![]() ![]() I love every trowel-full of Merle Norman cosmetics smeared over 70 years of social climbing, clove cigarettes, and alimony. There are so many tanning-boothed and sun-damaged faces that look like old baseball mitts perched atop couture mannequins. ![]() “I love seeing the honest-to-God Ladies Who Lunch, and I delight in every too-tight face-lift. By the time they get situated, martini-in-hand, and start throwing off their carefully cultivated blasé air, the house lights dim and they must gulp it down and dash back to their seats. I love watching the same folks try to navigate through the crowd without spilling anything and then try to find a spot to stand to look sophisticated. I like to see some of them pay through the nose for a drink at a crowded bar stampede. What is he wearing? Why is she with him? I’ve been to so many shows now that I recognize people just from having seen them at other shows. “Good show or bad show,” Curtis wrote, “I love the intermission, and all the action and interaction. His was among the most eloquent of responses that I read. Murray could learn a great deal from Bill Curtis, who certainly has found something to do during intermissions. Their reactions made me think about Matthew Murray’s line: “I hate intermissions because, for me, there’s never anything to do during them.” Guess perception is in the eye of the beholder. ‘The theater IS a temple,’ as one of our icons said.” John Petrikovic agrees: “Mid-session chatter is part of the excitement of live theater,” he wrote, then made a good point: “But I could see why some authors would want to avoid that chatter at all costs.” So, the intermission chatter, rushing to the restrooms, bar, outside for a smoke if necessary…it’s all part of why going to the theater became my religion of sorts. ![]() And so, I love that moment at the end of the first act when you are, hopefully, caught by surprise and/or emotion, and the curtain comes down. Nothing can beat the excitement of the lights going out and the curtain rising on a set, particularly in a musical. I prefer the curtain to be down when I enter. “I’m very much a theater traditionalist,” he wrote, before confessing, “Okay, I’m a romantic about the whole theater experience. Some people delight in the chatter that goes on during intermissions, like Lon Chaifetz. (Could you imagine listening to dot-dot-dot-dot-dot while high on coke?)” Years later, when I was older and wiser, I realized the man was snorting cocaine. When the second act began, I wondered why he was gone, considering he seemed to be so moved by the show. I was moved that he was crying, but I didn’t understand why he was crying into this little silver case in his hands. As the first act curtain fell, while I was shaking with exhilaration, I noticed the man sitting next to me leaning over, sniffing. ![]() “When I was much younger,” he wrote, “my parents dropped me off to see Sunday in the Park With George while they went to see My One and Only. With intermissions, I was able to move far away from them.” Andrew Barrett told of sitting next to someone who wasn’t smoky-smelling, annoying, or noisy - and yet posed his own special challenge. Wrote Ricky from P.A., “Without intermissions, I would have to have spent many a second act next to so many smoky-smelling, annoying, or noisy people. The ones I saved for today involve the people who need - or don’t need - people near them during intermission. To keep the beauty of the theatres architecture, they have become something of an art form in themselves.On Monday, I relayed a peck of opinions that readers had on intermissions - the good, the bad, and the not-so-ugly. The Theatre Royal of Drury Lane was the first to feature an iron safety curtain in 1794, and following a fire in a theatre in Exeter in 1887 that killed 200 people, their use became wide spread. Regardless of construction, in the UK, they must lower within 30 seconds. In fact, many are designed to look like cloth. Once asbestos was a common material, but no longer used, for obvious reasons, they don’t appear to be made from heavy materials. Made from fibre glass or iron and located behind the proscenium arch, it lowers as the lights go up. The arrival of the interval in the theatre is always indicated by a feature of the stage – the lowering of the safety curtain (or fire curtain). Opera Glasses were a must for fashion as well as viewing privately owned ones could be ornate, while those provided by the theatre needed a few pence to operate them. By the mid 19th Century, Opera glasses were common, replacing the telescopic variety used in the previous century with the addition of a focusing wheel. ![]()
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