2012-11-17 and 18 Washington, D.C.
I joined Bill in Washington, D.C. for the weekend to see some theatre, visit a friend, and to sees sights. I arrived late Friday night so we could have Sat. and Sunday for our adventure. Our only scheduled times were for seeing My Fair Lady on Sat. night at the Arena Stage and Sunday matinee of Dreamgirls at the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Va.
On Sat. we decided to have lunch at Legal Seafoods in the Chinatown area of Washington. This restaurant has become one of our favorites in DC. And once again we were not disappointed. From there we went to Regal Theats to see Cloud Atlas, the newish movie starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry. This movie be the Wachowski Bros. who did The Matrix movies has a very convoluted plot and uses the same actors in many roles. It was somewhat confusing at first, but started to make sense about midway thru. I enjoyed it very much and feel it will probably receive many accolades in the near futureyy. I look forward to seeing it again either on blu-ray or on a premium channel.
I forgot to mention that we had about an hour and a half after lunch and before the movie. W e went to the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibit of paintings and photograhs dealing with the Civil War. It was a very moving exhibit reflecting a great deal of insight from the viewpoint of many of the famous artists of that time period and photograhs depicting the horror of war, the blodshed, ane rhe destruction of many of the southern cities. I was very moved by the overall exhibit.
That evening we took the Metro to the soutern waterfront area of Washington where the Aren Stage is located. We had tried to make a reservation at 4 , a restaurant near the theatre. They seated us with no problem. Our waitress Kristen had waited on us on a previous trip. We had a delightful meal and sat next tothe actor who was playing Col. Pickering at Arena which we were about to see.
We have been to the revamped Arena a couple of times before. We saw The Music Man a coupleof months ago and Mary Zimmerman's Arabian Nights. The main theatre is in the round and they have added two more new theatres and surrounded them with a beautiful glass facade. The entire complex is quite striking. My issue with the mainstage is that everything produced there is in the round. I'm old fashioned and I love to see sets which you don't get a lot of here. So I was disappointed with My Fair Lady. The leads were good, the singing good, but I feel there were too many liberties taken with the script of the musical including adding a scene from the movie version and moving the first act ending later in the show. I was glad I got to see it.
Sunday morning we got up packed and headed to another favorite restaurant called Ris near Foggy Bottom to meet up with our friend David Tannous. David is an avid theatre, opera, and art lover. He gets us all of our tickets for shows in Washington. Last year he was named the Theatregoer of the Year in the Washington area. Once again, we had another wonderful brunch at Ris.
It was then on to the Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia to see their latest production, Dreamgirls. I loved this version of the show. It was well acted, sung, designed and executed. I would not be surprised if some New York producers go down to Arlington to see the show and want to move it to New York.
After the show, we returned to our hotel, grabbed our bags and headed to the Union Station to take the train back to New York. All in all, it was a wonderful weekend in our nation's capital.
