Just as it went without many things.  You might say it's one of the more poorly planned towns I've ever seen.  

In the 1990s, it became one of the fastest growing cities in the nation.  So what did the city planners do?  Build - housing developments.  And housing developments.  And more housing developments.  We almost tripled our population, and are larger than many cities around us.  Yet our infrastructure, commercial and industrial sectors are smaller than some of the small towns I grew up near.  My sons have often asked if any of the city officials ever played Sim City. 

Nonetheless, there have been improvements over the last few years. There have been attempts to get this well populated town onto the same level as other similarly populated towns.  Which is why the sudden appearance of a bookstore after a decade or more without has been met with such enthusiasm.  Same with the theater.  Started a decade ago, it began performing in local churches or even once in a court room (fittingly, a production of Twelve Angry Men).

Now it's moved to the theater in one of the city schools.  This summer they had a production of The Sound of Music.  Our parish, which has contributed large numbers of individuals to the theater group, is also a great source of advertising.  Since we have about 2000 families, that ensures a large crowd every time.

This performance didn't disappoint.  In fact, it's their highest attended non-musical production to date.  It was a theatrical production of the old 1985 movie Clue.  When released, the movie was a flop, as the 'gimmick' of separate endings depending on which movie you went to turned out to be a dud.  Yet like Amadeus, it was also a first fruit of this new thing call VCRs.  By late college, Clue was required watching, with whole parties gathered around, learning and repeating the lines almost like Curry's other film Rocky Horror ("I had to...stop her...from screaming!"). 

Naturally this version has changed some things.  Times being what they are, not all of the humor could be included.  Plus scenes, like the bumbling Mr. Green smacking Mrs. Peacock to get her to stop screaming, and then meekly explaining himself, had to be altered.  It had to be Miss Scarlet doing the slapping since, let's face it, no play in the world today could have a man slap a woman for laughs.  

With that said, it was fun, and well done.  The lead, Watson the butler, is one of their main performers, a local judge and one of your 'men of the community' types.  One of our parish's musical gems was Mrs. White (talk about against type).  My son was the ill-fated Motorist.  Of all the 'victims', he enjoyed the most focus time, and his dialogue was actually expanded a bit from the movie.  Overall a good time. And that doesn't even include our annual Halloween spookfests (more on that later when I have the time)! 

Seeing this all over town didn't hurt attendance

The main cast, sitting down to dinner, wondering what's happening

My son, "the Motorist", makes his entrance and Col. Mustard has something to say 

The phone?  How about...no, perhaps the phone in...no

"There's a weird party going on, plus you know who is here....?"

The last moments of the Motorist

Miss Scarlet and Col. Mustard discover the Motorist's body

Like the film, the 'Recap' is the highlight of the play

Some hijinks during a well received and well deserved curtain call