Saw "Nickel and Dimed" tonight at the Guthrie Lab. If you haven't heard of the book, a writer (Barbara Ehrenreich) went undercover to try and earn a living working as a cleaning lady and waitress and then came out with a best-selling book about how much it sucked. I kind of expected to hate it and find it pedantic, but found myself laughing. It was good.
To me, a good live performance means that I when the main character's knees hurt, I feel like they are my knees. When she is getting behind on her salad orders, I am transported back to the time I considered sticking a serated knife through my manager's neck at Ciattis. When I was 12, my mom took me to see a performance of "Of Mice and Men" and near the end, when the little slut invited Lenny to sit with her, I involuntarily moaned, "noooooo...." to the amusement of many people in the rows nearest us.
We left early because, as Kate said, we "got the point" and felt we could safely leave after one hour instead of staying the entire TWO AND A HALF HOURS. The audience was about like you would expect if you collected 200 people who cared enough about the working poor to pay $30 a seat for live theatre. The humor and good acting saved it for me.
In the end though, what the hell are you going to do? Leave bigger tips? People self-destruct one at a time in this terror-dome economy of ours and they will fight you for the right to do so.
10:45:59 PM 
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