{"id":12,"date":"2006-09-10T21:08:14","date_gmt":"2006-09-11T03:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bendreth.com\/?p=12"},"modified":"2006-09-10T21:08:14","modified_gmt":"2006-09-11T03:08:14","slug":"like-watching-a-train-wreck-but-socially-acceptable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"Like watching a train wreck, but socially acceptable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, Marion and I went to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arvadacenter.org\/\">Arvada Center for the Performing Arts<\/a> to see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arvadacenter.org\/perform\/theater.php?newsid=1860\">Souvenir<\/a>, a play about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Florence_Foster_Jenkins\">Mrs. Florence Foster Jenkins<\/a>. The play was hilarious for the most part, with a very poignant ending.<\/p>\n<p>This is a woman who was convinced that she was one of the great coloratura sopranos, but who was once described by a critic as the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.maxbass.com\/Florence-Foster-Jenkins.htm\">first lady of the sliding scale<\/a>.&#8221; I&#8217;ve never been so delighted by truly bad singing.<\/p>\n<p>Alex Ryer, who played Mrs. Jenkins, was marvelous in the part. One of her previous roles had been Edith Piaf in a <a title=\"Pure Piaf\" href=\"http:\/\/www.coloradobackstage.com\/reviews\/town_hall\/pure_piaf.shtml\">show she herself wrote<\/a>, and in the notes for the performance, she stated that she was thrilled to follow in the footsteps of Judy Kaye, who was nominated for a Tony for <a title=\"Souvenir on Broadway\" href=\"http:\/\/www.souvenironbroadway.com\/\">playing the role on Broadway<\/a> (note &#8211; the link has audio), but asked in an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rockymountainnews.com\/drmn\/on_stage\/article\/0,1299,DRMN_53_4973208,00.html\">interview<\/a> in the Rocky Mountain News, &#8220;What if I can never sing right again?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If you can\u00a0 get to the Arvada Center while it&#8217;s playing, or if it comes to your area, I&#8217;d recommend seeing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, Marion and I went to the Arvada Center for the Performing Arts to see Souvenir, a play about Mrs. Florence Foster Jenkins. The play was hilarious for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bendreth.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}