Assassins

I went with a friend to the Ivory Theatre last night to see Assassins, which is a Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical. As the name suggests, the play is about people who have either assassinated or attempted to assassinate American presidents. It was an interesting treatment of a tough subject. It is playing until March 29 and tickets are very reasonable.

In addition to my interest in seeing the performance, I was at least as interested in seeing the theatre space itself. Ivory Theatre, opened in 2007, was converted from what used to be St. Boniface Catholic Church. St. Boniface parish was merged with my parish in 2005. While I know many people are still sore over the mergers and some people might be offended at the use of a formerly consecrated space for entertainment purposes, the building has become a fine, tasteful performance space. Given a choice between recycling the church building into a theatre or tearing it down, I think the use of the building as a theatre is a better option.

That being said, St. Boniface was not my parish before the mergers and I only attended Mass there once. It had some stunning stained glass windows that dated back to 1893-1894 and were made in Austria. The windows have since been removed. I believe the windows have been installed in a new Catholic church in the St. Charles county area.