More Musicals! (or Another Season At Pantages)

Earlier this year, the Pantages announced the 16-17 season for musicals. This past season I didn’t have season tickets (I did the Black Friday deal instead) but I had them the season prior and it was so much fun! And most of the shows in the coming season looked pretty awesome so I was happy to order season tickets. Plus, the last show of this coming season is “Hamilton” and for what we paid for our season, single ticket buyers will be paying for that show!

We ordered our season tickets so long ago that it seemed like the first show would never get here! But this past Sunday, we finally had our first show of the season! This time, there are 4 of us in the group for the tickets and since we all live pretty close to each other we are planning on carpooling for the shows. We decided to go a bit early on Sunday so we could get some dinner before the 6:30pm show.

Fortunately there are a bunch of places to eat near Pantages, so we should be able to try a bunch of different restaurants over the 7 show season that we have. And most of them are quick service places so we should always have time before the show to go get dinner. While we were eating, we were talking a lot about how excited we were to have our first show of the season. The show was “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” and while I saw the Tony Awards performance recently, I have never seen the show or the movie. I had no idea what I was in for, but I like to be surprised.

When we bought our season tickets, it wasn’t easy to find 4 seats in a row in the price range we wanted to be in (we wanted the cheapest seats). So we ended up getting 2 seats in one row and 2 seats directly behind those. It worked out pretty well for us and we are pretty close to the stage! And being off to the side does cause occasional sight line issues, but it’s never been that big of an issue at any of the shows I had been to before.

It seemed like a lot of people in the audience were season ticket holders like us. And I’m thinking a lot of them didn’t really know what they were in for with this show (maybe they just got the season tickets to be able to see “Hamilton”?). While most of the audience seemed to enjoy the show, there were more walk outs during this show than I’ve ever seen. And I saw people covering their ears during songs as well.

Personally, I really enjoyed the show. I wasn’t expecting it to be a concert style show (I thought there would be scenes taking place in between the songs), but it was a nice difference compared to most of the musicals that I see. I thought the songs were all done really well and the set was fun to look at. While the tour of this show has been advertising that it stars Darren Criss, he doesn’t perform on Sunday evenings so we got to see Lena Hall in the lead role. She actually won a Tony for playing the other part, but she did amazing in the show!

I think we all agreed that this show was a great way to kick off a new season of musicals. We will pretty much get to see a show every month for the next several months with our last show being “Hamilton” in August. Each of the shows we get to see should be a really fun adventure and there’s only 1 show in the season that I’ve already seen (“Book of Mormon”) and I think all the other shows look really good.

Even though season tickets are a splurge, it really makes me so happy to go to the shows and I think that it’s so worth it. There have been so many times where I didn’t do something I wanted to because of the cost and I think that sometimes you need to put mental health above financial health. I love having these shows to look forward to and going out to more cultural events does seem to make the quality of my life so much better. So here’s to another full season of musical adventures!

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The End Of My Musical Season (or Finally Enjoying Phantom) Another Night At Pantages (or Hedwig Take 2) Another Round Of A Repeat Musical (or Seeing A Show A Different Way) An Epic End To The Pantages Season (or We Aren’t Going To Throw Away Our Shot) Having A Season Of Musicals (or Finally Enjoying Something I Haven’t Done Since I Moved To LA) And Another Season Of Musicals (or The Next Season Will Be A Bit Different)