A fine adventure on and near Broadway.

We've just returned from a New York City adventure. It has been a while, to our dismay. It's not an inexpensive undertaking, of course, but this time we had a special reason for going. But as usual, we crammed as much theater-going into our time as possible, along with celebrating our birthdays.

We got up to the Apple on a Thursday afternoon, though there were some weather-related delays. We still had plenty of time to hit up the TKTS booth to see "Peter and the Starcatcher" as our first stop. What a fine time that was. Prior to the Tony Awards, I knew little about this show other than some kind of connection to the Peter Pan story. I came to understand that two writers I enjoy, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, had created the original young adult book (and now, several sequels), and that this was a prequel for Peter Pan somewhat like "Wicked" is the prequel to The Wizard of Oz.

It's a very inventive "play with music," using some somewhat simple tools to help define set and place. It also won the play-side Tony for lighting design, and for good reason. Very fun stuff indeed.

On Friday night, we took advantage of a connection for our birthday celebration. Our son, Andy, is in a master's degree program, studying lighting design with Tony-award-winning Brian McDevitt, who won for "The Book of Mormon" last year. We were able to acquire house seats with Brian and Andy's help - fourth row, center. Pretty darn nice.

It's a very funny show and by some people's standards, probably tasteless at times. (I suspect most Mormons don't get a kick out of it either.) We had a special bonus in that the guy sitting next to us was raised Mormon - never quite got whether or not he still is. But he laughed with the rest of us. We didn't see the original two leads, but that didn't matter to me, anyway. Well performed and technically fine, too.

Based on some recent friend reviews and the Tony performance, we had pre-bought our Saturday afternoon tickets for the musical "Once." This for me was the high point of the shows. One friend referred to it as a chick-flick of musicals, and heck, he might be right. But we did not care. It was sweet, touching, sad, very well performed, musically delightful, very talented cast who acted, sang and played instruments -- and two lead characters who were written to be very interesting, and they were played very well by the actors. Excellent. Now I have to see the movie on which it was based!

From there, TKTS set us up for the play "Clybourne Park," which won the Pulitzer Prize. I liked the play, interesting concept and questions being asked -- but I have to question the Pulitzer. I don't know what else was up that year, but it didn't quite glue together at the end. Well done, though, and worth the time.

We also adventured by our standards on Sunday afternoon. We'd never been to the alphabet streets (Avenues A, B and C), which was the real-life setting of the musical "Rent." There's a relatively new rep company in its third year of doing two shows in rep during the summer (Sink or Swim Rep is their name). I just happened to find that one of those shows this year was "An Ideal Husband," the Oscar Wilde dramedy. (I guess, really, a comedy by classical definition: no one dies.)

Since that play is the play-within-a-play of my last full-length script, "Rehearsals," and I've never seen it on stage (only the movie, which was excellent), we made the taxi-trek and generally enjoyed the production (considering it was an $18 ticket, it was certainly worth it, compared to the $155 ticket price for the Bwy. musicals). It was also located in a neat old theater revitalized for stage theater purposes.

We wrapped up our stay with our first time to see an off-Broadway play in preview. It's a comedy co-written by Woody Harrelson and his friend Frankie Hyman, based on their summer of 1983 working construction in Houston, TX. A fair amount of it is fictional, but the characters are entirely based on reality. They are quirky, different, fun and funny.

Why this show? Truth is, we wouldn't have known about it if our son, Andy, hadn't been the assistant lighting designer and also in town while we were there. We got to hear a lot of back-stage stories and spend some time with Andy while we were at it. "Bullet for Adolf" was fun to see, especially knowing some of the back story.

So six shows, and not really a dog in the group. Nice!

The shows of early summer.

June through mid-July were busy times, in part because Kathy was directly involved in a show and we took a road trip in early July. But that doesn't mean there wasn't time for theater!

I caught the one-night staged reading of "Bleacher Bums" at Theatre Alliance and enjoyed my time with the baseball fans in the bleachers. That was followed by seeing Kathy's show, the upbeat, slightly jingoistic musical "Kilroy Was Here." KLT produced it at the usual school auditorium setting, but used the space nicely and made for the type of show that, if you have the slightest sense of patriotism, was going to bring a few tears to your eyes. I enjoyed it both times.

We also fit in an interesting show, "The Illusion," at Triad Stage, and I went by myself to see the amusing and well-done "Xanadu" at Theatre Alliance. The latter one would not mistake as an intellectual exercise, but a lot of laughs can be fun, too.

While on the road, we had an outdoor-play experience in Chillicothe, Ohio. Our young actor friend, Carson Elizabeth Gregory, is up there this summer as part of the cast of "Tecumseh!". We had no idea until we read the souvenir program that she was one of the leads. Awesome! Even if it was 94 degrees and just a few days after the big storm that blew through Ohio, West Virginia and other places, we had a lot of fun there.

On our way home, we stopped through Shepherdstown, WV to see four of the five plays being offered at the 2012 version of the Contemporary American Theater Festival. I've previously reported on my two earlier visits to this always at-least-interesting event. (I skipped last year.)

Of the four shows, "Barcelona" and "In a Forest, Dark & Deep" (a recent Neil LaBute) were quite good, but not as compelling as the other two. "The Exceptionals" and "Gidion's Knot" were both outstanding in their own way. The first delved into the intriguing issue of children being born to carefully-selected women using sperm-bank donations by male geniuses - and the divide that it would create. "Gidion's Knot" is tough to describe without giving away the story, but it was intense and challenging, the way I often like 'em.

Andy and Sarah were able to join us for two of the shows, and we visited with Kathy's senior-year-of-college roommate, Lissa, who used to work at CATF and still lives in the area.

We moved along through July with two other shows: a nicely-done teenaged cast version of "Into the Woods" done at the new space for Open Space Cafe Theatre in Greensboro, followed by an impressive Triad premiere of the musical "Spring Awakening." Another young friend actor of ours, Mike Shapiro, played the male lead, Melchior, and did a fine, fine job of it!

Then after a fairly long absence, we took off for New York City. And that's my next report. Soon.

A well-rounded and inspirational Spoleto Festival.

Our annual visit to Charleston, SC and the combination of Spoleto and Piccolo Spoleto Festivals over Memorial Day was perhaps one of the best of our seven times to spend a weekend there. In addition to a good outdoor jazz concert and a fine indoor gospel choir concert, we did our usual rounds of theater outings we could fit in. And what a wide range it was.

Three of the performances we attended were one-person shows. One was essentially non-fiction: a fine ramble by Charleston's own, Jack Hitt, called "Making Up the Truth." Two others were solo performances by women: "Becoming Harriet Tubman" and "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe." In both cases, especially the latter (originated by Lily Tomlin), the women played multiple characters, and in very convincing fashion. Strong acting that was interesting to watch in both cases.

We also caught a fine production by Dublin's Gate Theatre of the Noel Coward play, Hay Fever. Quite well performed by all involved, if not perhaps likely to be my most favorite play ever.

The most intriguing and inventive of our shows, however, for me, was by a company from London called, simply, 1927. A fascinating dark children's tale that seamlessly (other than a brief technical glitch) blended scenery with live actors with creative projections, "The Animals and Children Took to the Streets" definitely qualified as spell-binding, not a description I often use. Quite, quite fascinating. It's always neat to see the boundaries of what can be done being stretched.

For good reasons, we're not sure we'll be able to visit Spoleto next year. If that's how it turns out, we'll miss it. For sure.