Smitten by Spring

If God was going for perfection today, He achieved it. Perfect temperature, perfect sky, perfectly beautiful everywhere I looked! I spent my lunch hour outside in the sun, sitting beside the Peace Center waterfall and a flowering cherry tree, its pinky-white petals trickling all around me in a delightful spring "snow." I had a club sandwich from my friend's restaurant, the Hot Dog King (open for business again and looking great, with new 11-7/Mon.-Sat. hours, and new menu items underway; Greenvillians, gotta support the HDK!), Pamela Duncan's wonderful book Moon Women (Pamela is now up there with Lorna Landvik as my favorite author of women's fiction), and a half hour all to myself to sit there like a happy lizard lazing in the luxuriousness of it all. To top it all off, my Poetry Parade spectators loved today's poem from John Stanizzi. (I knew you would.) And I'm three for three in my efforts to meet Robert Brewer's write-a-poem-a-day challenge for National Poetry Month. Yay, me! Yay, poetry! Yay, spring! (Yay for all these blessings that helped me get past the fact that both my oven AND my microwave bit the dust last night. We don't realize how spoiled we are till our modern conveniences cease to function; life with no microwave is HARD!)

Today, a UPS Man. Tomorrow, a Spider

I am nothing if not diverse in the array of poems I showcase in my Poetry Parade. Today's selection was from Maine poet Alice Persons--an ode to her U.P.S. delivery guy that was particularly enjoyable for those of us who saw "Legally Blonde: The Musical" at the Peace Center last week! Tomorrow's poem is Walt Whitman's "The Noiseless, Patient Spider," and truly, does that not describe spiders to a tee? They're the most silent little critters there are--especially the long-legged, big daddy types. Good poetry does that: it ratchets down your focus to those miniscule, magnified details, then sums it all up in a handful of perfect words.

Coming up in the parade is a heartbreaker from Ellen Bass about marrying off your daughter, John Stanizzi's beautiful love poem "Cardinals," and a poem from a student at Harvard that put the U.S. Navy on notice. Don't miss the fun! Sign up at www.jaynejaudonferrer.com.

Nothing Sleepy About The Drowsy Chaperone

"The Drowsy Chaperone" is a Broadway play currently making its way across the country. It was in Greenville this week and, take my word for it, you should make every effort to see it if it comes to a city near you. (See the tour schedule here.) Unfortunately, many seats sat empty during the Greenville run because the play is fairly new and still largely unfamiliar. That's a real shame, because the plot is inventive, the music and dancing topnotch, and the voices among the best I've ever heard. Even the bit players are excellent. Georgia Engle, whom we know and love from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, is the biggest name in the cast; she isn't onstage often, but when she is, she's her sweet, softspoken, slightly ditzy self. The entire ensemble does a masterful job bringing to life this tuneful tribute to classic musicals; Cliff Bemis as frustrated impresario Mr. Feldzieg and James Moye as on-call lothario Aldolpho are particularly enjoyable, and a tap dance by bridegroom Mark Ledbetter and best man Richard Vida is pure fun. I just wish Fran Jaye ("Trix the Aviatrix") had been given more of an opportunity to cut loose; her voice promised way more than she had a chance to deliver.

The "Man in a Chair," who serves as narrator in this clever tale, gets it right when he talks about the ability of a darkened theatre to whisk us away from reality; heaven knows, a little escape from reality these days goes a long way toward maintaining sanity. That's why I hate that theatre tickets--especially top quality productions such as touring Broadway shows--are so prohibitively expensive. I don't know many families that can comfortably whip out $70+ a piece for a couple hours' diversion. Given the choice of playing to a half empty house or offering up a too-good-to-miss-out-on deal, seems to me the producers of these shows--any show, for that matter--would try to cut their losses. I know the argument: they don't want to offer last-minute discounts because then people will wait and not buy tickets at full price. The truth is, devoted theatre-goers, people who can afford it, and people who want to see the show from a particular seat will buy the same tickets they always have. But students, and families for whom cultural activities are too often a luxury, and people who would NEVER pay $70 for a ticket might just decide to buy a $35 one--and they probably wouldn't care if it was on the last row of the top balcony. They'd just like a chance to get in on the magic.

These days, with bell peppers a buck a piece and gas at four dollars a gallon, seems like we ought to at least catch a break on magic, doncha think?

3 Mo' Divas: Worth Crawling Outside Your Comfort Zone

Recently I had the privilege of hearing "3 Mo' Divas" perform when they visited my city's exquisite performing arts venue, the Peace Center. I knew little about the act, other than it was an outgrowth of "3 Mo' Tenors," which grew out of "The Three Tenors." The website, http://www.3modivas.com/, attested to the talent of the six women who perform alternately in this musical celebration conceived by Broadway writer/director Marion Caffey. But it was when I got a sneak peak of the evening's repertoire that I knew I couldn't miss it: everything from Puccini's "Vissi D'Arte" to the Angels' "My Boyfriend's Back."

To say that I got my money's worth is an understatement. Laurice Lanier's rendition of "Strange Fruit," complemented by Jamet Pittman's haunting harmonies, had me in tears, while the gospel numbers that wrapped up the show had the entire audience ready to be baptized all over again. Unfortunately, that entire audience amounted to a mere few hundred souls. We were lost in a 2100-seat auditorium that was filled to capacity for Tony Bennett, James Taylor, and Anne Murray. So why didn't the Divas have a full house? Because we are creatures of habit, and we are loathe to wander outside our comfort zones. Like "poetry," the word "opera" makes most people shudder and take two steps back. Apparently, as soon as Upstate residents started reading French and Italian song titles, the words "Boring! High brow!" flashed in their brains and they moved on to the movie listings. What a tragedy for both sides! Those amazing ladies sang to too many empty seats, and anyone who wasn't in one of those seats missed the best concert I've heard in that venue.

"3 Mo' Divas" is currently touring the country. If they come anywhere near you, see them or you'll regret it.