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OLT play – The Ladies Foursome

The PolyBlog
October 8 2019

My wife and I have invested heavily in shows for the coming 2019-20 show across multiple venues. For Ottawa Little Theatre, they have nine shows planned for the season, and if we hadn’t went with lots of shows elsewhere, I’d probably have signed up for 5 or 6 of them. Instead, we held ourselves to just two. The first was from Norm Foster, a sequel to a previous golf one called The Foursome which we saw back in ’07. 

Generally, we love Norm Foster comedies. Some funny, some farcical, almost always enjoyable, and most of the castings and shows have worked. He’s probably my second favorite playwright after Dan Needles who created The Letter from Wingfield Farm and six sequels, and my favorite general playwright. I was just looking at his website and he has 52 plays listed. Holy doodle, I had no idea there were that many.

We saw the original show, The Foursome, about four college buddies coming home for a reunion and a round of golf. It was an interesting setup, as the show takes place in front of a backdrop of 18 holes on a golf course as they talk while getting ready to tee off. In effect, it means 18+ scenes. It was funny, I quite enjoyed it, and when it was over, I promptly forgot most of the details. I remember generally that there were old grudges and jealousies about current levels of success, or apparent success, but not the details. But it was positive overall, and when the Ladies Foursome came up as a sequel, it seemed like a no-brainer to get it. We have also liked The Long Weekend (two couples together, 2011), Maggie’s Getting Married (older sister meets groom, only to realize she knows him biblically, 2005), Ned Durango Comes to Big Oak (aging cowboy star in small town, 2004), and Here on the Flight Path (a man gets to know 3 consecutive neighbours on an adjoining balcony, 2003). 

So we like OLT. We like Norm Foster. We like the original Foursome. Should be a no-brainer that we’ll like The Ladies Foursome so it made my list immediately to see. And it crashed.

The quick summary of the show is that every week for 15ish years, four women have played a round of golf together. Except one has died, and the play takes place the day after the funeral. The three surviving members have invited a woman they met at the funeral to join them in her place. And like the Foursome, the Ladies Foursome talks about anything and everything except golf, which is the draw for people who don’t play golf. Golf is just the plot device to get them together. 

The opening bit is two of the women showing up, and starting to talk. Tate is feeling her mortality, and wondering what she’s accomplished in her life. Her friend reassures her that her life isn’t a failure, including mentioning that she has two beautiful children. To which she replies, “I have three children”. She did say “beautiful” children though. The other surviving member shows up, joins the conversation and tells her that she has two beautiful children. Repetition for the laugh. And while it doesn’t ring funny as I’ve explained it here, it is a standard playwright technique that Foster uses well, with callbacks to earlier lines, and it works. For now.

But afterwards, when we didn’t really enjoy the show, I started to wonder what went wrong? What was different?

Well, first of all, there are 20 scenes — 18 holes, plus the 19th hole, plus a little goodbye in the parking lot. That makes for a LOT of transitions and interruptions to the flow. It worked fine for The Foursome, but it was dragging for The Ladies Foursome.

The callbacks also started to grate. There was constant refs to her 2 beautiful children plus her son with the lazy eye as being not beautiful. Separate from just being non-PC or mean, the joke started to wear thin about the fourth call back. It was funny for two lines at the start, and then they flogged it to death. Similarly, there is a revelation that the guest who joins the trio is a gambling addict, and while her trying to make bets with them added some tension, it ultimately went nowhere, it ended up not being much of anything. In or out of the story, it made no difference to the outcome. Which then grated when they referred to it repeatedly long after the realization it wasn’t going to be relevant.

So these were technical, story problems, as the writing wasn’t up to normal standards. But I have to say, I think the cast failed the play too. We saw the second last performance, and by that point, most casts have the show down cold. While lots of people love the excitement of opening night, seeing it near the end of a short run means that timings are better, the cast will rarely miss a line, and if anything wasn’t working, it’s been tweaked. Even though it’s amateur theatre, they are usually nailing it near the end. In a long run, they might get tired, but on three weeks, they’re usually able to pull it off.

In this case, three of the characters flubbed multiple lines. I suspect some of that was technical — there is no real scene change for them from scene to scene, plus they’re really short, with no flow between them (i.e. some could be told out of order with no change in outcome). In other cases, they talked over each other’s lines. 

Yet they also seemed to put emphases in areas where they shouldn’t have been. When they note that Dory, the guest, didn’t know that the deceased had won the lottery a few years before and thus didn’t know EVERYTHING about the dearly departed, the others had a sinister hook to it wondering what she’s up to, and when the gambling is introduced, BADLY as a throw-away line with no meat to it, you’re made to think THAT’s the link. Nope. There isn’t one. But more importantly, two of the characters delay leaving the scene so they can talk privately, and one asks the other, “What does she know? Do you think our friend told her everything? Does she know what we DID?”. Dun dun dun. There’s a hidden secret, a plot development to come that adds some tension. Except it isn’t. The hook is supposed to be what she knows and how deeply about them. But because the cast member emphasized “DID” over “everything”, we all were waiting for the big secret. Did they kill somebody? Rig a lottery? What did they DO? Nothing. They did nothing. And I heard other audience members asking the same head-scratcher as they left, “Wait, what about…”.

I may be a bit biased, as the fourth member of the cast is someone we know, but I felt she did the best job with what she had. I felt a couple of the scenes could have been better, but more better written than better delivered. And as Dory, she has the role of Fifth Business — important information to reveal at the end. Which she does.

Leaving most people in the audience scratching their heads. It is 2019, and spoiler alert, a character being gay isn’t enough to get fired from her teaching job. If they had added a wrinkle of it being the ’80s or if it was a Catholic School Board, SOMETHING, or that Dory herself had been a distant Brokeback Mountain-style lover undercover, there would have been SOMETHING. Or add an estranged husband that was basically a beard. Instead, the revelation just fell flat. And honestly, considering everything else that was shared between the four, it’s hard to believe that the big supportive emotionally available departed friend never shared ANYTHING with any of the other three. She even had a partner she was seeing. Really? Everything you learn about the woman who died does NOT equate to her keeping her sexuality a secret. It just doesn’t seem to fit.

So we were disappointed overall. I think there’s a good story buried in there somewhere, but it drastically needs an editor and a better cast to deliver.

NAC Pops – Hollywood: The Epics

The PolyBlog
November 15 2015

Do you know the classic cliché that says, “I don’t know art but I know what I like”? That’s me attending an orchestra performance. I have never taken music (except things like ukelele or the recorder in school), I play no instruments, I can’t read sheet music. I’m not even well versed in Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, and if truth be told, my favorite classical piece is Beethoven’s 5th, which dooms me to the dustbin of the pop-version of classical music, not “real” classical according to the experts. For me, it has to be accessible, and so my wife and I have tickets to the Canadian National Arts Centre orchestra “Pops” series.

It’s not a cheap investment, generally running about $65 a ticket for six shows for two people (I’ll let you do the math). Add in a babysitter, and it makes for six date night outings that we plan for and generally use as our formal outings for the year i.e. we don’t plan too many other ones. We found that if we didn’t subscribe, we wouldn’t bother getting individual tickets and would just forget about it; so we go since we have the tickets, and we have the tickets so that we’ll go.

Even though I enjoy the Pops events, I generally prefer faster tempo pieces, more lively pieces over long slow string sections. Honestly, those can literally put me to sleep and I feel like they are almost lullabies-for-adults. Yes, I know, some of them were written that way intentionally, but I want to close my eyes and let my mind drift with the music. I tend not to do that with the Pops series, it just holds my attention better. I mention this as you need to know where the following review comes from, as it is not your typical review perhaps of an orchestral performance. I won’t debate in detail, for instance, the conductor’s choices in the third movement, or how the violinists seemed a tad too slow on a refrain portion.

Last night was the first outing of the year, entitled “Hollywood: The Epics”. Let me first get out of the way that, as always, the NAC orchestra performed brilliantly. If something was off in anyone’s performance, I would have little chance of noticing, and didn’t find anything offputting anywhere. It’s always crystal-clear sound, fantastic acoustics, although perhaps a bit biased by the fact that we sit near the orchestra and in the centre (sixth row last night).

The program was designed with eight items in the first half and nine in the second, but they did an opening impromptu playing of the French national anthem (while standing) in honour of the citizens of France dealing with the tragedies of the day before. It was a nice tribute, although a bit odd when the very next item was “Hurray for Hollywood” (Whiting). The opening number was a harbinger for me. They do something a couple of times a year with the orchestra, which is bring in a large choir to sing with them…in this case, two large choirs. About 75-80 people in total. If you like choral music, good on you, mate. If they were singing clear words of well-known songs, like Christmas hymns or songs, I’d be okay with it; for this item, about the only words I could make out were in the refrain of “Hurray for Hollywood”. Their voices are beautiful, but for me, it is a lot like spices in cooking…throw too many in, might as well be salt. So the choir adds nothing for me. I’d prefer one or two singers at the front, if at all. Nothing memorable in the opening.

As an aside, the NAC has ramped up their bilingualism in recent years, and while the conductor Jack Everly is not bilingual, they have a co-host/animatrice named Manon St-Jules who does a great job giving some info about the pieces in french, and then throwing it back to Jack. I have heard a few grumblings from other patrons about it, mostly from those who don’t understand what she’s saying, but I love her little bits (partly as I can follow most of it until she hits warp speed) and she brings passion and zest to her little spiels. Jack, by contrast, is all about background and trivia about the pieces, who worked with whom, what else they did, or in last night’s case, how certain scenes were filmed that the music was attached to during production.

Overall, I think the evening was a fair to middling set of pieces, and I’ll run through the list quickly for the “also-ran” items:

  • Main title from “Gone with the Wind” (Steiner) — interesting trivia about the King Kong set being repainted to look like Atlanta for the initial burning scene, but the song was sweeping but ho-hum;
  • Suite from “Titanic” (James Horner) — there was a nice slow build, but it was way too long, and not very exciting (hmm, kind of like the remake version of the movie!);
  • The Exodus song from “Exodus” (Gold) — meh, not sure how this fits into a “Pops” repertoire for anything other than the source, it was slow, boring and unremarkable;
  • “How the West Was Won” (Newman and Darby) — The trivia was interesting (Cinerama) and almost as long as the piece;
  • “It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad, world” (Gold) — This was very short, with lyrics I don’t remember from the movie (but it’s been a long time since I saw it), and completely worthless for posterity; and,
  • The Lord’s Prayer from “King of Kings” (Rozsa) — Classic, but unremarkable, even with (or because of?) the too large choir.

The second group includes those where it wasn’t particularly memorable, but where there were some interesting sub-elements:

  • Overture from “Hawaii” (Bernstein) — Introduced as representing four themes in the movie, it had a lively middle and concluded with a decent set of elements combined to represent a big storm, kind of cool development;
  • Prelude from “Ben Hur” remake (Rozsa) — I found the start quite strong, and seemed almost Asian interestingly enough, not sure why;
  • Overture from “Around the World in Eighty Days” (Young) — This had a great violin section at the start, sounded reminiscent of the start of a hot air balloon ride (continuing the movie metaphor) but it was slow, and didn’t really progress from there;
  • Main title from “Lawrence of Arabia” (Jarre) — The large drum work was good, and there was something going on in the middle with double bass or the trombone (as my wife identified) that was interesting, definitely not the flute or the piccolo, deeper and gave a different sound and feel to it, but it didn’t last long enough to be truly memorable; and,
  • Lara’s Theme from “Dr. Zhivago” (Jarre) — So quintessentially the sound used to represent Russia, it’s hard to imagine anything else.

The last group includes the stand-outs of the evening, and in increasing order of quality:

  • “El Cid” (Rozsa) — One of three pieces from Rozsa during the night (mostly Biblical style), and this one was in line with the other two except for one major element repeated throughout where the first violins play a small section that is then “answered” by the second violin section, almost like “dueling” or “arguing” violins… I don’t know how much of this is the original arrangement or a conductor’s choice, but it was really cool to see the conversation ripple across the stage as different elements answered the earlier pieces;
  • Danse des Enfants from “Napoleon” (Honegger) — this piece was short, but completely different from the rest of the night…where the others were dark, ambitious, ominous, serious, this one was light, playful, and a strong focus on the flute and piccolo, almost like a palate cleanser after a heavy meal, quite delightful;
  • Symphonic Suite from “The Magnificent Seven” (Bernstein) — This piece kicked off the second half of the night, and it is awesome — bold, definitive, a clear statement that resonates throughout the entire piece; and,
  • Symphonic Suite from “The Lord of the Rings” (Howard Shore) — This piece soared, bringing about easy images of flying, sweeping mountains, battles and more. I haven’t even seen all of the movies, and I loved it, so not sure if I’m doomed to pablum pieces or not, but it was truly “epic” music to match the theme of the night, and the only truly remarkable piece from the first half.

Any credibility I could ever attempt to claim on music is completely lost with my choice of best piece for the evening. I mentioned that Jack Everly is self-described as “steeped in trivia” and he did a fabulous little bit of trivia showing the music that accompanied the 20th Century Fox logo and the extended version of the logo music to also play while the Cinema scope logo appeared. The reason he played them was that it was about how they defined a lifetime of the studio, and the logos still often appear accompanied by the same music. It was the rampart that called people’s attention to the fact that this was a 20th Century production about to follow.

George Lucas wanted the same “hallmark”, and John Williams gave it to him, as exemplified by the last piece of the night, the main title from “Star Wars”. Maybe it’s the geek in me, maybe it’s the fact that Empire Strikes Back was one of the first movies I ever saw on my own with friends, and even one of the first five I ever saw in a theatre (rather than on TV or at the Drive-In). But John Williams piece is, and will always be, one of the iconic moments of Star Wars. So many scenes throughout the series use pieces of that opening as they transition from one scene to another, whether it be from space to Tatooine, Cloud City to Dagobah, or space battles to Endor. It combines the harsh overlord style of the Empire with the softer peaceful areas of some planets with the rebel uprising, with just a dash of old swashbuckling music thrown in to keep it lively and not quite so serious. I loved it, and it was awesome hearing a professional orchestra play the notes that a generation lived and breathed as they realized what a combination of effects and music could do, the places it could take you unlike any effort previously.

The same goal that all “Epic” music should aspire to, and few in the ensemble tonight delivered. Overall, the three way split between yawn, interesting bits, and really engaging left the evening being rather ho hum. But as ho hum nights go, there are worse ways than listening to a fantastic orchestra do its bit.

Help with a statistical question

The PolyBlog
April 19 2013

So I need help with a statistical question. It starts off relatively easy, and then I complicate it with two aspects that result in my having no idea how to handle it at all. Let’s start with the easy part. Let’s assume there are two ranked lists, and in the first instance I’ll just do five things in the list:

List OneList Two
  1. A
  2. B
  3. C
  4. D
  5. E
  1. D
  2. E
  3. C
  4. A
  5. B

What I want to know is how much the rankings in list one differ from list two. An easy way to do that (Solution A)  is to compare the differences:

  • A(L1) to A(L2) = three spots lower i.e. -3
  • B = three spots lower i.e. -3
  • C = same spot i.e. 0 change
  • D = three spots higher i.e. +3
  • E = three spots higher i.e. +3

Net result is essentially 0, as it should be…for every displacement in list 1 to list 2, there is a corresponding displacement of another item. In the end, they’ll net out at zero change.

So, the proper statistical technique (Solution B) would be to use nominal values — ignoring the +/- — and ending up with 4 changes of 3 spots and 1 change of 0, for a total of 12 spots of difference over 5 items in the list or an average difference of 2.4. So I could argue that the difference in rankings between list one and list two is about 2.5 spots on average. I’m okay up to that point. Not completely sure what that tells me, but it’s a number. I almost think I’m looking at two separate samples from a pool and calculating their degree of deviation from each other, but not quite since it is a full sample of the whole population (i.e. there are only five items in that example), not a “sample”, so I can’t use sampling methodology to see how different it is from some generic population.

So we come to the two complications…the first complication (call it C1) is of scale. My lists aren’t five items long, they are a 100 items long. I don’t think that complicates it too much, just one of “scope” more or less.

The second complication (C2) is much more insidious…the first list is fully ordered, #1-100. The second list, however, is grouped into five unequally sized tiers. I’ll use a smaller example than 100, just 10 to make it plain, and I’ll reverse them just so it is obvious the lists are different…I’ll also tuck in a third list that is for all intents and purposes identical to List One, just grouped differently:

List OneList TwoList Three
  1. A
  2. B
  3. C
  4. D
  5. E
  6. F
  7. G
  8. H
  9. I
  10. J
  1. I,J
  2. F,G,H
  3. D,E
  4. C
  5. A,B
  1. A,B
  2. C,D,E
  3. F,G
  4. H
  5. I,J

The obvious choice would be to convert List One or List Two to “match” each other…I could, for example, rank I vs. J in List Two to get a #1 and #2 slot, then F vs. G vs. H to get #3,4,5 (Solution C). However, that would require a lot of subjectivity on my part that isn’t very functional. In my list two example, I & J are basically “tied”, no way to differentiate them further.

I could however decide that, like in a sports competition:

  • I & J share rank “1”;
  • F,G,H share rank “3”;
  • D,E share rank “6”;
  • C would have rank “8”; and,
  • A & B would have rank “10”.

Seems like a good solution (Solution D), right? It’s the way tournaments do it. The problem is if I apply this technique to List Three, which is virtually identical to List One, just grouped into 5 levels instead of 10, the numbers don’t tell you that (i.e. 1: A,B; 2: C,D,E; 3: F&G; 4: H; 5: I&J). If I do comparisons, I’d end up with a total difference of “A=0, B =1, C=0, D=1, E=2, F=0, G=1, H=0, I=0, J=1” for a total of 6/10 or .6 difference), even though the lists are basically identical.

A second alternative (Solution E) to converting List Two/Three to List One format is to do “average” and uneven rankings…so from List Three, A&B wouldn’t be in position “1”, they would be between 1&2. So I would give them both the average of 1.5; C,D,E would average out at #4 (i.e. spots 3, 4, and 5, averaging out to spot 4), etc. Nominally this would work, i.e. they would “net out” correctly and not nominally, but I would still be left with calculating a difference not in terms of ranking but in terms of methodology of ranking.

Soooo, I think I need to find a way to convert List One into List Two/Three format. Since List Three shows me whether or not my methodology “works”, I’m going to compare List One and List Three for the next part. One way to convert L1 to L3 format is to just divide L1 into equal chunks (Solution F):

  1. A,B
  2. C,D
  3. E,F
  4. G,H
  5. I,J

This maintains the list format, divides it into equal chunks so not reflecting any bias of methodology in List Three, and preserves the ranking order. But if I then compare this “new” list one with List Three, I would get: A=0,B=0,C=0,D=0,E=1,F=0,G=1,H=0,I=0,J=0 for a net difference of 2 spots out of 10 items. It would show the list was “slightly” different, but not radically so, and would reflect essentially the difference in methodology in this “pure” example. Even if I bump it up to 100 items, those differences should be relatively minor. But again, primarily focusing on methodological differences.

Lastly, I have Solution G — I’ll convert List One into five levels, same as for List Three, but I will make them unequal size i.e. matching the size of the groups from List Three. If I do this for List One, it basically will look identical to List Three and comparing them would give me “net change = 0” and “nominal change = 0”. Which sounds good, but it basically means that I am “weighting” the results of List One to match the secondary lists’ ranking approach — for example, perhaps the original “weighting” would have been 9 items in Level 1 and 1 item at Level 5, but I wouldn’t know that.  Instead, I’m imposing the ranking / weightings of List Two/Three’s methodology onto the pre-established list in List 1.

Summary

  • Solution A (Net changes, matching lists) — doesn’t work as nets out and lists aren’t matched in my applied example;
  • Solution B (Nominal changes, matching lists) — doesn’t work as lists are matched in my applied example;
  • Solution C (Re-rank List 2) — doesn’t work as no way to differentiate List 2;
  • Solution D (Sports tournament) — doesn’t work on similar lists, adds a methodological problem to a ranking approach;
  • Solution E (Average rankings) — doesn’t work as it eliminate second methodological problem but still leaves measurement of the different approaches to rankings;
  • Solution F (Equal chunks) — semi-works but it would still measure difference in methodology and ranking approach; and,
  • Solution G (Weighted chunks) — semi-works as it reflects nominal change of 0 in matching lists, but adds bias of second ranking approach.

The only other thought I had was to combine the results of Solutions D, E, F, and G and take an average of the four approaches. Not sure if that helps or if I’m just compounding my methodological and ranking problems.

Would love some thoughts if anyone has any to share…FYI, this is for personal use, not a work issue, so it doesn’t have to be entirely statistically pure, but I would like a little more comfort with an approach than I have for Solution G currently.

Watching Castle – "Significant Others" (S05E10)

The PolyBlog
January 10 2013

I know the ‘shippers love the idea of Castle and Beckett working out on the show, dating, etc. But it is really starting to overwhelm the episodes. Earlier this season it was their parents meeting; this week’s episode involves Alexis being sick and her mom (i.e., Richard’s ex) coming to stay with her while she’s sick. All at Castle’s apartment, all while Beckett is staying there cuz her place is being fumigated. Most of it is just a waste, except for a scene where you see the ex-wife running around in skimpy clothing, making Beckett all insecure about her intentions.

However, what really annoys me is that the big “change” in the episode (small spoiler alert!) is when Beckett and the ex go out for dinner together, kiss and make up, everything’s great, etc. Except the VIEWER DOESN’T SEE ANY OF IT. It all happens off-stage. So, the writers tell me this relationship and how it impacts on others is super important but then resolves it off-screen? Whose idea was that???? The intern’s????

For the mystery of the week, I have to say it was incredibly weak. Divorce attorney killed, whole situation smacks of revenge, let’s look at the suspects, etc. Yet, and I will throw out a big spoiler alert here, the motive for the murder is almost non-existent. It is painfully obvious in about scene 2 that the wife who went missing-and-presumed-dead years before is still alive and that she will pop up again near the end. It’s a slim thread that gets hammered on three times in about five minutes so the audience doesn’t miss the significance, so the fact that it will be relevant to the resolution is too obvious. Except the wife didn’t do much wrong — she faked her own death, sure, but she didn’t profit by it, she did it to escape an abusive husband. She’s got a new husband, lives in area (really? they would stick around???), but are the legal hassles she’ll have when the truth comes out enough to cause her to switch to murder? After all, this is the woman who had a drunk abusive husband in front of her on a boat in the middle of nowhere and left him alone. But the divorce attorney who might reveal her secret should get murdered. Sorry, that one was way too hard to swallow.

The only two gems in the entire episode were Lainey advising Beckett to “mark her territory” at Castle’s and a final conversation between Castle’s ex-wife and Beckett where the ex says one of the reasons they broke up was that Castle was too private a person, i.e. sharing was too one-way, a point that resonates with Beckett on a deep level.

Season premiere – Rizzoli & Isles

The PolyBlog
January 10 2013

Showcase just kicked off the second season of Rizzoli & Isles (originally aired in 2011), and it has a very slow start. At the end of Season 1, Rizzoli was being held hostage, various people had been shot at the station, she was asking people to shoot the bad guy holding her, etc. When they didn’t, she turned the gun in his hand and shot him through her, taking him out. Of course, she’s in a bit of pain even three months later when the episode starts, as she’s being awarded a medal for being a hero. At the same ceremony (why would it be the same ceremony? It wouldn’t, but let’s go with it), a female military officer named Abby is getting an award for her work overseas. Just after the ceremony, a car bomb takes out the other officer. The episode is pretty good overall, just a slow start with getting Rizzoli up and around, back to work, etc.

The mystery part is not very good though — it is painfully clear really really really early that it is not a terrorist attack but rather a personal hit on Abby, and since one of the few things we know about Abby is that she was wounded in battle and she used to date one of her fellow soldiers, it isn’t that big a stretch to figure out one or both of those issues are the cause (actually it turns out one is a clue, the other is the cause). Yawn. On the personal front, I was excited that Rizzoli has a new beau, and they even end up in bed together but apparently do not have full sex (not sure why, they just don’t, even though they used to date and are clearly adults now who want each other). I was initially REALLY excited that Rizzoli’s mom and dad split up cuz I hate the Mom and I hoped this would reduce her role — unfortunately, quite the opposite. Mom now pops over to Rizzoli’s house cuz she’s bored. Maybe it’ll improve, but at least the interactions between Rizzoli and Isles are fun. Would be more fun if THEY were dating each other, but alas, apparently prime time is either not ready for that or felt that it would undermine their characters (“strong powerful, oh, they must be lesbians” would indeed be a bit of a cliche, I suppose).