It’s been rainy and windy all day; our fishmonger told us that she wouldn’t be at the Farmers’ Market today, so we went to the JCC to work out instead of taking our usual downtown Los Gatos walk. Things calmed down around lunchtime, and I was able to get a photo of our camellias from inside the house while they weren’t blowing around too much.
After lunch, we drove to downtown San Jose to see City Lights Theatre‘s production of Nora: A Doll’s House. We parked in our usual place under the freeway and walked a block and a half to the theatre; the sidewalks were loaded with debris from palm trees, and we went out of our way to avoid a hanging palm frond that was caught in a tree limb hanging ominously over the sidewalk.
The theatre was nowhere near full (I assume the weather kept a lot of people home), but the actors gave it their all. It’s an intricate story, with each of the three actresses playing the parts of Nora and Christine (her best friend) in two of the three different time periods (1918, 1968, and 2018) in the play; the male actors exist in each of the time periods in the same role.
I didn’t find any of the characters particularly sympathetic or likeable, but I was curious to see how the playwright would bring the strands together. Just as the action was building to the climax, the lights flickered, the sound stopped, and finally all the lights went out and stayed off. The actors held their places for a couple of minutes before the stage manager came in, holding a flashlight, and told us all to leave the theatre.
It wasn’t raining when we left the theatre, but it was pretty windy. The traffic lights were out, and the intersection was covered with fallen palm fronds. The tree limb that we’d avoided had fallen onto a car parked on the street.
We navigated around all the obstacles, got into our car, and drove home.
Our schedule won’t let us see another performance, so I guess I’ll never know what happens. C’est la vie!
