Two friends went and they seriously considered leaving during intermission.

Received this email. They're giving away tickets for this weekend. Not a good sign.

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We are offering complimentary tickets to SHREK THE MUSICAL at The 5th Avenue Theatre (1308 5th Avenue) for the following performances:

Wed 9/17 at 7:30 PM – deadline to RSVP is Wed 9/17 at 12:00 PM noon

Thurs 9/18 at 8:00 PM – deadline to RSVP is Thurs 9/18 at 10:00 AM

Friday 9/19 at 8:00 PM – deadline to RSVP is Friday 9/19 at 10:00 AM

Sunday 9/21 at 7:00 PM – deadline to RSVP is Friday 9/19 at 10:00 AM

If you are interested please email dwtheatrical@dreamworks.com and specify the performance, number of tickets (not to exceed 6), name for will call and the organization you represent. Tickets are first come first serve, and you will receive a confirmation. Tickets will be left at will call one hour prior to each performance and I.D. is required to pick up the tickets. Please know that this is an almost 3 hour, sit-in-your-seat production, and as such is not appropriate for really young children.

Let's clear something up here.

They're giving out free weekend tickets because after the coming Sunday show, they're packing up the entire production and shipping it down to New York for the next round. It's a "Goodbye and thank you, Seattle" thing, not a "Wow, we're screwed" thing.

Please also note that the show is still totally a work in progress, and is literally changing by the day. Live theatre is really a difficult thing to pull off, and there are people at that production literally pulling out their hair trying to make it shorter, better, funnier, etc.

And I'm willing to bet that your friends got free preview tickets to the show, and probably wouldn't have gone to a musical otherwise. That I can understand, I hate musicals too, but again, was given a comp ticket by someone gracious enough to invite me in. And that's what this coming weekend is about.

So c'mon, let's be polite here. No bitching allowed.

Here starts the hunt, again and again in the theater rows from balcony to chandelier... hide from your deamons... the devils in your bed are laughing.

Just surfing the net and noticed this article in the Stranger. We have a theatre reviewer (critic is not a word I'd use for someone who knows as much about theatre as I know about auto mechanisms) and she wears shawls as well. They probably have cats, sensible shoes, live alone, and feel very responsible in thrusting their opinions on the populace at large and eroding the efforts of a lot of young, talented people.