Going to the Fitz

So tonight Rachel and I had a special treat. We drove out to downtown St Paul in the middle of freezing rain and sleet to go to the Fitzgerald Theater.

Now why would we do a silly thing like that?

Oh wait, this guy!

 

So yes, Rachel and I got to go to the first ever live cinecast of A Prairie Home Companion! And see it live in the theater! The Fitz is a pretty nice theater (though it scarily resembles the Clemens Center in its architecture), and we got what I like to call quasi-boxed seats.

As you can see in that last picture, at the beginning there was a bit of a video where Garrison Keillor walked around St Paul and explained a bit about its landmarks and his favorite places in town. Particular favorite line from this part: "It's cold here. It's... Nature's way of killing us."

Then the show began, and an interesting figure took the stage; you can see him on the right there:

Elvis Costello!?!?!

The rest of the show had all of the great hallmarks of PHC: good music, Lake Wobegon, random advertisements, etc. It was really interesting to see them perform the show as, well, a radio show, rather than a live show. Sure there were plenty of gestures towards the audience, but for the most part it was as they always do, geared towards radio. Stage hands walking unapoligetically around the stage, big obtrusive mikes, no props besides the two awesome sound effects guys... just a lot of people talking and making us see the scenery through the way that they talked about everything.

Some more pics from the show:

 

Until next time...

When you want genuine music--music that will come right home to you like a bad quarter, suffuse your system like strychnine whisky, go right through you like Brandreth's pills, ramify your whole constitution like the measles, and break out on your hide like the pin-feather pimples on a picked goose,--when you want all this, just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!
- Mark Twain's "Enthusiastic Eloquence," San Francisco Dramatic Chronicle, 6/23/1865