Weekend Highlights:Little Women

With all the feng shui planning going on I completely forgot to mention the real weekend highlights. We started the weekend early on Friday. My hubby and I took our nieces and nephew to the Universal City Walk for the afternoon. Oh to be that young and carefree again – you can not imagine the thrill these kids had over playing with miniature toy dogs, splashing in the water fountain, running in open spaces, and eating pretzels dusted with cinnamon sugar. Spending time with these kids is just as thrilling for us, not to mention great practice for when we have our own! Later on, we met with my BIL and SIL for dinner at Buca di Beppo and afterwards caught part of a concert benefiting Hurricane Katrina victims.

On Saturday we went to see the new home of two of our very good friends in Arcadia. It was really nice catching up with them and playing with their adorable baby boy. They in turn invited us to a great, authentic Thai lunch at this place called President’s Thai. The company was, as always, awesome and the food was so incredibly good. (Not like a lot of the hole-in-the-wall Thai places we've been to in L.A. and the South Bay). I can’t say enough about the spicy green chicken curry with lots of fresh basil, the tender beef satay with just-the-right-sweetness peanut sauce, the tasty ho-fan-like noodle dish, and the shrimp tom yang soup with a kick! Not to mention the flourless chocolate cake for dessert - yum! Later that afternoon, we stopped by the place of another family friend (whose daughter was celebrating her birthday that day) – we could only stay a while since we had just enough time to get to Orange County.

The real weekend highlight was of course the long-awaited Little Women musical at the O.C. Performing Arts Center. It was AWESOME. Watching the play made me fall in love with the story all over again. The musical chronicled the adventures of Jo March as a writer in New York, but seamlessly interspersed that with flashbacks of her life in Boston during the Civil War, growing up with her sisters Meg, Beth and Amy as well as their loving Marmee. It is such a timeless story – both poignantly funny and sad at times – but so full of life and incredible spirit.

The musical is fairly new and so I didn’t recognize any of the songs but in some way everything seemed so familiar. Since I am no theater expert, I am not going to write a lengthy review of the musical. Suffice it to say the play was well written, the actors were superb (especially Kate Fisher who really showed off the spirit of Jo March and Maureen McGovern who was every bit the way I imagined Marmee would be), the songs were entertaining, and the stage backdrop was top class.

The only thing I noticed was that some parts of the original story were edited (as I guess is the norm in most theater or film adaptations). Some of these were my favorite parts though – like Amy’s writing her will patterning it after Aunt March’s, Marmee giving each of the girls a little Pilgrim’s Progress guidebook on Xmas morning, the March sisters giving up their Xmas breakfast for the Hummel family, and the part where the girls first meet Laurie from next door. Also the musical made no mention at all of gentle and loyal Hannah (their housekeeper) who I’ve always considered as part of their family. But despite that, I truly had a fabulous time and found myself both laughing and crying as I got caught up in the lives of the March sisters.

P.S. My hubby seemed to enjoy it too – for the most part.