Paula Poundstone performed on Friday, August 3, at Cathedral Hall, to a very appreciative audience, which might have been bigger, had the event and venue been promoted more adequately.
The Good: Paula Poundstone is an incredible comedian and a wonderfully entertaining performer, and she had the audience laughing so hard that our faces ached. As you'd suspect from her show 'Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!' she's a master at improvising when talking with specific audience members she picks out (or on). One of her conversations with a male audience member down front was so funny that it even had her laughing, and wishing that she had caught this particular exchange on a live CD. Paula graciously came out quickly to the lobby post-performance to sell and autograph CDs and pose for photos with the purchasers. The ticket prices were reasonable, and appropriate, given the drawbacks of the space.
The not-so-good: First, this was apparently the 'inaugural' performance of Water Street Music in this new venue. You wouldn't have known it from their website, which kept the location fairly secret, when it should have trumpeted that fact. Even on the day of the show, the map link on their site showed the Water Street location, rather than the correct address on East Main Street. I wasn't the only audience member who was confused, but at least I finally figured it out. Apparently, many did not - they showed up at the wrong place initially, which must have been a bit of a shock. Second, the air-conditioning, if there was any, didn't compete with the heat of the day. Some smart audience members were in shorts and t-shirts, but those of us in 'going out' clothes regretted our choice. Paula must have been melting in her suit and tie. I'll make a mental note next year to dress more appropriately, or skip buying tickets in the summer entirely. Water Street Music should make a mental note to warn people on their website of the lack of adequate a/c. That is, in addition to telling people where the performance really is. Finally, since the hall is simply a cavernous multi-use space, the main-floor seating consisted of mostly-uncomfortable metal folding chairs. The first dozen rows of 'VIP seating' had cushioned chairs, but I suspect as the number of patrons purchasing VIP seats rose (there was only a $5 difference between that and regular seating), instead of holding to a specific number of VIP seats, Water Street Music simply increased the number of VIP tickets and moved the dividing rope back to the point where most of the seats in that section were only VIP "ish" - they weren't close enough to the stage to be differentiated from those slightly further back, and they weren't padded, as the true "VIP" seats were. The best seats in the house for this performance, because Paula stayed down-center stage the entire show, turned out to be in the cushioned side balcony seats. She even had some back-and-forth with a patron up there who gloated about the comfort of his 'cheap seat.' On the plus side, because the folding chairs aren't permanent, the rows were spaced generously apart, so there was plenty of leg room. It would have been nice if they had been set up with some offset as well, instead of rigidly being placed one chair right behind another, so that sight lines would be slightly better. Since there is no pitch to the floor (because it really is a ballroom space, not a theatre), and the stage is only a couple of steps higher than the seating floor, if you get stuck behind someone taller than you, you really have almost no chance of seeing the performer.
The bottom line: I'm sure as the managers work out the kinks (and make an investment in more comfortable folding chairs...), over time this will become a very useful additional performance space for Rochester. It appeared to be able to hold around 5-600 people, which gives the space the ability to feel more intimate than the enormous Auditorium Theatre, but at the same time allows the managers to book performers whose fee requires, or whose popularity draws, a larger audience than the smaller Water Street Music Hall can accommodate. Now, if only there were more restaurants in the immediate vicinity, so you could just park once for the evening...
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