Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Keith and I went to see the Addams Family musical at the Orpheum in St. Paul tonight. He dropped me off at Rice Park so I wouldn’t have to walk. It is very nice to be dropped off. There was a dancing group doing their thing in the park. I felt like I was in Europe, having traditional dances performed. They had clarinet, violin, accordion, and drum accompaniment. And sticks! Sometimes they clanked sticks together and some time they tossed them to each other and sometimes they banged them on the ground. I liked the sticks. We stayed and watched until we had to get to the show.
The show started and the orchestra played the song and people in the audience clapped. I don’t mean they were appreciative. I mean the band went doodlydoo and the audience went clap clap. What? Why are you here if you don’t know it is snap snap? What was going on? There was loud, recorded snapping in the right places, but most of the audience clapped. Oh, Minnesota. You disappoint me.
We got tickets because Keith remembered seeing it before and really liking it. I agreed, but in a nebulous way. I was sure we had seen it, but didn’t remember much. I figured it out during the first act – we had definitely never seen this before. At intermission, I said as much nearly at the same time that Keith said he remembered it all and still really liked it.
Huh.
It was good. I liked it. For maybe the first time. (He could have gone without me)
I think those dancing dudes are “Morris Dancers.” Something you see in England (the British folks make fun of them a lot), but not in Minnesota or pretty much anywhere else in the U.S. Maybe they’re British and just trying to escape the harassment.
Keith looked them up last night and agrees with you – Morris dancers. He also read about the not-so-kind reception in UK. What the heck, UK? I was very entertained. I bet it would be lots of fun to be part of the team, putting together new choreography.
There are apparently two different Morris dance troupes in the area: Minnesota Traditional Morris and Uptown-on-the-Lakes Morris Dancers. But the interesting thing is that based on the pictures of each of these groups and schedules at their websites, these people weren’t either of them. Maybe some new rogue Morris dance troupe.