This past holiday break has allowed us to do some things that we don\u2019t normally have time to do (like seeing 3-hour movies, but I digress).\u00a0 There were several productions that we saw that we very much liked.<\/p>\n
The first is the Shakespeare Theatre\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/span>.\u00a0 The Harman Hall stage resulted in a very clever staging of this light-hearted comedy.\u00a0 There were times, however, when I thought the staging was cleverer than the acting, but, overall, it was a pleasant and well-done version of the play.\u00a0 The brawl between the two lead female characters was particularly well done.\u00a0 Our two children both enjoyed the production as did we.<\/p>\n We also saw the National Theatre\u2019s production of Les Miz<\/span> (the movie is on our list of things to see).\u00a0 Jean Valjean is the linchpin of any production of Les Miz, of course, and we thought this particular production had a strong actor in that role.\u00a0 Javert was also excellent.\u00a0 (Our daughter wasn\u2019t a fan of Javert because the actor reminded her of a substitute teacher that she particularly disliked.\u00a0 It lent an air of authenticity to the production for her.)\u00a0 Fantine\u2019s voice was beautiful as well.\u00a0 It is one of our favorite musicals, and this particular production did not disappoint.<\/p>\n One of our annual holiday traditions is taking the entire family to see Charles Dickens\u2019s A Christmas Carol<\/span> at Ford\u2019s Theatre.\u00a0 It gives us goosebumps every year to look up and actually see the box that Abraham Lincoln was sitting in when he was assassinated.\u00a0 As with Les Miz<\/span>, the casting of the main character, Ebeneezer Scrooge, is the key to a successful production.\u00a0 This year\u2019s actor was the same as last year\u2019s actor, but he played the character a little differently than last year.\u00a0 Less curmudgeonly but more Grinch-like, if that makes any sense.\u00a0 We do require a satisfying redemption scene at the end of the play in order to feel complete, and this production fulfilled our expectations in that regard.\u00a0 Christmas doesn\u2019t feel like Christmas if we don\u2019t see A Christmas Carol<\/span>.<\/p>\n Finally, the behemoth Peter Jackson film otherwise known as The Hobbit<\/span>.\u00a0 We had originally seen it in the Udvar-Hazy theatre (the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport) with its six story IMAX theatre.\u00a0 Fifteen minutes before the end of the movie (when all the dwarves, Gandalf, and Bilbo are treed, for those who have seen it), the entire museum lost power.\u00a0 Oops.\u00a0 I then went and saw it again (at a lesser theatre) so that I could see what happened in the last fifteen minutes.\u00a0 I understand the criticism leveled at the movie\u2014it very much is not in the tone of the book but, rather, is more epic and in the same vein as the Lord of the Rings<\/span> trilogy.\u00a0 The movie also moves slowly in parts.\u00a0 On the other hand, it is beautifully filmed and much of the background plot (derived from The Silmarillion<\/span> and some of Tolkien\u2019s other works) is meant as a richer prequel to the Lord of the Rings<\/span> trilogy than most prequels are.\u00a0 It clearly works for Tolkien geeks.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how well it works for the normal human population.\u00a0 All I know is it works for me.\u00a0 The movie is rated PG-13, and I think it\u2019s a fair rating.\u00a0 There is a lot of violence in the movie, mostly directed at orcs and goblins.\u00a0 The themes are also fairly mature.\u00a0 That being said, our eleven year old son loved it and happily sat through the almost 3 hour movie with no complaints.\u00a0 Our fourteen year old daughter was thoroughly bored, but she is not a Tolkien fan.\u00a0 I am seriously thinking of disowning her for her heresy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past holiday break has allowed us to do some things that we don\u2019t normally have time to do (like seeing 3-hour movies, but I digress).\u00a0 There were several productions that we saw that we very much liked. The first is the Shakespeare Theatre\u2019s A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream.\u00a0 The Harman Hall stage resulted in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,41,30,29],"tags":[65,63,327,66,64,337,334,333,67],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-movies","category-shakespeare","category-shakespeare-theatre","tag-a-christmas-carol","tag-a-midsummer-nights-dream","tag-family","tag-fords-theatre","tag-les-miz","tag-movies","tag-shakespeare","tag-shakespeare-theatre","tag-the-hobbit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-bA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":722,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}