Applause

Theatre at its best
I’ve followed Dan’s column over the decades of living in and raising my kids in the city, and his show captures all the quirks I love about the city… from our peculiar North/South dynamics, to the malapropisms made more something in our peculiar twang, the local characters – elected and otherwise, the hard-luck-turnaround guys and the just plain human beings who give a hand up instead of a handout. Poignant moments between ongoing laughter. Fantastic choice and perfect timing of image projections. And Dan, who: wow, really held the stage for 90 minutes. Happy-making, theatre at its best, enjoyed with a hugely appreciative audience.

A love letter in the form of a play
Maybe other cities have a song about them – but how many cities have a love letter written to them and about them; a love letter in the form of a play, written in exquisite detail by someone familiar with the whole width and breadth and depth of the place, who knows its charms and its flaws inside and out from decades of sharp observation, and can wrangle those countless observations into a perfect portrayal that never shrinks from honesty, whether that honesty is humorous or empathetic, unstinting in its generosity as well as its wicked-funny skewering, a tribute with a reporter’s unflinching assessment coupled with a human being’s deep sadness at the personal cost of a city’s entrenched, relentless suffering, but that manages to offer hope as well?

So grateful to have seen it; so delighted to be someone of the same age who remembers the inside jokes in the opening montage – and SO hopeful that someone, maybe WETA, filmed it, so that many many many more people can see it and hear your voice narrating it. I could not wait to stand and applaud you and your cast and crew at the end. Thank you for this witty, loving, funny, heartbreaking, beautiful bittersweet paean to your adopted home. We’re so lucky you stayed.