MAN OF LA MANCHA closes today, after a two-show day. Then it's off to the Titanic.

Yesterday I woke at 5 a.m. to commute up to the Poconos to do the first run-through of TITANIC. It went... well..? It's such a bear of a show. I remember when I second-acted it on Broadway and hated it. Knowing the show now, I know why I did.

A) The Broadway production wasn't particularly good.
B) Second-acting a show whose second act is primarily full of "evocative reprises" of single lines of songs from the first act doesn't do much for you.

Second-acting a show, for those of you unfamiliar with the practice, is what you do when you're bored in NYC and want to see theatre. You wait until the show lets out for intermission and intermingle with the crowd outside. It helps if you can find a discarded playbill. Then, when the mob returns inside, you let yourself be shuffled in with them.