This Encores! revival made mefeel "light as a bumblebee"

 The wonderful Encores!   concert series   did  a wonderful   production  of   a Lerner and Loewe  musical   with  a  wonderful score but    troublesome book that probably accounts for it's neglect since 1951.  While the lyrics aren't   on a par with Oscar Hammerstein or Stephen Sondheim   we did catch a  few  very apt  similes.

  The one below  by   the top name  beneath the title, Keith Carradine,  served  as  a nice  lead-in quote:
 I sure wish your mother was here. She'd know what to do. She was a real lady. She could read and she could write, just like you will someday. And she talked softer than a leaf hittin' water.


Here are a few other catchy ones. . .
 You’re as useless as a milk-can in a bullpen --
I’m feeling higher than a lark can sing
Oh what a day!/ I'm feeling flighty as a bumblebee!

 Here's a link  to my review of the show  curtainup/encorespaintyourwagon.html
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Life is like a train!
A roaring rushing train!
You get on at the beginning,
You get off at the end.
  
The train inspiring  this similistic ditty is, of course,  the once   fabulous  20th Century    with its  redcaps, plush compartments and other amenities.  In  the new  revival of  the musical  screwball comedy , On the Twentieth Century,    the four tap-dancing  porters  (no wheelies needed back in  1932)  who  introduce the 2nd act with that ditty stop the  exuberant show.

For  more about the show, here's a link to  my revie
wwww.curtainup.com/onthe20thcentury15.html

Similes from A Month of the Country now at Classic Stage

New York's  Classic Stage Company, an off-Broadway Company that  attracts   actors with bog office magnetizing names  is currently  presenting a  fine revival of Ivan Turgenev's    A Month in the  Country.

 Typical  of these long-ago  Russian plays,   there are plenty of  interesting  secondary characters with their  own subplots-- in this case romantic interests.   The most amusing of these is between the play's  country doctor  and  a  spinster,   which   lacks the sizzling passion of  the Country Estate's  beautiful  doyenne.   To wit  a hilarious   no-nonsense proposal which  nevertheless insures that the Good  Doctor  has a   fully  functioning libido  as indicated  by his assurance  that    her "somewhat old-maidish" ways will be no problems  since  "in the hands of a good husband, a woman is like soft wax." <br><br>



I  also liked this  this extend   simile in which the    beautiful, Natalya  tells  her  best  brainy friend  bored  chatelaine of a Russian estate who falls madly in love with her child's tutor.  She also has a flirtatious friendship with a  friend Ratikin   whose way with words   she  enjoys  but that don't move  her:

 "You’re clever, but... your words are like lace – intricate and beautifully constructed. But you know how they make it? Lace? In airless rooms without windows, hunched over their work fourteen hours a day. Lace is lovely, but give me a drink of fresh water on a hot day any time."

Here's a link  to my review of the production www.curtainup.com/monthinthecountrycsc15.html

Colorful speech comes natural to the Irish--

 New York's invaluable Irish Rep Theater  is currently  reviving Hugh Leaonard's  D a--   the title character being the father   from whom his son Charlie  would like to distance himself.  But this being an Irish play,  the  old guy refuses to stay put   even after he's  dead --  or as   Charlie puts it
"he keeps coming back  like  a  yo-yo."

This being a memory play  we also  see Charlie being interviewed for his first job  by the dour Mr.  Drumm  who    knows  the boy is too smart for it  and  advises him not to  take it with this pungent simile    "jobs are like lobster pots, harder to get out of than into. . ."  And sure enough,  it takes thirteen years for Charlie to  get out of that figurative lobster pot.

Once he  is in London and a successful playwright  he wants his aging Da  to   come live with him and greets the old man's refusal with  "you'd rather stay here  instead like a maggot in a cabbage and die of neglect."

Here's a link to Curtainup's   review  of  the production
www.curtainup.com/dairishrep15.html

My culture is dying--like salt--a simile fromSarah Ruhl's new play

#Sarah Ruhl  is  a playwright with an  original and  often poetic voice.   Her latest play, The Oldest Boy is  about  a woman married to a Tibetan  Buddhist faced with the   shocking news that her child might be a  reincarnated Lama.   Her husband at first resisted marrying  her as it would mean being untrue to the  demands of his  cultural heritage,  the   romance does  move forward  despite  his metaphorical  reasoning  below:

I have to marry someone of my culture. My culture is dying. It's like salt I have to marry someone of my culture. My culture is dying. It's like salt dissolving into water, my people dissolving. If you put a small amount of salt into a very large pool of water, and take a sip, the water is no longer salty. It disappears.

Here's the link to my full review:    www.curtainup.com/oldestboy14.html

A #simile from #Suzan-Lori Parks masterful new play

 S#uzan-Lori Park has written her best and most ambitious play yet.  If  the  other triptyches  planned to take her  Civil War  odyssey,  #When Father Comes Home From the War (Parts 1, 2, 3)  to the present,  are as good, she's sure to win another Pulitzer.
Her theme is ambitious,  her writing both lyrical  and earthy.   Here's  her central character, the anti-heroic Her's   similistic sum-up of   the choice faced when his master offers him freedom if he accompanies him to  the battlefield.

He dangled it in front of me. My Freedom.  Like a beautiful carrot. Like a diamond. And those scraps of uniform and the diamond Freedom glittered . . .but while I so wanted to I was still thinking on the bald fact that in his service  I will be helping out on the wrong side.

 Here's a link to my  full review:   www.curtainup.com/fathercomeshome14.html

F for metaphors- A+ for The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

The  thrillingly staged  New York production of  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is about a 15-year-old autistic savant.  One of his quirks is an absolute  belief in truth-telling which to his thinking turns even a metaphor into a lie. And so he  explains why  he feels  his teacher's example of metaphors into untruths:

 He was the apple of her eye. (Christopher:  imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have
anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget
what the person was talking about.a pig is not like a day)
They had a skeleton in the cupboard. (Christopher: People do not have skeletons in their cupboards)
 He was the apple of her eye. (Christopher:  imagining an apple in someone’s eye doesn’t have
anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget hat the person was talking about.

But  though comparison  phrases  don't  get  a  good  review from Christopher,  our review of  Adam Sharp's  performance and this  unusual    play  is  an A-plis.

To read all about it www.curtainup.com/curiousincidentbway14.html