Sunday, January 29, 2012

No "Jolly Holiday" For Me


For the first 9 months of 2011 I faithfully followed the itinerary and schedule for the national touring company production of Disney’s stage version of “Mary Poppins.” The closest it came was a stop in Indianapolis, Indiana four hours away. I decided that it was a bit too far to go.  By September the cities listed as part of the tour didn’t come any closer. So I stopped watching the website.

Last Saturday night Paula and I went to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center to see the musical “Spamalot.” While we were there much to my surprise and delight I saw that “Mary Poppins” was coming to Nashville March 20 for 5 days of performances. The most amazing thing about that was that we already had tickets to go see a comic at the Rymon Auditorium on the evening of March 23. We have tentative plans to spend the night in Nashville and go to the zoo the next day. We could go to the scheduled “Poppins” performance that night.

I knew that if there was any chance of getting tickets I had to buy them very soon. So today I logged on to the TPAC website. Soon my excitement turned disappointment. I found out that there were a very limited number of seats still available for the performances. In addition they were the farthest away from the stage. The price was not worth the view.

I also found out that the week before it goes to Nashville the tour stops at the Kentucky Center in Louisville, which is only 90 minutes away. But the ticket availability, or lack of it, was exactly the same as TPAC.

In one last effort to get tickets I looked on Stub Hub. I found some pretty good seats there but they started at over $125 each. If they think I’m going to pay that kind of price to go see a stage show they can “go fly a kite”.

So it looks like there will be no “Jolly Holiday” for me. I really “missed the carousel” on this one. I’m extremely disappointed. Even a spoonful of sugar won’t help this “medicine” go down.