Theater Musical Review: The Notebook

The Notebook is playing at the Orpheum.  I have never seen the movie.  So the entire story was new to me.  There were three actors to play each of the main characters at different stages in life, youth, middle age (ten yeas later) and geriatric.  I really like the effect.  Sometimes the character would be singing a duet or a trio with themself.  Noah, older-Sharon Catherine Brown, Alysha Deslorieux, younger Chloé Cheers and Noah, older Beau Gravitte, Ken Wulf Clark, younger Kyle Mangold.

This musical also delves into the consequences of Alzheimers.  Allie the lead has lost her memory which she does not want to do.  She wrote a notebook of she and her husbands love story, and asks her husband, Noah, to read it to her, and she will come back to him.  The action portrays the things he is reading.

The love story is very interesting.  Her parents do not approve, and move her when they are young so as to separate them.  He goes to war, and writes daily but never hears back.  Ten years later she is engaged and goes back to the same town where she sees in the paper he has remodeled a house he said he was gong to buy and fix up for them.  She goes back to him, and the house.  Mother also visits, and admits to having hid the letters.  She gives them to her daughter now.  The song My Days is where Allie has to decide what future she is going to have, one based on love as she really loves Noah.  It is quite a struggle however.

Warning, there is one part where the young lead characters disrobe to their underwear, and then their bed is pulled off stage.  I haven't decided if this adds to the story or not.  It does match the movie.  
 

Book Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne,   This is a new work from J.K. Rowling.  It is presented as a script for a play.  I would really like to see it performed.  Reading this scene to scene is very exciting.  It is one of those books you are compelled to keep going.  It is written in two parts with two acts in each part for a total of four acts.  Harry and Ginny’s youngest son, Albus Severus and Draco’s only son, Scorpius become fast friends at Hogwarts.  They are both in Slytherin House.  There is a rumor that Scorpius is the son of Voldemort.  He consequently has difficulty making friends.  But this story gets really interesting when the two boys decide to steal a time turner and go back in time to prevent the death of Cedric Diggory “the Spare.”  The are encouraged in this by Delphi, the nurse of Cedric's father who misses Cedric in his old age.  They find it is difficult to change the past, but more easy to screw things up.  They come back from two attempts to find the world entirely different.  In one universe Harry Potter died and Voldemort won.  This is a dark world.  In turning this seen right, they discover their accomplice is not who she says she is.  Turns out Delphi is in fact the daughter of Voldemort, whose goal is to change the past to make the present different.  Albus and Scorpius get sucked back in time with Delphi, to the time with Voldemort killed Harry's parents.  And she could have succeeded.  This book is about parenting, and being true to you friends.  It is family and friends that can help change the tide in the end.  In one of the alternate universes Harry Potter was a very bad father, driving his son away.  This story is terrific.  My only regret is that it had to come to an end.  I love these characters that Rowling created.