Phantom

I have a longstanding love of musicals.  I am 99% sure it is inherited from my parents, who are so musically gifted and passed the love of music onto my sister and I.  (I'm not really sure they passed the gift of being able to make music onto us, but that's neither here nor there.)  I can remember my dad playing in pit orchestras for all the local musicals for as long as I can remember, and my mom would sing show tunes as she cleaned the house.  So needless to say, I was so excited when Alex told me a couple of months ago that Johannesburg had extended their run of Phantom of the Opera and it would still be playing when I arrived!

Alex and I went to go see Phantom the weekend after we arrived at a venue called Montecasino.  Montecasino is essentially this huuuuuge indoor/outdoor 'entertainment center'.  Alex compared it to Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas--Montecasino has a live theatre, numerous gambling areas, a myriad of restaurants, weird stores (in the USA-themed store we found Coors Light and Dr. Pepper...soooo excited), a movie theatre, and much more.  

We both got all dressed up for a lovely date night...and were definitely overdressed.  Most of the people there were in jeans and t-shirts; they had obviously been taking advantage of the gambling Montecasino had to offer and just threw in a musical viewing for good measure.

The performance was pretty good!  Sets were lovely, acoustics were good, and the cast did very well.  It was an entirely South African (read: all Afrikaans except one black man) cast, but they had decent French accents and sang without a trace of Afrikaans accent.

After the show, Alex and I ate at a very mediocre Italian restaurant in the Montecasino complex.  

All in all, it was a great first date in JoBurg!

Pardon the poor quality BlackBerry photo...