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Hollywood Bowl
Viet and Billy decided to do something unusually cultured: go see a musical at the Hollywood Bowl.
Needless to say, they made a fairly big production out of it. Turned out to be 14 people, six bottles of wine, at least one chicken, over a pound of cheese, enough potato chips for everyone and then some, etc. Very tasty! Maggie came down to visit Viet for a week, Amy came (first time I'd seen Billy and Amy together since they were engaged back on the east coast), Nishant, Todd, Ray and his brother Rueben, Kim, Anne, Thomas and Teresa, Carley, and myself. Somewhere along all of this eating, we watched the Hollywood Bowl put on a pretty good performance of Camelot and managed to finish off a package of Chinese dessert crackers and some Starbursts for dessert.
The rendition of the score was very good, almost as good as I rememebred the original cast recording. It lacked any real grand magnificence live, but that was okay, since Camelot is not a grand-sounding score compared to some of the other classics. The impression of King Arthur as a well-meaning dolt and Merlin's significance were pretty amusing, and the touches of modern themes with the names (Guinevere is "Jenny" in some instances, Lancelot is "Lance", etc.) were quite nice for a contemporary crowd.
The Hollywood Bowl is a beautiful outdoor venue for classical music. For a musical like Camelot, the video screens for those of us in the nosebleed seats left something to be desired, but they were acceptable. Parking, on the other hand, was a complete mess. We took the shuttle bus in from the Metro, and even that was insane. Staples, The Grove @ Anaheim, the Rosebowl, etc. all do much better with this much traffic. If you go to the Hollywood Bowl, do not drive in. Take a shuttle!!!