Last night Cornetta and I went to the third play of our season's tickets to the Davis Musical Theater Company (DMTC) - Mame. No, not maim as in my stitched up thumb you silly! Anyway, our breath was held a bit at the start of the performance because Mame is a tough musical to pull off if the lead isn’t up to Ethyl Merman standards of bombastic energy and singing capacity. Thankfully, shortly into the second act you could almost hear the audience release a collective sigh - the lady in the lead was smashing (Mary Young). So too were many of the other characters. Cornetta’s pick was the wildly repressed and later amusingly gravid Agnes Gooch (Monica Parisi).
A stand out for my tastes, the cute-as-a-button house keeper Ito (Andy Hyun); the guy had like maybe ten single utterance lines, but his posture, smile and gestures had me in stitches. Still, my favorite character was the adult Patrick; a tall bean-sprout of a blonde with chisled cheekbones and a graceful dancer named Robert Coverdell. There's something ethereal about the Coverdell; like he's only here on loan from another realm, some other planet - he's that fragile and unearthly. I remember him from last September’s DMTC production of West Side Story.
Anyway, it was nice seeing Cornetta again – tragic events kept her from the last DMTC performance. Tonight, as always we had a ball, both of us being a tad silly and eager to forget recent tragedies & even a few deaths of late among our friends & acquaintances. A night at the theater is always good for what ails you. 
