"British hegemony began in the 16th century under Queen Victoria I, son of Henry VIII..."

Neither subject line nor icon will be explained. You know who you are.

The last few days of the trip were... odd. My mental sequencing of events is confused, so I can't say very much about the weekend, but the last show was strange. We hadn't the money to get tickets to any show but the final performance, so the night of the 23rd was my first time in the theater. It was enormous and quite beautiful and they had an organ, and they were handing out little souvenir pins at the last show. The whole thing was surprisingly understated--special pins, special playbills, and a rather emotional extra bow by the full cast. No balloons, no confetti, no speeches, no encores, no closing-night antics. Just a lot of cast members (and I suspect a lot of audience members) barely refraining from bursting into tears.

Okay, I'm not a great fan of Joan Almedilla's Fantine, but she made me wibble solely by the fact that she was practically sobbing through her entire performance. Randal seemed collected enough until the second act, and then he gave possibly the best rendition of Bring Him Home I've ever heard in my life. I think we all kind of lost it at that point, him included--he got a five-minute standing ovation which he thoroughly deserved. I even warmed up to Robert Hunt, a little. He still seems too young and his Javert is far too rabid and seems like a Disney villain, but he does have an excellent voice. And I think a lot of my problem with him stems with the lack of variation in intensity--he's manically intense all the time--which was solved neatly by a more-emotional-than-usual Javert's Suicide. And of course everyone was sobbing through the finale. Even the actors, a bit.

I was expecting a bit more fanfare to mark off the end of the tour, like I said--at least some speeches or something. But the largest commemoration was unofficial: dozens of fans lining up at the usually-deserted stage door begging autographs, photos, a few minutes of conversation, whatever. It meant more that way, somehow. I usually feel so self-conscious at the stage door because I'm either the only one there or in the company of people who know the actors better than I do, but on Sunday for some reason I didn't feel like an obsessive freak standing first in line at the stage door with a dozen roses for Victor Wallace. There were people from bloody all over the place, Washington DC, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California... no one international as far as I know, but a good turnout of people coming to stalk the tour from all over the country. Lulu and I proceeded to make asses of ourselves in front of Victor, but he was terribly sweet and seemed amused and he did like the flowers. Did I mention he's pretty?

Lulu and I ran into alligatorandme, mmebahorel, and shawk at the stage door, and of course dastardly hijinks followed. 2 am found us in the parking lot of a Steak & Shake (closed but for the drive thru, which Lulu walked through to get a replacement hamburger after hers fell on the ground), trading obsessive-fan stories, bizarre fanfiction ideas, and all manner of other fannish crack. And witnessing what were quite possibly drug deals at the other end of the parking lot. Lovely city, St Louis.

And then there was the trip back. One of us had the lovely idea to try to get home as quickly as possible after the show by leaving for Washington the night of the show. So instead of the sensible option--namely, a full night's sleep and a drive during the daylight hours--we departed St Louis at three in the morning with a lot of No-Doz, a little food, and a distressingly tiny amount of money. I don't remember much of the drive back, except that it was very long, the Midwest is the most godawfully boring part of the country to drive through, we almost got lost on the PA turnpike, and I have good cop karma. Seriously. In three years of speeding like a Nascar driver while on highway trips, I have never been pulled over for speeding. Misinterpreting directions from cops, yes. Illegal turns, yes. But I thought we were dead meat when we got pulled over in Indiana while doing almost ninety on I-70, and it turned out the cop was after someone else and was just irked at us for not slowing down when he put his lights on. And so we got off with a warning and my driving record remains lily-white.

Oh, and did I mention practically no money? It worked out eerily perfectly. We were burning through gas like crazy the first two hundred miles of the trip and thought we were screwed, but then whatever emissions problem it was disappeared, we got great gas mileage all through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and arrived home with exactly $3.17 counting loose change. I'm still getting the car checked out, of course, but it's really odd that we had exactly enough money to get home.

And from then on all is lunacy and sleep deprivation and you probably don't want to hear about it. My only comment is that after having listened to the Cabaret revival recording incessantly in the car, both of us were rather disappointed upon re-viewing of the movie. Ew.

"British hegemony began in the 16th century under Queen Victoria I, son of Henry VIII..."

Neither subject line nor icon will be explained. You know who you are.

The last few days of the trip were... odd. My mental sequencing of events is confused, so I can't say very much about the weekend, but the last show was strange. We hadn't the money to get tickets to any show but the final performance, so the night of the 23rd was my first time in the theater. It was enormous and quite beautiful and they had an organ, and they were handing out little souvenir pins at the last show. The whole thing was surprisingly understated--special pins, special playbills, and a rather emotional extra bow by the full cast. No balloons, no confetti, no speeches, no encores, no closing-night antics. Just a lot of cast members (and I suspect a lot of audience members) barely refraining from bursting into tears.

Okay, I'm not a great fan of Joan Almedilla's Fantine, but she made me wibble solely by the fact that she was practically sobbing through her entire performance. Randal seemed collected enough until the second act, and then he gave possibly the best rendition of Bring Him Home I've ever heard in my life. I think we all kind of lost it at that point, him included--he got a five-minute standing ovation which he thoroughly deserved. I even warmed up to Robert Hunt, a little. He still seems too young and his Javert is far too rabid and seems like a Disney villain, but he does have an excellent voice. And I think a lot of my problem with him stems with the lack of variation in intensity--he's manically intense all the time--which was solved neatly by a more-emotional-than-usual Javert's Suicide. And of course everyone was sobbing through the finale. Even the actors, a bit.

I was expecting a bit more fanfare to mark off the end of the tour, like I said--at least some speeches or something. But the largest commemoration was unofficial: dozens of fans lining up at the usually-deserted stage door begging autographs, photos, a few minutes of conversation, whatever. It meant more that way, somehow. I usually feel so self-conscious at the stage door because I'm either the only one there or in the company of people who know the actors better than I do, but on Sunday for some reason I didn't feel like an obsessive freak standing first in line at the stage door with a dozen roses for Victor Wallace. There were people from bloody all over the place, Washington DC, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, California... no one international as far as I know, but a good turnout of people coming to stalk the tour from all over the country. Lulu and I proceeded to make asses of ourselves in front of Victor, but he was terribly sweet and seemed amused and he did like the flowers. Did I mention he's pretty?

Lulu and I ran into alligatorandme, mmebahorel, and shawk at the stage door, and of course dastardly hijinks followed. 2 am found us in the parking lot of a Steak & Shake (closed but for the drive thru, which Lulu walked through to get a replacement hamburger after hers fell on the ground), trading obsessive-fan stories, bizarre fanfiction ideas, and all manner of other fannish crack. And witnessing what were quite possibly drug deals at the other end of the parking lot. Lovely city, St Louis.

And then there was the trip back. One of us had the lovely idea to try to get home as quickly as possible after the show by leaving for Washington the night of the show. So instead of the sensible option--namely, a full night's sleep and a drive during the daylight hours--we departed St Louis at three in the morning with a lot of No-Doz, a little food, and a distressingly tiny amount of money. I don't remember much of the drive back, except that it was very long, the Midwest is the most godawfully boring part of the country to drive through, we almost got lost on the PA turnpike, and I have good cop karma. Seriously. In three years of speeding like a Nascar driver while on highway trips, I have never been pulled over for speeding. Misinterpreting directions from cops, yes. Illegal turns, yes. But I thought we were dead meat when we got pulled over in Indiana while doing almost ninety on I-70, and it turned out the cop was after someone else and was just irked at us for not slowing down when he put his lights on. And so we got off with a warning and my driving record remains lily-white.

Oh, and did I mention practically no money? It worked out eerily perfectly. We were burning through gas like crazy the first two hundred miles of the trip and thought we were screwed, but then whatever emissions problem it was disappeared, we got great gas mileage all through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and arrived home with exactly $3.17 counting loose change. I'm still getting the car checked out, of course, but it's really odd that we had exactly enough money to get home.

And from then on all is lunacy and sleep deprivation and you probably don't want to hear about it. My only comment is that after having listened to the Cabaret revival recording incessantly in the car, both of us were rather disappointed upon re-viewing of the movie. Ew.