My friend Barb recently made her annual pilgrimage from the summer heat of Tucson, Arizona to the more pleasant climate of the Northeast. After visiting her son in New York City, she made her way upstate to spend a few days with me. She and I (I left John home to do housework as usual), attended a performance of Cole Porter's "Kiss Me, Kate" at the Glimmerglass Opera House in Cooperstown, NY on Tuesday evening. The tickets were provided by Barb's brother, who has been a member of the orchestra for 30 years. As I look at the webpage, I see that the tickets were worth $114 each. We did have great third row seats in the center of the theatre. It sure is nice to have friends with connections!

It's been wet around here for the past week or so, but the drive to Glimmerglass wasn't too bad. The play was presented in the fully packed 900-seat theater. The theater company was well-rehearsed in the production, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. The play, "Kiss Me Kate", is based on one of Shakespeare's somewhat controversial but lighthearted, romantic comedies, "The Taming of the Shrew", which he wrote in the late 1500s, I believe. It is a play within a play where a divorced couple are brought back together to play leading roles in the Shakespearean comedy I mentioned above.


There were many extremely side-splitting, hilariously funny acts in this 3-hour long play, but for me, the funniest had to be when Kate or Katherine did her "I Hate Men" performance. Here she is as Katherine, dressed as a 1500s maiden when she suddenly rips off the bottom of her flowing gown to reveal a skin-tight cat suit as she struts across the stage to open the doors to a hidden cabinet where she reveals a cornucopia of BDSM paraphernalia. She pulls out a huge snake-like whip and cracks it loudly on the stage floor as she viciously sneers at her shrewish best. She gives a thouroughly convincing performance as the willfull, vicious and ill-tempered Katherine.


It was a wonderful two days--to connect with an old friend, and to see a wonderful play, which I hadn't done in years.