Rabbit Hole

Thursday night I went to my first TOFT shoot, because I wanted to see Rabbit Hole. I met some of the camera guys for the first time, and all of the video crew were very nice and welcoming. It was also fun to see several celebrities at the show. I saw Amy Brenneman as well as another actor from Judging Amy whose name I don't know, but he plays Tyne Daly's boss. The best celebrity sighting however was Mrs. Garrett from The Facts of Life. She was recently in an Encores! production of a Kander and Ebb musical called 70 Girls 70 which we had taped, and she asked if she could come to the library to see it. She was charming and nice, I hope she comes (she's going back to LA on Thursday). I gave her Patrick's card so she could call and tell us when she's coming, and I tried to be very professional and polite, but the whole time I was thinking, "I'm talking to Mrs. Garrett, I'm talking to Mrs. Garrett!" and "That's what you get for your evil ways, hmmmm." The latter is a quote from a fantastically bad (by which I mean it's very bad as well as very fantastic) movie called The Worst Witch.
Okay, about the play. It was very good. It's about a couple whose 4-year-old son gets killed in a car accident, and how they try to get over it. The actors were all good, but I felt that Tyne Daly was really the stand out. She was so funny, and so heartfelt; I'm so glad I got the chance to see her in action on the stage. The other star of the show was the set. It's a John Lee Beatty set (he's a very famous scenic designer for good reason), so I knew it would be beautiful, but it was really breathtaking. I don't know if there's any way I can describe it, but I'll try. The set is a very realistic house set, and there are three rooms. But remarkable thing is that the room is built over two turntables, so when a scene is done, the turntables turn, splitting the room you were looking at in two, and a new room comes together, does that make sense? So you start off in the kitchen, but the next scene is in the sitting room, and so the set turns around and it's the sitting room. Like I said, it's very hard to explain, but it was so amazing to see. They really used it to full effect as well. There's one scene where you watch the wife in her son's room on one half of the stage, and the husband in the family room on the other half of the stage. And when any given room is showing, you can't tell that it's cut in half, it looks solid. Anyway, you'll just have to come to the library and see it for yourself, but trust me, it was pretty amazing.