The Moore (but not of Venice)

Last Saturday, Captain Midnight, V and I went to the Moore Theater to see a traveling production of "The Screwtape Letters."

The Moore is an aging theater -- lots of grandiose style to make up for the fact that the paint is peeling and the gingerbread is missing in places. Here's the proscenium arch, as seen from our spot in the Nosebleed Section.

And the main chandelier above the proscenium arch...

...flanked by several smaller chandeliers.

In the balcony it's easy to spot the rough concrete ceiling above all the gewgaws.

The show would have been fantastic if it hadn't been so hard to hear what the main actor was saying. The Moore has... um... interesting acoustics, his body mike wasn't properly adjusted, he spoke a mile a minute in several places, and we were (as previously mentioned) in the Nosebleed Section. The combination produced a torrent of reverberating gobbledygook which was extremely difficult to follow, even if you were very familiar with the book from which this play was taken. Miss V was hard pressed to follow any of it, which made me feel a little sad -- I think she would have enjoyed it if she could have understood what was being said.