smoke on the mountain

i love the ad players. i've been to a small number of performances: Driving Miss Daisy, Pride and Prejudice, and The Heiress. but there have been so many more that i have wanted to go to. i always drool over the website, but usually miss out. sometimes i just suck it up and purchase a couple tickets and decide that someone will go with me if i beg enough. :)

one particular performance that my mom heard about was Smoke on the Mountain Homecoming. it's the third installment of the sanders family taking place in 1945 at mt. pleasant baptist church. the sanders family reunites for a bluegrass gospel singing when the son takes over the pulpit for his brother-in-law.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adplayers/2594941204/sizes/l/

so for mother's day, i bought the two tickets and then presented her with a little promotional poster so that she would have something to open. she actually cried. because for some reason (that she still clings to, no matter what i say), she thought that this performance was over christmas and i had let us miss going at all. anyway, last night was the night. we had been talking about chinese food the day before so on amanda's recommendation we went to kim son. i had the best lemon chicken and the second best vegetable fried rice ever. unfortunately we didn't get to linger and enjoy an appetizer or dessert. we had a little traffic and accident bottleneck on both 290 and 610 (gotta love houston traffic, ugh.). anyway, i still highly recommend kim son. and the prices were very reasonable for great food in downtown houston.

it was a really fun night and we really enjoyed the ad players interpretation of smoke on the mountain. i just wish we could have seen the first two installments that have run over the past years. maybe they will bring them back. the performance was filled with old baptist hymns that we were singing along with. sometimes even out loud when the characters would pull the "congregation" (the audience) into their performance. there was plenty of laughing and also a lot of Biblical truth as the characters would step forward and tell personal testimonies.

if you have never been to the ad players (and you're one of my houston readers), GO!! you won't regret it. smoke on the mountain runs through august 31. who knows, you just might see my mom and i there again. ;) the 2008 / 2009 season was printed in our program last night, though it doesn't seem to be on the website yet. there are several great performances coming up. John, His Story and the houston premeire of Last Train to Nibroc are two of the performances for the season. also for the kiddos -- check out the children's theater, currently performing Samson.