DIRTY ROTTEN RENO

People who can't afford to shop at Holt Renfrew, shop at The Bay. People who can't afford foiegras, buy Spam. People who can't afford Las Vegas go to Reno. Not only are we inundated with far too many brush cuts in sweat pants, 56D cups in sweat shirts, and polyester pant suits topped with lavender rinse, we are staying at Circus Circus.

Now, we've stayed at a lot of hotels on this tour. Some spectacular, some that make you want to peel your skin off and mail it back to yourself. In my personal opinion, this is the worst hotel ever. It's past it's day and starting to look it, the service is deplorable (but that seems to be the case everywhere in Reno), the housekeeping is not very good (I discover M&M's on my floor and Sarah finds the previous guest"s toiletry bag still hanging in her bathroom), and the long walk to the rooms in the Sky Tower is complicated by several sets of stairs that one needs to negotiate with one's luggage! Add to all of that the fact that the place is CRAWLING with children and you have my own personal kind of hell.

As I leave my room one day, there are 3 children, all under 5 years old, playing in the hallway....not an adult in sight. (Probably in the casino trying to win the money for this month's payment on the trailer home). I scowl at the urchins sufficiently enough to send them back to their rooms...or at least out of my sight. We find out that most of the children are here for a wrestling tournament. Twenty-two-hundred, twelve-year old boys have converged on Reno. (Why me? What next, locusts?)

The six elevators in our tower are miserably inadequate to service a full hotel. Often, you have to let 2 or 3 cars go before you can squeeze in to one, and this, after waiting several minutes for each car. Steve tells me that he eventually gave up one morning and walked down 20 flights of stairs with a long line of people who were doing the same.

Downtown Reno itself is looking pretty sad. A world apart from it's richer, sassier sister, Vegas. Everything is dusty, empty, closed or closing, and vagabonds, loonies and unsavories accent the streets. Everywhere we go, we find that service seems to be a lost art. We are studiously ignored for as long as possible, then grudgingly serviced. In a way I can see how it got this way because I'm pretty sure nobody makes much of a tip from Bucky Ballcap and Bertha Bingohall. At The Sienna, Reno's supposed "boutique hotel", I finally get the world's most watery martini from the careless bartener, and then have to pay $11.00 for it. I do have to add an exception here, though, and say that the food and the service at Mel's Diner are great. Perhaps that's why they've been there since 1947.

The theatre is very nice and supports a full season of Broadway shows and it's own Philharmonic series. We play 5 shows, all of them very well attended with vocal, responsive crowds. This is good news for me since I am still feeling like crap and need all the support I can get. The illness has turned into a wet, lung-rattling chest cough that makes me sound like an alcoholic, asthmatic smoker. Try singing and dancing a romantic duet through that!

Somehow, in spite of it all, I make it through. Through the impossibly overpopulated hotel. Through a manic five-shows-in-three-days. Through a whirlwind of visiting family, producers, possible producers and a host of sundry "somebodies" and hangers-on. Through phlegm, low oxygen, petty bickering questionable acting choices, I make it to the Easter hiatus. And that means that Michael and I get to spend a week of play-time together. First in Vegas, then in Calgary. Yee-haw. I hope my lungs can take it.