Where the Streets Have No Name

Wednesday night, I headed east to Coxwell and Danforth to check out Technotown, an original musical put on by the students of Monarch Collegiate. In a futuristic town where the motto is "Where Efficiency Is All Around", people have stopped interacting physically. A new family, the Novaks, arrives in town straight out of "Leave It To Beaver" central casting: straight-laced dad, home-maker mom, gee-whiz son and precocious daughter. They have retro ideas such as meeting face-to-face, baking actual blueberry pies, and playing real sports. How will the citizens of Technotown react to such outrageous ideas?

I won't critique a high-school production but I will make two observations. The performances were generally good although some kids had more acting and singing experience. The girl who played Chloe Novak had an especially strong voice. Though the songs had a good variety of styles, the tempo was consistently the same: the typical 120 bpm. This might have been to make it easier to sing to, but some change-up would have been nice.

As for the school, it's quite different from my alma mater. My high school was not nearly as big, I would have gotten lost with so many hallways. We certainly didn't have a large auditorium or an airy split-level circular library. Of course, we do share the musty photographic progression of past alumni on the walls reaching back to the ages, with the accompanying change in hair styles and clothes.