I'm now three for three events keeping my cough under control, and in fact I'd say I'm probably 90% back to full health. The first was the Summer Music concert featuring Brahms Sextet #2.*
Then on Sunday I went to see The Effect, since I had never heard back from Coal Mine. Although Sunday is actually the day I do the bulk of the grocery shopping for the household. Then I had a bit of time to kill and had the bright idea to run over to the gym to do an ultra short set of weights and some time on the stationary bikes (to see how I would fare if I bike to work on Monday, weather permitting) and then get under the ultra hot shower to break up the crud in my lungs. That all worked ok, though I was probably 10-15 minutes behind schedule. Then the 72 bus was having one of its fairly predictably shitty days. I ended up speed walking all the way up to Danforth and then 3 showed up in a bunch. I wish I were joking. I was very unhappy about this. In the end I made it to the show with about 3 minutes to spare, so another close call, and one that didn't put me in the best of moods to say the least.
I know the reviewers have generally liked this play (about pharmaceutical trials) or liked it with reservations, but I really didn't care for it, particularly some of the revelations and twists after the intermission. There was one bit that wasn't at all clear if the young woman had tried to force her pill on the young man, which then effectively doubled up on the chemicals in his system, triggering an overdose. The acting was all very good, but I just couldn't buy into the script and didn't really care that much about the characters. To me it was by far the weakest play of the season, and I am confident I would have felt the same even if I was completely healthy. At the intermission, I went and complained about the whole email fiasco and the woman at the desk said she had seen the email and wasn't sure why no one responded to me. It was a challenge to stay polite and say that without some sort of phone service, things like this would keep happening and that I wasn't willing to subscribe next season without changes. (And while the official, official announcement isn't until this Thurs., Concord Theatricals (formerly Samuel French) and DPS say that Coal Mine is planning on Waiting for Godot (which seems like an odd choice for them), Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and People, Places and Things by Duncan Macmillan. Maybe this isn't such a bad year to sit things out anyway...)
I briefly debated bagging it and going home, but I ended up heading up to Richmond Hill to see Castle in the Sky. This involved getting up to Finch station on Line 1 and then talking the Viva Blue up to Bernard Terminal and then crossing over into a strip mall. Curiously, the trip involves a stop at Langstaff GO Station, which is immediately next to SilverCity Richmond Hill Cinema. I'm almost certain that I made a stop there to see Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel when I was staying in Richmond Hill on a company outing and had access to a car. However, I still had another 20 minutes or so to go to get to Imagine Elgin Mills. It was quite a long way to go just to see a movie, and I am hoping that there are more Toronto options for Howl's Moving Castle and then I might see Spirited Away again in the original Japanese with subtitles. Though I do know how to do it if I have to go again. I did get halfway through Desani's All About H. Hatterr, and I'll review that more thoroughly at a later time. I will say that this book is starting to feel a lot like Gogol's Dead Souls, for better and worse.
Anyway, I enjoyed the movie. There's non-stop action (about as much as in the Indiana Jones movies) and some silly set pieces as well. I'm glad I'm finally seeing these movies, but I'm not going to watch them over and over. I was glad I didn't cough through this movie, even though there weren't that many people in the theatre.
I reversed the trip and got home just after 11 pm. Again, probably not the wisest set of choices for the day for someone who is technically still on the mend...
* I'll just say there was a lot of Brahms in this festival. Maybe a bit too much. I sort of remember when they were bringing a famous symphony to town, but all they were playing were Brahms's symphonies, so I passed. Just as I favour Beethoven, Dvorak and Shostakovich over Brahms for symphonic work, I prefer Shubert and Mendelssohn (and Shostakovich) for chamber pieces. That said, Sextet #2 was interesting (and I'm still a bit burned over the way they programmed Sextet #1 as a free lunch concert in a small hall that ran out of space**). And I also thought his Piano Quintet was very well done. But it still was an awful lot of Brahms this summer...
** And I'm even more bummed about the seemingly random way one could reserve a seat to some of these concerts. That wasn't explained well at all. I found out that I could book to Friday's concert, which I really wanted to go to, and then I got called away to something else, and I got back an hour later and it was sold out! If indeed, they are not saving any seats for the general public on the day of, this seems the worst of all possible approaches. Anyway I can't take the time off to find out just to suffer one more disappointment this week.
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