Checking out some new musical theater in town…

It’s fair to say that music is an important part of my life. I may not have played an instrument in several years (though I still have them in a closet), but I listen to music all the time at work, and as much as I want to listen to NPR on the drive to/from work I’d rather have music playing off my iPhone. My music tastes tend to be pretty eclectic, which can annoy Jennifer oftentimes simply because of how jarring the genre changes can be, plus how a bunch of my music is instrumental.

To give you an idea of how eclectic my music tastes are, this is my iPod’s work playlist. (Anything that’s just a title is a soundtrack.)

Notably, there are a few musicals and operas in the playlist. I appreciate musical theater, but I never really got much of a chance to go before I started dating Jennifer. She’s a theater geek and loves musicals, and so we’ve been to a few shows since we started dating. The big problem we’ve had, though, is that musicals at the main venues in the theater district tend to be bloody expensive, so we don’t get to go as often as we’d like.

While listening to The Front Row on the local NPR station, Jennifer heard about a new musical theater group called Bayou City Theatrics. A small group, they were putting on a performance of Into the Woods, which is one of Jennifer’s favorite shows. We decided to check it out on a lark, and bought tickets for the performance last Saturday. The tickets were inexpensive and general admission. The show itself was at the Midtown Art Center, and was a small and intimate venue.

How was the show itself? It was REALLY well done, and the cast did a superb job. Jennifer had never been to an actual performance of of Into the Woods before, and she thoroughly enjoyed this one. She only had a couple of quibbles, and that had more to do with a couple of the characters being portrayed differently than in the cast recordings she was familiar with. Otherwise, we had a lot of fun and want to go back.

Fortunately, their season has only just begun, and they have a few shows upcoming we want to see, like Little Shop of Horrors and Avenue Q. The latter one is the one I’m really interested in seeing them do, from a technical standpoint. As Avenue Q (being a mature parody of Sesame Street), it should be fun to see how they get all the puppets going and everything. I’m sure they’ll do a good job, as they did a good job with Into the Woods, but I’m looking forward to seeing how they pull it off.

In any event, Bayou City Theatrics has definitely given me and Jennifer something new and fun to go see. Here’s hoping they continue to meet the expectations the first show we saw set for them. :-)