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Avenue Q and Without a Trace
Dec. 13th, 2009 01:53 pmIt goes without saying that I thoroughly enjoyed my third viewing of Avenue Q last night, though we almost missed it altogether, thanks to complete lack of observation. Luckily, one of the people going with us noticed that it said 5pm on the tickets, not 7:30pm as we had automatically assumed, and so the trip was saved! We also thought that Google maps had directed us to the wrong theatre, and nearly went off on a panicked aimless wander round the West End, only to discover it was actually at the next door theatre, only 50 yards away. Not a great day for organisation or navigation on my part, but it luckily all worked out in the end.
In other audio-visual entertainment news, Dave and I have been working our way through Without A Trace from the beginning and largely enjoying it. Episodes almost exclusively follow the same pattern - someone disappears, the FBI guys look for them and eventually figure out what happened to them, sometimes finding them alive, sometimes not. Recently, though, they did an entire episode from the point of view of a missing boy's parents, and it proved an entirely different experience. Staying with the parents for the whole time, and only seeing the agents either from a distance or when they came to speak to the parents, suddenly changed those familiar characters into complete strangers and left us, as the viewers, as lost and frustrated as the family members, who were largely kept in the dark on the investigative front. It also added a great deal more emotional impact to the story, as we shared the parents' pain and anxiety, rather than viewing the case with the more clinical eyes of the agents. It was really effective and brilliantly done, but I was very glad that it turned out to be one of the happier stories.
In other audio-visual entertainment news, Dave and I have been working our way through Without A Trace from the beginning and largely enjoying it. Episodes almost exclusively follow the same pattern - someone disappears, the FBI guys look for them and eventually figure out what happened to them, sometimes finding them alive, sometimes not. Recently, though, they did an entire episode from the point of view of a missing boy's parents, and it proved an entirely different experience. Staying with the parents for the whole time, and only seeing the agents either from a distance or when they came to speak to the parents, suddenly changed those familiar characters into complete strangers and left us, as the viewers, as lost and frustrated as the family members, who were largely kept in the dark on the investigative front. It also added a great deal more emotional impact to the story, as we shared the parents' pain and anxiety, rather than viewing the case with the more clinical eyes of the agents. It was really effective and brilliantly done, but I was very glad that it turned out to be one of the happier stories.
