astradele

Having just returned from Play! – a video game symphony, I’m still giddy. Live concerts are already an improvement over a recording on any sound system. Add in nostalgia and it’s a reliving of childhood, before worldly concerns tempered play and enjoyment with responsibility.

Before I glow even more about the occasion, I’ll note that the Hummingbird Centre’s audio and light-work needs work. It sounded like the audio was over-amplified (slight noise during silence) and the high frequencies were over-emphasized (slight tinniness). The spotlight crew also had a hard time finding the announced celebrities that were in attendance.

Speaking of celebrities in attendance, the biggest was Nobuo Uematsu, who sat in the audience with the rest of us. Sitting with him was the composer for Shenmue, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi. There were several other notables mentioned, some for their musical prowess, but the two above were the ones that stuck in my mind.

Final Fantasy songs featured strongly, of course: Liberali Fatalis from FF8, the Chocobo theme done in a swing style, and Aeris’ Theme and One Winged Angel of FF7 as the finale. Shenmue, Chrono Cross, Chrono Trigger, Metal Gear Solid, Kingdom Hearts, and World of Warcraft also featured, as well as songs for the very-new: Pray and Blue Dragon (Nobuo Uematsu’s latest). There were also remixes of older mainstays: Super Mario Brothers, Sonic the Hedgehog, Castlevania. There were several others, including an impressively complex percussion solo by Chris Tilton on a simple bongo.

For some songs there were clips of the video game on the overhead screens, mixed in with camera-work of the orchestra. There was also a score for a game I can’t remember (i.e. never played) that used an electric guitar with the standard orchestral suite for an astonishingly enjoyable effect.

I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much at an event in, quite literally, years. Laughing with delight as they announced the title before playing the score, grinning as they showed video game clips from the NES and SNES era, Play! made my day, and the next several ones, too. I’m very, very grateful to the one who invited me to this event.

“I am not a dinner mint” – an unusual theatrical title. Knowing only from the ads that the target demographic was “sisters, mothers, daughters”, I wasn’t sure what to expect, much less expecting great enjoyment.

Certainly the play is written for women, and the relationships from their point of view. However, it’s hardly male bashing; if anything, it’s “female bashing”: about the self-harming actions that women take.

There is some black culture influence in the beginning, which disappears later. The literal content – hard to call it a plot as the play is a series of anecdotes – is not particularly surprising or noteworthy, but the method of delivery, and the passion with which it is delivered, is. Some of the scenes and some of the actresses were particularly moving.

I recommend the show to those who might ask me. It’s not expensive as plays go, and while there may not be much novel insight, there’s value in emotional reminders that buttress what the intellect already knows. It’s the difference between knowing of the poor and needy in the world, and actually seeing how they live; there’s no net change in known facts, only in personal impact.