Pirates and Eurovision

I went to see Pirates of Penzance last night. I'd never seen Pirates before, and Kat was in the cast, so I went along with a bunch of other people, somewhate randomly scattered throughout the audience due to differing dates and times of ticket purchasing.

The beginning of the show was a little lacklustre and I felt the opening notes from the orchestra were terrible. It sounded like the novelty had well worn off and the musicians wanted nothing more than to get the show over and done with so they could retreat to the comfort of their beds. The got into the swing of things as the night progressed and by the end they sounded like they actually wanted to be there. Some of the cast members seemed to be suffering from a similar condition, though not quite as obviously as the musicians. We put it down to the fact that they've had almost two weeks of performances, as well as countless rehearsals before that, and as it was an amateur performance, many of the performers would have needed to attend day jobs as well, so they can be forgiven for showing a few signs of tiredness. Overall the show was quite enjoyable, and full of terrible puns and groan-worthy jokes, which is always a bonus in my opinion.

From our seats we didn't have a really good view of Kat for some of her role in the first half, so we unfortunately missed some visual humour that her character provided, though Nick was in a better position as his seat was higher and said that it was worthy of a few laughs.

Tonight is the final of Eurovision 2006 and I will celebrate it by attending a Eurovision party at Oddur's place. Germany's contestant is an Australian girl singing an American country and western song, so they're being very global this year. I don't have a favourite, as I haven't seen the first set of finalists, but there were a couple of groups who I thought were quite good. I didn't like Finland's entry, but other people seemed to think it was good, and enough people voted for them that they got through, so that's what matters in the end for this contest. One year I will definitely attend a Eurovision Song Contest in person, though I don't know when (or where, obviously).