Pirates of Penzance, 2024
Some time during this upcoming year, a message will arrive in the phone or computer of Friend-Rosie and her ever eager sister, Em. First it will be a message about the cottage on Rose Lane, the place we can't wait to see and never want to leave, with an AGA inside! (my fingers are already starting to twitch toward the Cottage Boutique Search page).
Then there will be messages surrounding the Minack Theatre on the cliff. You can see for yourself the results of all this messaging and purchasing. You can also see the weather we experienced. Three-fourths of our visits were absolute GEMS. The only rainy, stormy, water-in-your-shoes type experience we had turned out to be fun anyway. How could it not be? We looked so ridiculous and laughed so much that no one could possibly be cross.
Our dear Em had not been able to come that year (2022), and when we asked Ted if he wanted to sit on a rainy cliff watching Mr Rochester hide his crazy wife in the attics, he said no. So the two of us went up, up, up to a far away car park, and - I'm not just perfectly sure how it happened, but anyway, we didn't have the car keys. So Rosie ran all the way back down to get them, only Ted couldn't hear her knocking. She banged and banged and hollered, wondering if he might have gone to The Sloop for a pint of Wallup.
Well, more things happened, but the details have faded. The keys were finally found and when we arrived late (just as Helen Burns lay dying on the stage), it was okay because the car park man put us in the Handicapped spot closest to the front.
When I, my sister, and the Amazing Larry saw the HMS Pinafore (2021), we loved it for a really very good reason. Our father had played the part of Nanki Poo in High School, and that had made him (almost) famous. As children we had played that record over and over until each song was perfectly memorized (and probably scratched to death). At the Minack, we sang our hearts out just as if we were the players on stage.
But then look how far away from the stage I was at The Fisherman's Friends (2023)! The Minack had sold me their absolute last ticket, up at the extreme top of the cliff. The men were tiny stick figures down there, but somehow the sound crew had whipped up a system where everyone could hear every word.
Our visit to the Minack last week might not have been as dramatic as the day it was raining sideways. But there were four of us this time, and if you had been too, you'd have seen four beaming grins up in section 'B'.
I don't know if we will see the Minack again next year, because it depends upon what is playing. On our way back down the hill, Em asked me, "And what would you like to see on the Minack stage?"
I thought for a bit. "Les Miserables, maybe...?"
But that seemed a bit off the minute I said it. Les Miserables is sad, and you can't have hundreds of people trying to climb granite steps while bawling their eyes out.
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