Dec 07 2008
Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty by Sir Edward Burne-Jones
We took the kids to see a community theater production of Sleeping Beauty. I was nervous about going, especially after our fifteen minutes of Wall-E. Things turned out much better than expected.
The show was a musical, which was a BIG plus because Gus loves music. It was also the earlier of the two shows, so it wasn’t very crowded. Win! We got seats near the back right on the aisle (just in case we had to leave).
We had a discussion about the ‘play rules’ on the way over, and we made sure everyone had lunch so there wouldn’t be any hunger meltdowns. There was about a fifteen minute wait after we got to the auditorium, but he was excited and in a good enough mood that he handled himself well. The show itself was great, notably the role of the Prince. Once the lights went down Gus was mesmerized and wasn’t even disturbed by the fact that there was no intermission. He actually sat through the show better than MM, who started bouncing in her seat about halfway through the show. She was funny - at one point during a set change, she said, “Can we just get on with the show? Enough commercials already!”
We were worried that Gus would be yelling out comments, but he was amazingly good about keeping his voice down.
After the show, the actors hung out in the hall and signed autographs as their characters. MM got a few, but then Gus decided he wanted one too. He’d been reading the actors’ bios and decided on one. So we went up to ‘the Prince,’ a very kind fourteen year old, and Gus asked for an autograph. Then he proceeded to tell the boy his (the Prince’s) name, and what grade he was in. Prince was a little weirded out until I explained that Gus had just read his bio on the wall. I think he thought he had a seven year old stalker.
All in all, a great day out for the family. I’m sure that the advance prep work made all the difference. That and I think we were due for a little luck as well.
