Ashley & Brandi 2-32

Ruler of the Queen’s Navee Department

Saw the Guthrie’s revisionist version of Gilbert & Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore yesterday evening.  Pinafore as a Busby Berkeley musical.  Overall enjoyable, although one had to get used to the jazzing-up of Arthur Sullivan’s wonderful, jaunty melodies.

The producers managed to unearth a previously unknown version of the operetta, moreover, which provided Queen Victoria a cameo appearance late in the second act.  She arrives in one of the Royal Navy’s first submersible warships (quite a feat in 1878), played by the inimitable Brenda Blethyn, a stalwart Guthrie troupe member (known to wider audiences as Costanza’s mother in Amadeus).  I wish my British friends could have seen it, for those final scenes alone if no other.

Since we’ve sworn off the Guthrie’s “Level 5″ restaurant for shoddy service and substandard fare, we ate instead at the nearby Wasabi, which provided decent Japanese cuisine.  We’ll explore other restaurants in the neighborhood as the 2011-12 season proceeds, but Wasabi is one we’d return to occasionally.

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Cool Photo Department

An M.C. Escher drawing refracted in a falling water drop.  Cool!

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They were really quite good together.