Opening Night

So....
For anyone who's interested and doesn't mind spending money to see people mess up a lot go to an opening night show of, well I'm assuming, any show ever put on the stage. This being the third time seeing The Phantom of the Opera on the stage I didn't mind -- in fact, it was really entertaining.
Most of the mistakes were made by the stage techs (lighting people, prop movers and whatnot), but there were a few made by the actors as well. The most noticeable mistake of the night would have to be the prologue scene transitioning to the opening scene. For anyone who has seen it I'm sure you know what I'm talking about and for those of you who haven't here's a brief description:
The prologue takes place during an action at the closed down opera house. Everything is draped in dark cloth including a broken chandelier on the stage. During the transition there is supposed to be the illusion of going back in time to when the chandelier wasn't broken and the opera house was in its prime. They do this by pulling all the grey sheets off of everything and raising the chandelier back to the ceiling. In all other productions that I've seen this transition runs very smooth and it does seem a little like magic -- this time it was anything but magic. Two of the sheets didn't want to pull away and it took then the entire intro song to pull one of the sheets off and the other remained half draped down one of the walls through the entire first act. When it was finally pulled down during intermission the audience cheered. Apparently I wasn't the only person who knew how it was supposed to look.
There was a couple lighting issues, one being the moment a spotlight shone in an area that there was no action or actors and a couple of moments where the spot wasn't following the actor very well -- which I don't blame the spot for at all. I did spotlight for a high school play and I remember how frustrating it is when an actor does stuff different than what they did in rehearsal.
Then there were the actor mistakes: lines missed or screwed up and the moment when several people ran on stage a little bit before their scene. Overall a very amusing production.
I still love the show and always will, but I wouldn't mind seeing it a second time after they've worked all the kinks out.

The rest of the night was much like any other night out with my mother and for anyone who knows what that means -- well you know what that means. Enjoy a good laugh.