I just fall more and more in love with APT

Last night, Tom, Anna and I went to see Of Mice and Men at American Players Theatre. 
 Best $21.50 ever spent. 
The drive up was about an hour and a half, which wasn't bad with the pair I was with, even though my radio is broken.
Anna took some pictures of me driving. That was nice of her, I guess? 

After a bit of a silly drive up, and a VERY slow Subway employee at making our dinners, we were afraid we'd be late for the show. Especially because we still needed to buy our tickets. 

Thankfully, we got our tickets (great seats, as well), and made it into the theater JUST before it began.

It was magic. 

Everything about that show was exactly as I remembered it from the book. I loved it so much when I read it to begin with, but this level of magic and devotion was something that made me cry. 

Steinbeck has always been important to me, but now more so. 

Riley was reading East of Eden when I met him. I remember vividly how old, and worn his copy was. He said he'd taken it from his high school library. There were due date stamps all over the inside of the falling-off cover.
That was the day we became friends. 

When I heard that Of Mice and Men was playing at APT, I knew I had to see it for him.
He would have loved it.

Watching the show and reading the book were two distinctly different experiences. While I was reading it, I was caught up by the wording and the characters. They were interesting and diverse from that which I've known. The events of the story were sad, but acceptable. Everything happened because it had to. 

Watching the play was so much more moving:

When Curly's wife went to see the men, because she had nobody to talk to, George explains to her that she'll cause them nothing but trouble by saying:
"You're like a round pebble. If a man comes along and trips over ya and falls and breaks his leg, now it's not the pebble's fault; but he sure as hell wouldn't have tripped if ya hadn't been there."

This comes into play when she and Lenny are sitting in the barn, and both of them have monologues that intersect with one another: Lenny about George and the rabbits, and he remembers things that George had been needing to tell him repeatedly all through the show, and Curly's Wife about her alcoholic father who she should have run away with.
She was Lenny's pebble. If she hadn't been there, then he wouldn't have killed her, and he wouldn't have had to run from the men, and George wouldn't have had to shoot Lenny. 

The best part of the show was the last scene, when the men split up looking for Lenny: it started to rain lightly. 

As Jim DeVita, who played George, spoke to Lenny, played by Brian Mani, and told him that they would still get their little place and live off the fat of the land, DeVita told Mani to take off his hat, and feel how nice the rain felt. 

George retold the old description of their place, while Lenny looked over the horizon trying to see it. As the ending of the worn description came, Lenny said he could see the place. He could see it, just over the horizon. 

And with a painfully moving expression, George shot Lenny. And the lights fell. 

And the rain stopped. 

When the lights came up and the actors took their bows, I realized I had been crying. 

I want to work here so bad. 

Much love, best wishes.