Weighty issues

MistyCyclops was taken to the vet for her check up. She looks so tiny on the scales. And she is tiny. When she was admitted to the emergency vet she weighed 3.7kg, and now she weights 2.7kg. She is of course minus one spleen, one tumour, some fluff which had to be shaved off, and a load of sloshy blood.

We are supposed to feed her up but she is being extremely fussy and is more inclined to eat when hand fed. We have discovered she will eat tuna, ham, Iams cat biscuits and soup. We are trying to force these things down her.

She is doing well otherwise.

Went to see Dirty Dancing this evening at the Playhouse. I thought it would be a musical - first mistake. It isn't a musical. I had assumed that like Legally Blonde they would take a film, sing some of the original songs, and add in some new ones to further the plot. Instead it has music, and occasionally someone sings it at the side of the stage, but it is incidental music and so is pretty much a direct rehash of the film. There is also a surprisingly small amount if dancing. So in these respects I was disappointed.

I was also surprised at how they managed to take an hour and a half long film, convert it into an hour and a half long play without adding anything new - but also take out any depth or integrity that the original had. I felt it was entirely stripped of the painful coming of age juxtapositions in the film - Baby with her parents / other guests / her sister / the staff / society. Her big ideas and her concurrent naivety. Which meant that for me it was lacking in charm and human interest.

What it did have was a few good lines that the audience *loved* ("I carried a watermelon" and "Nobody puts Baby in the corner") but without the human interest behind them they were just meaningless words over-egged for the audience. So basically it was just panto. And I'm not keen on panto.

I'm giving it a 3* though. It was fine to watch, it did not offend me (unlike last year's Christmas show We Will Rock You which I found painfully bad). The audience loved it. The set was excellent and what dancing there was was good. I thought the actor playing Baby did a good job of acting learning to dance. Johnny had some charisma. And there was one or two bits that showed it wasn't taking itself too seriously. Thank God.