A Weekend of Harry Potter (double) and H.M.S. Pinafore

My weekend was full of fun! I had taken off Friday, the 15th of July, in order to view a few apartments (apartment hunting is horrendous, and a story for another day) and to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with Marisa and Theresa. Fun, fun, fun! The movie was awesome! However, as a reader of the books, it was hard to watch for entertainment’s sake. I’ve found that when I’ve read the book of a movie I’m watching, I have to see the movie more than once because I spend the whole time of my first viewing comparing the book and the movie, and this time was no exception. I spent this viewing wondering why they did this and that, which is frustrating for me, so I have to see it again. I left the movie with this “whoa” feeling, like I couldn’t process the whole thing and that it was over. It was a similar feeling when I finished the 7th book too.

After the movie, Marisa, Theresa, and I went to dinner at Famous Dave’s…yum, yum, yum! I had the open-faced Georgia chopped pork with fries, broccoli, corn on the cob, and a cornbread muffin. Well, I had part of that! I took half of it home and had lunch the next day. We sat and talked for a couple of hours, and then went to head out. We ended up taking Theresa’s car and heading over to look at an apartment I was interested in that I had viewed that morning, and made plans to go and re-view the place for Monday.

Saturday was much the same as I usually have, except that I had to get up early for a chiropractor’s appointment because I had missed my regularly scheduled appointment during the week (due to apartment hunting). After that, I went home and cleaned up the kitchen and living room, and then read for a while. That evening, I went to Marisa’s for a BBQ and movie. While I was there, I had been texting with another friend, Caytie, and we discussed seeing Harry Potter the next day with her girls.

I met Caytie (and company) at the Rogers’ theater where I got the shock of my life…movie tickets were $5 for a matinee! Cheap!!!! Gotta love that! After purchasing goodies (which were also not horribly expensive, and all large sizes included refills), we headed into the theater. The screen was huge, which was pretty cool. I definitely enjoyed the movie the second time as well, and I felt a little less “whoa” about the whole thing. Afterward, we got an ice cream at DQ, and talked for a while until I had to leave for Angela’s, a friend who had recently moved from St. Cloud to Wayzata.






I met up with Angela and got to see her new apartment, and then we headed off to Minneapolis to the Guthrie Theatre. Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore was AWESOME! I loved it! It is a funny, romantic musical with sailors…what’s not to love? The music was great, and there was a very cool tap number where the sailors go to town. The set was the bow of a ship, with the orchestra up in the bridge, with a platform above and in front of it. At the back of the bow of the ship, under the bridge, was a revolving wall that changed the set from deck to boiler room to captain’s office to the boat that the sisters, cousins, and aunts of the Admiral come in on. If you are interested in seeing a clip, there is a video that is only about 3 ½ minutes long. Here.


The day I went was incredibly humid! It was so humid, in fact, that it looked foggy outside! When Angela and I tried to get a picture outside at the intermission at 8 o’clock at night, the camera lens fogged from the humidity! It was crazy!

Arsenic and Old Lace at the Guthrie Theatre

For Mom’s Mother’s Day gift, I had purchased tickets to the final performance of Arsenic and Old Lace playing on the Wurtle Thrust stage at the Guthrie (the “round” stage). I hadn’t been to the new theatre; and I had only been to the old theatre once in high school when I saw As You Like It, also on the round stage. The building is extremely blue, so it isn’t hard to find! It was also cool, because you can see people in the blue walls on the outside (and on the walls and ceilings inside as well). We parked in the structure directly across from the Guthrie, which, crazily enough, only took cash and check, and walked across the street to go into the building. On the way, we noticed that runners were coming in from finishing Minneapolis’s Marathon! Kinda cool!

We were about 45 minutes early, so had time to wander around. Our first stop was the bathrooms, which were up the escalator. This was NOT your ordinary escalator, but one that was a single long escalator that rose four stories! (You can see mom’s and my reflection in the picture of us going up the escalator.) We got to the top, and went to the restrooms, and then wandered around. I took a few pictures from inside the building looking out at the river when we noticed an outside area that people were standing on that was facing the Mississippi River, so we headed over to go outside and get a better view of the river area.

It was beautiful outside, and the various bridges over the river were pretty cool to look at. The Guthrie is right at the St. Anthony Falls. One thing that I never knew is that Pillsbury and Gold Medal Flour were directly across the river from each other! Very cool old buildings are in that area, and many of them are being revitalized. It was beautiful outside, and we hung out for about 15 minutes, and then headed back inside to enter the theatre.

The set for the play was absolutely awesome! It was a two-story interior of an old Victorian house, with the audience viewing the entry/sitting/dining room, with views of a door to the kitchen and a door to the basement, and then stairs up to a balcony with a bedroom door and hallway to another bedroom. On either side of the “house” were views of the cemetery outside. The picture is very dark (no flash), so you can’t see it very well, but it was the best set I’ve ever seen!

The play itself was so well done! The actors were fabulous, and the Brewster sisters were absolutely awesome! I know I laughed more at this play than I ever did at the Cary Grant movie! It was totally worth the money!

“The play is a farcical black comedy [written by Joseph Kesselring], revolving
around Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal
family and local police in Brooklyn, NY, as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch" of cyanide; a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home (which then serve as graves for the aunts' victims); and a murderous brother who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein (a character based on real-life gangland surgeon Joseph Moran) to conceal his identity and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff (a self-referential joke, as the part was originally played by Karloff). The film adaptation follows the same basic plot, with a few minor changes.”

After the play, mom and I took some outside pictures of the building, and walked around back, and what did we find? The outside seating area where we had taken our pictures upstairs was a giant “arm” off of the building! Way crazy! We both said that we were glad we didn’t know while we were standing out there!

After we walked around outside for a little while, we headed back towards St. Cloud. We ended up deciding not to eat in the Cities as it was only about 4pm, and neither of us were too terribly hungry. We stopped in Maple Grove, and ate at California Pizza Kitchen…yummy Portobello Mushroom Ravioli in a garlic cream sauce!