I went to see Into the Woods, this year’s Mountain Play on Mount Tam with my sister Chrissy and her friend Abby. It was a gorgeous day for a hike halfway up the mountain. We parked near the Mountain Home Inn and hiked about 4 1/2 miles up to the theater. It was a beautiful, blue sunny day and the trail was relatively quiet, except when we got to the West Point Inn where they were holding their annual Father’s Day pancake breakfast. It was swarming with people there!
We got to the theater and it was less than half full, the least crowded I’ve ever seen it. The sun was pretty intense, so most people were crowded into the shady areas. We ended up being in the sun for the first half of the performance, but when the occasional breeze came up it really helped and Chrissy bought us some snowcones, which kept things cool. None of us had ever seen a production of Into the Woods, so it was fun to see a totally new musical (though I now have the title song stuck in my brain!). I’ve been to the Mountain Play dozens of times over my life, it’s been going on since 1913 with only a few gaps (once for a hoof and mouth disease epidemic, 3 years while troops were stationed there during WW II and then during the pandemic). When I was younger, they focused on many of the classic musicals, such as South Pacific, Music Man, Oklahoma, Sound of Music, etc. They seem to have been getting into “newer“ musicals lately and we found out at the end of the performance that next years show would be Kinky Boots! It was a fantastic cast and a fun musical. Well, at least the first half was fun, the second half got a little depressing. We commented that it was like the Sound of Music, where the first half could pretty much stand alone and is overall very positive, but the second half is much darker.
We hiked back down to the car, it was definitely the least crowded hike back from a mountain play that I’ve ever experienced, which was very nice. Though we did get passed on the way down by a much older man wearing flip-flops!
Earlier mom and I talked about how when we went to the Mountain Play as a family my dad did all the work driving up, schlepping the coolers and stuff to our spot so we could all enjoy the play, even though his idea of a fun day was definitely not sitting in the sun and watching a musical. I am sure he sat there most times thinking he’d much rather be puttering around in his garden listening to a Giants game. It made me realize even more my Dad’s devotion to his family.
I had dinner and caught up with mom (she was thrilled because the Giants swept their series against the Dodgers), then went to bed looking forward to Monday, a quieter day.