Broadway Palm's 167 th performance: FOOTLOOSE!

http://www.broadwaypalm.com/Content/default.asp 

FOOTLOOSE

JULY 9 - AUGUST 15, 2015

When Ren and his mother move from Chicago to a small farming town, Ren is prepared for the adjustment to his new high school. What he isn't prepared for are the local laws, including a ban on dancing, so he and some of the other kids decide to shake things up! The Oscar-nominated Top 40 score includes Holding Out For A Hero, Paradise, Let’s Hear It For The Boy and the title song, Footloose.

  MY REVIEW: If you liked the movie you will LOVE the real, live action production! Everyone has the most wonderful, powerful voices, you will be taken to ear heaven.. and the dancing (thanks Amy) is perfection!

The biggest stand out of all the performers, even those were outstanding, but the most visible of all is the character of WILLARD.. played by Joe and he is EXACTLY as funny and painfully shy on stage as in the movie.. you'll adore him and want to take him home and just hug him.

The rest of the cast totally rocked the whole show as well. Ladies, you'll love all the cow boys dancing.. makes the word Macho sound totally sissy. Everyone in the cast is total eye candy, ear joy and mind-blowingly great.

i DO have to mention another couple of incredible things you might not notice, but is very noteworthy: 

1. Jayar Garcia is the consummate stage manager: 

the staging for this production is HUGE.. so many sets that he has to make certain are spot on AND he performs throughout the show as well. Totally amazing, Jayar.. EXTRA great job!! 

Something else I need to be excited about: my buddy Victor Legaretta gets to stay in town the rest of the year with other productions both directing and starring in, both on and off broadway!!! WHOOOT!!!! I love me my Victor-sightings!

And Chase McCall, dang, man~! Check out his one-arm push-ups in the gymnasium scene as well.. 

And such a Good job, all!

~*~*~

Below is more info that needs to be brought forth!

SHOW MENU (mm mm mmm)

Chef Carved Roast Beef*
BBQ Baby Back Ribs
Panko Breaded Chicken with Lemon Butter Sauce
White Fish Over Orzo Pasta with Tomatoes, Basil and Parmesan
Fried Cheese Ravioli with Marinara Sauce

Honey Garlic Roasted Red Potatoes
Rice, Broccoli and Cheese Bakes
Sweet Corn with Roasted Red Peppers
Green Beans with Almonds

* Indicates Evening Only

Full Salad Bar With Caesar Salad, Tossed Salad and Assorted Fresh Toppings and Dressings
Rolls and Butter

A Delicious Selection of Composed Salads and Fresh Fruit

Ice Cream Table with Vanilla and

No-Sugar-Added Pecan Ice Cream and a variety of toppings

(Sugar-free Chocolate Ice Cream Available Upon Request)

Dessert Buffet includes Sugar-free Cheesecake and Assorted Cakes and Pies

So, come and join the fray for food and entertainment to see FOOTLOOSE!!! you will LOVE it!!! 

~ Bekki (bekkihere@gmail.com or Bekki.Shanklin on Facebook ~ https://www.facebook.com/bekki.shanklin)

THE OFF BROADWAY PALM THEATRE

THE LITTLE THEATRE WITH THE BIG SHOWS!

The Off Broadway Palm Theatre is located just off the main lobby inside Broadway Palm.  The Off Broadway is a 100-seat theatre with a great view from every seat!  The doors open a half hour prior to showtime for seating. If you chose to have dinner with us, the dining is in a separate dining room. 

PRICES:
Evenings $51 
Matinees $47
Show Only $31 

BETTER LATE

SEPTEMBER 18 - NOVEMBER 1, 2014

The side-splitting, yet touching, comedy about Julian Nussbaum, who, due to illness, is forced to move in with his ex-wife and her new husband. As the days pass, the laughter builds and the awkward situation spirals further and further out of control. 

 Tonight I went to see Better Late at the Off Broadway venue. Currently, I'm immersed deeply into the 7 seasons of The West Wing on Netflix. As I enjoy an actor, I hop onto Twitter and tweet them. Mostly complimenting and once I get a dialogue going, we tweet back and forth.. information and innocuous verbiage back and forth and it thrills me to death!! (I amuse easily)

I don't think the people in the local area understand that WE, the local people who are able to venture to The Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre avails us of INCREDIBLE and delicious Chef-prepared Meals, fabulous personalized service by the staff, the musicians, office staff, as well as brilliant productions. I DON'T HAVE TO GO TO TWITTER TO START A DIALOGUE WITH THEM. All I have to do is wait for the end of that particular show, go to the lounge/bar area and MEET THEM, live and in color and we talk, laugh and get to enjoy and get to know each other. (and MORE FUN!!! I get to 'friend' them on facebook and keep up with the same people off stage so easily and Please Know that I am so humbled by their friendships. EVERYONE, to the last person listed on the play bills, is so wonderful, conversant and nice to me. Again, totally humbling to me.. thank you all. I adore your work down to the last person ever to grace either stage of The Broadway Palm. Thank you, all.) Everyone in this venue is accessible. This is practically unheard of in many other venues where we get to enjoy a production, a musical, whatever. Broadway Palm ALLOWS us to mingle, compliment and 'hang with' their wonderful actors, et al, OFF the stage.

Tonight I was privileged to sit in the audience of an intimate setting of 100 comfortable seats. The cast was basically ALMOST within touching distance. When we watch them, we can almost imagine they are speaking directly to us.

Better Late is a production by Larry Gelbart.. recognize him? Before his death on 9-11-09 was an American television writer, playwrite, screenwriter and author most famous as a creator and producer of the record-breaking hit TV show, M*A*S*H, so right here, the thought and intelligence behind Better Late has already been established.

Mr Gelbart, noted for his soliloquy-esque form of dialogue and that it is incredibly intense and extended, is not lost on this production. I have to sometimes need the use of a name tag, clipped upside down so I can read it, these actors, with their amazingly vibrant and fluid and limber brains seem to remember reams and reams of verbiage and interactive dialogue throughout nearly two hours of constant back and forth.. sometimes exploding in angst and anger. Totally invigorating banter.

Something else about this production deals with a man and woman, who met while she was married to another man. They instantly fell in love and she had to extricate herself from her current relationship, read: marriage.

After the divorce and re-marriage of the lead (and only female in this production: Nora ~ brilliantly played by Nancy Antonio) such a brave and wonderful girl starting the production in a slip.. good one!

to Lee, played by Robert Summers, a master in this performance portraying rage and anger (frankly, I can't deal with that much anger without popping a vein in my forehead and passing out for just shooting someone the 'stink eye' and he has to portray it night after night, sometimes for two shows a day),

and Nora's former husband who suffers a stroke and has to move in with them, Julian ~ played by John Noble and Julian who is amazing as an invalid.. good one, John!

Nora's son, Billy, played by John Keckeisen has his own issues leading to his divorce, but with the interaction and stress of everyone living in everyone else's space and old feelings are brought up and discussed, Billy's situation is sort of sidelined until he has to tell his step-dad (Lee) that he and his wife are divorcing, to which Lee attempts to get him back on track to try to save the marriage.

This production and the gift of the actors to the audience brings us face to face with reality, and mortality. And way beyond. In some ways, pretty gut-wrenching, occasionally funny as all get out but putting that reality up close and right in front of us. Sometimes the laughter was uncomfortable, sometimes with gladness of the actually amusing and laughable.

Good job, peeps.. you kept us riveted, uncomfortable and in the end assuaged our moments of fleeting discomfort letting us realize that we were privy to some incredible acting and a HECK of a lot of brilliant dialogue.. thank you so much. Rock ON, and break many legs for the duration of this great production and beyond.

      

http://www.broadwaypalm.com/Content/default.asp 

more of my daily life..

while i'm all enamored watching and enjoying tv, Sonny (the other half of my parakeets, the seemingly main half, his lady, Cher ~ what can I say, daughter-girl named them and thought that was amusing.. well, she doesn't live w them.. ) but I digress.. Sonny, when he's tired, rings his bell.. so it starts with one tap/ring.. then if I dont' shut stuff down and turn off the tv, he adds more tap/rings.. ring.. ring.. then he gets REALLY tired of waiting for me to turn off tv and hit the sack, he starts SERIOUSLY ringing the damn thing.. ring-ring-ring-ring.. then he starts bitching.. ack! ack!! ack!!! in the most annoying bitching sounding sound.. so I pick up a squirt bottle and just show it to him.. he immediately shuts up and sits on his branch and gives me the parakeet version of the Stink Eye.. then he falls asleep and then falls off said branch and scares himself nearly to death.. silly bird.. and I continue to watch tv..

Daily Funnies.. what day did this happen??

DAMN! what appalls the fiery, bloody hell out of me is when I wake up in the middle of the night to wander to the 'little room' and I walk like my gramma who's been dead for over 15 years. Like some of the old geezers who wander these hallowed swfl halls, streets, market places, etc: head thrust forward, shoulders hunched and feet shuffling.  Since I never walked like this 20 years ago, and hardly ever have sleep overs w someone of the opposite sex because of this new and unfortunate way to get around, I want a mulligan.. a do-over.. I want to know WHAT effing day this happened? (this and the bat wings under my arms.) When I have someone of the opposite sex over, or my daughter.. so I don't freak them out by the hobbling, I straighten up and 'model walk' across the hall from my bedroom, exercise my right to shut the bathroom door and inwardly groan b/c that lie of omission of my walking and saying, "Ow, Ow, Ow" is not what I'll allow anyone else, but me to hear. Thus not embarrassing either of us.  At this point in my life, being closer to 100 years old than I was, said 20 years ago, I need to remind MYSELF that FOR myself, I NEED to 'hop' out of bed and 'model walk' to the bathroom, and shut the moaning the hell up and portray myself TO myself that, by all that is holy in the universe and In MY universe, that I can whip this 'old shit' in the butt..   They (whom so ever this 'they' is) were right when they said, 'gettin old ain't for the faint of heart.' damn them all.

The Moral Fiber of a Man

I date frequently and I usually only date from those I find online. I have an unheralded success rate for dating ONLY from meeting guys on line. Talk to them long enough, you can really get a feel for someone. I was also trained, by working for a high profile dating site, how to spot scammers, which has served me well in detecting the language and verbiage of ppl I'm in contact with.

Something else that is a HUGE 'tell' of a person is how they treat people.

Ghandi was quoted as saying, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."

*I* say, "The greatness of the person you're dining with and their moral progress can be judged by the way they treat the servers."

Case in point: I had lunch one afternoon with someone at the Olive Garden. Our server was at our elbows, keeping us up on the progress of the lunch we ordered, keeping our bread sticks, salad and drinks CONSTANTLY refilled and anything we needed at all, at our fingertips. Totally anticipating our every request or whim.

The man I was with had been married for 48 years. His wife had just passed a couple of months previously from alzheimers. The man bad-mouthed this blessed wife (who *I* guessed had gone away from her mind so she wouldn't have to put up with this idiot, as she probably didn't recognize divorce or hitting him in the back of the head with a shovel as options.

The man ate hunched over, jamming huge quantities of food in his mouth and then talking around that same food so I was privvy to his consumption and progress of his mastication of same food.

At the end of the meal, when the check came, I quietly cast my eyes as best as I could on how much of a tip this jerk left for an over $30 set of meals. He left $2.

When he was finished, and darted off to the 'little boys room to take a dump.' (Oh, you sweet talker, you!), I got into my purse and I very rarely EVER carry cash, but for some reason that day, I had a $5 bill with me. And I laid it on the table.

When he came back and I guess had success on his mission, we were ready to leave. And I added the cash into the folding bill-thing and he asked me why. And I told him.

I'm not a cheap person. I have been part of the 'wait staff brigade' and know how much a server is paid, which isn't much. It's all tip-dependent and in cash, it can be slipped by as undeclared income (and with the political jerking about, I'm all for slip-sliding past bureaucracy and the laws of the money-changers (from my hand to theirs).

But I will NOT date a cheap and oblivious butthead.

And once I worked for a bunch of radiologists in a huge metropolitan hospital. We went to the big sit-down banquet and each person that served me, I got their name and looked them in the eye.

When I needed ANYTHING, all I had to do is look up, see the person and quietly say their name. I was served as if I were a Queen. (Ok, I've always been a princess ruling with kindness and respect of whoever served me.. LOL) But the Rads (radiologists) couldn't get service as fast and as well as I did. They quizzed me about it and I said, "how many names of the people serving us tonight do you know?" The answer was "None." as they were invisible entities who quietly handled everything the doctor's hearts desired. Yet no respect was exchanged. That's so darn sad, to me.

Anyway, enough of that rant..
have a fabulous rest of the week, weekend and beyond..

Bekki

Staying up all night in case I passed on..

You know how at sleepovers someone gets out that heinous oijah board? Well, get a bunch of older geezer girls together and someone has to break out the glucosometer.. yeah the thing that sticks fingers and shows you how much blood sugar you’re harboring..

Ok I started this day that would end up with my possibly looking the holy trinity in the eyeballs and having to explain my ‘little south of plumb’ life to ‘the great ones on most everyone’s lips’.. not mine, but that would be another part of the explanation. Something like, “DUDES!! I heard about ya, didn’t ring my chimes, but .. well, you know.. So, how’s it hangin?”

But I digress..

Ok, my friend’s husband, Jim, whipped out the ‘stabby finger’ thing.. and said, “who’s first?” well, since I’ve not been stabbed (by a little blood letting machine, anyway) in a couple of years, I heaved a deep sigh and held out my hand.. he held my ‘flip off’ finger, squeezed it and STAB!!!! Crap!!! OW!!! Then he squeezed more and let the blood slide into this machine.. we waited til the numbers came up like a one armed bandit.. 353..

“HOLY SHIT! Said both Jim and Sally. “HOLY CRAP!!!” said Lois, because she hardly ever says ‘shit’.. and I said, ‘Why, what’s up?”

“You’re near death, girl!! It shouldn’t be over 100 !!!”

“YIKES!” I thought.. and my heart started racing and I felt faint.. then on the inside I’m yelling to myself, “Don’t give IN to it, Girl.. Don’t give in!”

So, I regaled what I’d eaten the days before.. Barbeque with SWEET sauce, SWEET potato, SWEET Slaw and SWEET tea..’ and I said, “YA THINK?? “ CRAP!

Once I got home I IM'd my friend who’s a doctor.. and said, “Hey, what do you think?”

All of a sudden I got an IM back.. “GET YOURSELF TO THE HOSPITAL NOW!!!! You could go into a coma and never wake back up.”

Now, anyone who knows me knows that I live a life of comfort and joy. Like the Christmas Carol. And rousting myself out of the house to go and sit for a decade in the emergency room.. nah, thanks, I’ll pass.. but I WAS genuinely spooked. And the thought that I’ve probably lived like this for a couple of years didn’t do all that much to calm me down.

So, that night brought much awareness to me.. so much so, that I laid there thinking, “holy crap! If I croak in the night, and the parameds come in the morning when my ex-husband finds me (we do lunch and a movies most Saturdays.. yeah, interesting! Really nice guy and we see each other more now than when we were married when I worked days and he works nights, he still works nights), I needed to make sure my dishes are done.. so after thrashing about and imagining I was feeling the sugar course evilly through my veins, I got up at 2.30AM and did the dishes and futzed around the kitchen tidying up. Then went back to bed..

Then thought “holy crap! The tub needs scrubbed!” so I sprayed this lung-infecting stuff all over the tub and tile surround, waited til it got to working and scrubbed it at 4AM.

After that, I thought.. “what the hell.. what do *I* care about what they’ll say after I’m gone?”.. so then I was worried that I would be following everyone around as a spector and not have the energy that Patrick Swayze tried to achieve by flicking the bottle cap to MY not being able to smack people on the back of the head if a discouraging word was ever said about me and my housekeeping.. because, to know me is to love ME, not the way I keep my house. And as a ghost I was ready to enforce that anyway I could, even if it was by moaning and finding a chain to rattle or flick the lights on and off.. and on top of that, I had no subway to go to to find that odd looking guy to show me how. The only subways we have in florida are the footlong for $5 kind.

About 6 am, I was settling down a bit.. but when I threw off the covers I thought, “oh heck, the parameds will come in and see my naked butt.. and hopefully not walk into a mess where my bowels had released.. dang, do I have an enema bag around, just in case I need to Pre-cleanse?

I had NO idea the stress there was with knowing perhaps that death could be near.. sheesh! Remind me to remember all of this in case I NEED to start digging for the big dirt nap. This is a LOT of work!

So, my Saturday Date called me at 10a and I answered the phone.. there seemed to be a relieved sigh.. not sure if he was happy I answered and he didn’t have to come in and hope there was no decomp scent yet.. or he really wanted to see the movie and didn’t want to go alone.. toss up here.. LOL

I asked him to go ½ way down the driveway and I’d jog down to the car and get in and go from ther, then we ate Mediterranean food then and .. it was cool running again! I nearly forgot how! And when we came back, he let me out ½ way down on the way back and I jogged to where he parked.

After he left, my doc friend came over bringing his diagnostic gear.. took my blood, came back on Monday and took my fasting blood and it had dropped considerably to 298.. so, at that time he determined that I’m a Type 2 Diabetic, which means my crap can be controlled w diet and exercise..

At this point, my little hitler Athletic Trainer daughter decided I need to do 30 minutes of cardio every day.. well, that’s good if I were up to 20 minutes. That would be good if I were all the way up to 5 minutes at any given stretch. Right now I’m up to about 2 minutes many times a day, that maybe all adds up to the 30 minutes that she’s requesting of me.. but not able to accurately do math on this earth, maybe I’m rounding up.

I went and did a bunch of laps and burned my buns at the pool Tuesday, but every night (for a while now) I do 30 toe touches and then 30 squats right after that and my friend wants the health rider out of her little tiny apartment, so it’s coming to roost here at BekkiWorld, a tiny bit larger than HER tiny place.

I also feel amazing! And when I ran that day, my torso felt so sveldt and sleek! Just a start.. I’m not missing bread, fruit or sugar of any kind.. even tho Easter is coming and it’s row after row of peeps, carmel and chocolate eggs.. and as I go past the deli where I can smell the fresh bread baking.. past the chips and crackers.. landing in the veggie aisle where I can grab some avacados, lettuce (which worked well when I ate at my friend’s house and she’d made tuna/egg salad and I wrapped it in a lettuce leaf!), celery, cucumbers.. nice munchy stuff!

Anyway.. life is good and fun again! And this is totally beat-able and I’m gonna beat it!!!!

And P.S. did you know that if you go into a restaurant and order a burger, you can corder it without the bun? Yup, you can.. not sure if you can do that at drive through but I’ll get back to you on that!

I’ll keep anyone who wants to know, posted! Just E me! bekkihere@gmail.com

A Path Not Taken

40 years ago, when I was 20, my dad and I spent a week in Kansas City, Missouri. Dad and I went there to a place called “Calvin Productions”.. according to Wikipedia: “The Calvin Company was a Kansas City, Missouri-based educational and industrial film production company that for nearly half a century was the largest and most successful film producer of its type in the United States.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Company)

There was a Star Trek once that has stuck w me for years.. where Worff came back from a contest and his little travel ship hit a bump, which caused an anomaly and every time he was around Jordi’s eye thing, he’d be living another of his lives. At the end of the show, he looked out the wind shield of the Enterprise and there were a thousand other ships facing them, all with one of his lives being lived in them.

That’s sort of been what my life has been like.. I have see the branch in the trail and have physically set my steps to go onto one of them.

This branch has always haunted me.

When we were in school, we all went someplace to go eat (remember, this is about 40 years ago, I’m 61 now and I find it hard to remember what I ate for lunch, so remembering exact details about that week so long ago sort of escapes me..) and I somehow always got to sit next to Courtney. He was a bright red-headed kid with big dreams and I loved listening to him, looking at his bright eyes and his lush red beard and sparkling white teeth.

We got very close in that week.. I don’t think I ever went to his room w him, as my dad would have spun in his grave with thinking that I might be ‘doing something’ on his dime.. LOL.. But Courtney and I got pretty close. And after that, when he’d gotten back home, there were phone calls, him wanting me to come and be with him and see where he lived and each time, I’d wimp out.

Oh, yeah, after reading the rest of my memoirs, I DID have some ‘wimp out’ moments. This, sadly, was a major one.

I've gone on with my living paycheck to paycheck, blah work, unrewarding work.. my doing nothing to make a mark or help someone or something make the world better and that continues today.

Being brought into the lives of 3 amazing photographers and artists, you’d think something great would rub off on me. Now, two of them have died this year alone.. Bob Shephard, who brought me back to photography about 6 years ago. He and my good friend Bob Stoner and I (all of us w the initals B.S.. so I called us “B.S. to the third power” and I would load up in Bob Stoner’s van and go around the city shooting sunsets on the water.. they were beautiful. Bob Shephard also set up a website for me to feature my photos on.. although now, I can’t get into it and the $3,000 program that he installed on my one computer is long gone since that computer crashed, never to be revived again. He had big dreams, would get a lot of people excited about them and then just wander off. He was also very ill and ended up dying in Washington state several months ago. He passed on 9/15/10.. Courtney passed at the end of August.. they were just days apart with their departures. Here is his beautiful and amazing website.. please consider purchasing one of his calendars.. they’re amazing.. http://www.courtneymilne.com/

Courtney roamed the world taking amazing photos, having many causes that he championed and lived a life of freedom and beauty. Bob did the same, with the exception of having to be more circumspect with his activities because of his unhealthy heart. The last B.S. guy is my Dad... Bob Shanklin, 86, photographer extraordinaire.. and thank heaven he's still here. Still producing amazing work and I hope to follow in his footsteps and make him proud.

Here is all about Courtney’s life:


Courtney Milne
October 3, 1943 – August 29, 2010

Courtney Milne, cherished by so many, passed peacefully at home surrounded by nature. He was renowned for his photography and for his passionate spirit, recorded in 12 books and numerous slide sound presentations and exhibitions. After photographing on all seven continents, he came home to his acreage in Grandora and discovered the whole world reflected in his pool, which he called The Pool of Possibilities. This work will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Mendel Art Gallery in the summer of 2011.

Courtney was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in 2009, becoming paraplegic as a result of the disease in his spine. But this did not slow him down – it gave him an opportunity to continue working with thousands of images, creating some of his most stunning new work. The loving and skilled care of his Home Care team fostered his ability to continue his work and to love his life. He spent every day with grace and verve, sharing his exuberance with everyone who came his way. Lung and brain complications interfered with continuing this passion. Courtney was truly an ambassador of the land, inviting everyone to find their own sacred place in nature, to feel a connection with the Divine Mystery; a place to honor and care for, whether in your own back yard, in the park down the street, or a piece of wilderness.

It is unfathomable to think of a world without Courtney: he is monumentally missed by his wife Sherrill Miller, sister Bonnie, sisters-in-law Lorraine and Evelyne, brothers-in -law Eric, Bill and Dennis, precious nieces, nephews, cousins and hundreds of friends, students and colleagues.

Please consider a donation in his name to Meewasin Valley Authority, caretakers of Courtney's beloved riverbank in Saskatoon; or to SaskAbilities -- for many years Courtney donated his images for their fundraising projects, which came full circle when they provided everything he needed to live with a disability. Or, share a year of inspiration with a subscription to the Pool of Possibilities ecalendar -- and keep the beauty he created and his spirit and wisdom alive and circulating around the world. He would be so delighted to know that people are experiencing the world anew through his eyes and heart -- see the Gift Shop

A joyful Tribute to Courtney will be held Saturday, October 2, 2010 at 1:30 pm, St Anne’s Catholic Church, 217 Lenore Drive, Saskatoon.

CBC News Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Listen to Courtney on the Pool of Possibilities
...This, I believe, is my core ideology — to reveal life’s unfolding mystery — not to try to solve it. In so doing, I not only help myself but also others to connect to their joy and passion. I believe that for each of us, the presence of our being is the greatest gift we can give. Truly accepting and loving ourselves has a ripple effect beyond comprehension...

He was the spirit that I live today, with all the thoughts, love of art and nature and desires for adventure to bring beauty to the world and the back up and push to get it to the world.