I went to Providence on the train this morning. There were still lots of empty spaces at the parking lot at the commuter rail station when I got there about 8:45 a.m. The lot used to fill up before eight o’clock when parking cost two dollars a day, but now that the parking costs four dollars it apparently never fills up. That’s good for me since I don’t drive there very often anyhow, and when I do I tend to be later than the rush hour.
I did some browsing at Nordstrom’s. They had some nice shirts. I suppose $54 isn’t much for a shirt, but I’m used to paying $35 or less, and so I don’t want to get into the bad habit of paying full price for things I don’t really need.
I had a nice lunch at Bravo Brasserie across Washington Street from the Trinity Repertory Company’s theatre. Sesame and ginger encrusted salmon with braised bok choy and basmati rice.
Then I went across the street to see the play The Secret Rapture by the Brisith playwright David Hare. Sad to say, the play itself wasn’t very good, though most of the actors did a good job. The father of two sisters dies. One sister, Marion (Phyllis Kay) is a Conservative-party member of Parliament during the Thatcher years. Marion’s husband Tom (Fred Sullivan, Jr.) is a businessman with “Praise the Lord” religious views. I didn’t know they had such people in England. The other sister, Isobel (Rachael Warren), is one of three people in a commercial art studio. Their stepmother, their father’s widow Katherine (Anne Scurria), is an alcoholic. For not very clear reasons, Isobel has Katherine come to London to work in the commercial art studio as a salesperson. Isobel’s love interest Irwin (Stephen Thorne) who works for her at the studio doesn’t think Katherine’s presence in the business is a good idea. And it turns out not to be. Marion and Tom’s business buys the commercial art studio, apparently as a subsidiary. Isobel is bothered that Tom had spoken with Irwin and had told Irwin that his salary would be doubled after the takeover of the business. Apparently that conversation was some big deal, I don’t know why. The studio expands and moves to a more expensive address. Marion’s assistant Rhonda (Patricia Lynn) drops by the studio and lolls around in a dressing gown talking to Irwin before she takes a shower. And so on. Not very plausible. Not very dramatic. Isobel wants to take care of Katherine even though Katherine drinks vodka and stabs a major client in a bar. I guess Isobel never heard of Al-Anon. More things happen, again not very plausible. There is supposed to be a message that greed was bad during the Thatcher years. The message doesn’t really come across. They used to say if you want to send a message, call Western Union.
Isobel’s words were not intelligible about 2% of the time. Maybe that’s not much to complain about, but I think it is. In the theatre an actor needs to enunciate words clearly and project them out into the audience. The other actors’ words were intelligible 100% of the time, even when the play called for them to speak softly.
At the end there was one brief “curtain call” with polite unenthusiastic applause.
