Tonight, Tonight...

... I went to the theatre with Clare and her sister Sarah. I guess we should have gone to see Buddy in London, given that today is the 50th anniversary of The Day the Music Died, but London apparently can't deal with a smattering of snow and has come to a standstill, so it was a good job that West Side Story was on in Southampton instead.

I really enjoyed this performance, despite other people's best efforts (see next paragraph). I'm not really one for soprano voices - I find them a bit squeaky - but the girl playing Maria had a beautiful voice, really pure on the top notes. As ever, the words of some of the songs were lost because the orchestra was too loud, but I've seen the show enough times in the past to know what was going on. I just think it's such a shame for people who haven't seen the show before to lose half the words.

The funniest moments of the evening, though, came from observing just how inconsiderate other people can be. The man sitting in front of me, for example, sat forward in his seat the entire show. If he had only sat back in his seat I would have been able to see round him and wouldn't have missed everything that went on in the left third of the stage. In his defence, however, I think the reason that he was sitting forward was so that he could see round the lady in front of him. This picture is terrible quality because I took it with my phone, but I hope it shows what I mean: -


The lady had really long hair, and she piled it ALL on the top of her head, making her at least 4 inches taller. Seriously? For the theatre??? People pay a lot of money to go to the theatre, and they know that their enjoyment is highly likely to be marred by the sound of phones going off and people unwrapping sweets at inopportune moments (tonight - check and check), and they also know there's a chance they'll be sitting behind a tall person (Clare was), but making yourself unnecessarily taller when you know there are going to be people sitting behind you? That's just rude.

Then we were going up the stairs to get out after the show and a group of 10 women just stopped at the top of the stairs, blocking everyone behind them from getting out. Why do people do that????

So apart from the idiocies of the general public (and let's face it, the woman with the hair was far more funny than she was annoying), we had a great night. And also, I saw our old car in the car park behind the theatre - I almost had kittens when I saw it, I thought someone had nicked it off our driveway, then I realised we traded it in a month ago...