Ew ew ewwww, the weather is awful. All hot and humid and ick, why couldn't they have closed the tour in San Francisco in October or something?
Saw the last show in Indianapolis. Two things were notable: one, everyone was insanely energetic. It was practically palpable. Not so good in Joan Almedilla, who is pathologically bland and overacts, but in most everyone else it was yay. And Ali Ewoldt is so cute. The second thing is that Pierce Peter Brandt was on as Javert.
Allow me a moment to go AAAAAAH OMG.
Bear in mind that I've only seen three other Javerts live: Cornell John, whom I don't remember much of; Robert Hunt, who looks far too young and plays Javert as way too much of a straight villain; and Trent Blanton, who is excellent. Pierce, however, is more than excellent. His Javert doesn't bear intense hatred towards the dangerous classes, like Robert Hunt's does (I swear his Javert thinks every thief and whore on the streets kicked his favorite puppy or something), but more a detached sort of distaste. I find it far easier to believe that he was doing his duty, nothing more. His conflict with his devotion to his job and his growing realization that the law isn't always right were clearly evident, and probably the subconscious inspiration for the über-tormented Gestapo!Javert Lulu and I dreamed up the other night in the Steak 'n' Shake. Who is all the sexier because of the sheer magnitude of the gap between authority and morality that he has to fathom.
And then we went to the stage door after the show. Melissa Lyons and Victor Wallace both recognized us, by name no less, and Victor even came up to us and hugged us. God bless that man and his sexiness. (We were fangirling so much during the show that I can't even tell whether his performance was better that night than usual, I just know that he was very good and we almost fainted dead away at "let others rise." But I'm pretty sure that the heightened energy was affecting him too.)
We also met another woman at the stage door who was, frankly, almost as much of a fangirl as us, and who offered to let us share her hotel room. (!!!!) Ye gods, sleeping in an actual bed and getting an actual shower felt so good. We're so short on money that we couldn't help pay the hotel bill, but I'm going to send her a couple hundred dollars' worth of Les Mis recordings to make up for it. She also took us out to the Steak 'n' Shake in Indianapolis and fostered a horrible, horrible addiction. Good food + cheap + open 24 hours = Lulu and I staying up all night at one just outside St Louis having tea and coming up with crack!plotbunnies.
St Louis is... interesting. We spent all yesterday in the eastern, ghetto-y part of the city without knowing there was a nice part, and ended up in some fast food restaurant bitching about all the bad mojo and worrying about finances. When our luck promptly did a one-eighty, our ability to attract weird people (or perhaps divine providence) kicked in, and a lady from the UniverSoul Circus came up to us and said we looked lost. We got free front-row tickets to the circus (!!!!), which was the coolest thing evar, directions to the nice cafés-and-bookstores district, and an offer for a discount on a hotel room. And then afterwards, when it was about five in the evening and starting to cool off, we were sitting in a park when some random guy invited us into his restaurant and gave us all this information about stuff to do in the city. And we got soup and lots of bread for about five bucks total.
Which is good, because our money is running out. My car has apparently developed an emissions problem (or maybe I just didn't screw on the gas cap tight enough, impossible to tell) and is chewing through gas at a thoroughly alarming rate. It doesn't help that we're sleeping in the car with the engine running so we can have air conditioning. We'll be able to get home, because we both have emergency money, but the rest of the stay could be quite uncomfortable and we might not be able to get as many tickets as we wanted.
Our plan, if we have much of one, is to try to find someone else to freeload a hotel room off of so we don't have to run down the gas tank, and make some money by busking outside the theater. We have costumes, decent voices, and a large repertoire of Les Mis songs, so we might be able to get either free tickets or enough money to see the show a few more times.
Yeah. Currently sitting in an internet café somewhere in the Lower West End bemoaning the fact that they won't crank up their air conditioning higher. So much better than outside though. I really don't have much of an opinion on this city yet; I don't know what to think. East St Louis is a really fucking bizarre place, but the street we're on now looks so much like downtown Bethesda that I keep expecting to look up and see my favorite French restaurant on the corner.
Why did there have to be a heat wave this week of all times? And why did they have to close in freaking St Louis?! Augh.
If anyone can give us a place to stay we would love you forever. We don't have much to shower upon you besides undying gratitude, fangirling, lots of obscure LM recordings, passing acquaintance with a few cast members, and really interesting luck... but it'd be fun. Promise.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}