Dredding Nuns

Good Flick

I had a wild range of entertainment adventures yesterday.  My wife had to go into Worcester to take a friend out for lunch for the friend’s birthday.  I was mowing the lawn on a truly magnificent early fall day and then inside watching a rare opportunity to see my alma mater, UNH, on television.  Typically they scored 61 points and still lost so I was looking for other options when I just happened to notice that the local theater was showing the newest incarnation of Judge Dredd in the aptly titled – Dredd 3D, go figure.  To Buddy’s intense disappointment I headed down to watch the movie while I was still free of certain constraints on my cinematic viewing choices involving hyper-violence (I’m just saying).  I was interested to see what they would do with Dredd after Stallone’s 1980’s comic book type adaptation.  I’ve liked Karl Urban since his Eomer days and he does really well under helmet once again, even though you only see the lower half of his face.  I’ve always thought it takes a brave and really self-confident actor to play a role that never shows his face.  He’s ably supported by another young actress I like, Olivia Thirlby who played a psychic rookie judge.  The only miss in the cast was Lena Headley, someone who is usually awesome, but she played the evil villain like she was sleep walking, a real disappointment.  The plot was also different as the two judges find themselves trapped in a mega-skyscraper, cut off from outside help and battling Headley’s minions who are trying to rescue Avon Barksdale, who’s been captured by the judges.  The film makers felt the need to show their 3D capabilities with some early graphic head wounds exploding but the rest of the movie was a very entertaining sci-fi adventure.  I returned home before my wife came back from her lunch escapade and so I didn’t have to pay too heavy a price for going to the movies before she did.  I played up the violence in the movie to mitigate her concerns.  Luckily I had a trump card to play in that I had surprised her earlier in the week with tickets to a local repertory theater.  A couple weeks ago when the MEG was coming for the weekend I was exploring tourist sites around the area when I stumbled onto the website for the Stageloft Repertory Theater.  I’ve always had a fairly well concealed love of live theater.  I was even recently kicking myself for not doing more to see some of the plays offered in Worcester and Boston.  I arranged for tickets for us to see Nunsense Amen which has men playing singing nuns in full regalia.  We arrived at the theater and I realized why I had never seen in before, it as a really small building behind another shop and shares a parking lot with a tuxedo rental shop.  Our seats were all the way in the back but were still within spitting distance of the stage.  Small “barn” theaters like these are a New England tradition and one of my best memories is seeing Oliver in one such theater with my whole family.  In the critical scene where Nancy is killed by Bill Sykes the entire theater was deathly quiet when my smallest sister plaintively asked my mother in a loud voice, “Is she going to be okay?”.  The entire theater erupted in laughter and even the actors, including the recently deceased Nancy, had problems containing their amusement.  I really enjoyed the neighborhood type feel of this theater which reminded me of that long ago one.  One of the people attending was one of my employees and she came up to say hi before the play started.  I wasn’t expecting a whole lot in terms of talent and found myself very pleasantly surprised by the cast.  The play was really well done.  The lines and the singing were challenging but the actors were up to it, especially the guy playing Sister Mary Amnesia.  Between acts you could sample paper cups of soda and homemade chocolate chip cookies for a voluntary donation in the lobby.  It turned out to be a welcome, entertaining evening that I’m sure we’ll repeat in the coming months. (It is so difficult to blog when the NFL Red Zone is on!)

My Tickets Out of Trouble

The Outside of the Theater

View from Our Seats