Weekend Review: 253 pride

It was a good weekend in Tacoma.

Not only were there two festivals this weekend, but they were packed with all things Tacoma fun.
Of course, the big draw of the weekend was the 13th Annual Art on the Ave festival that featured a thunderous performance by Vicci Martinez, who is fresh from the “Voice” competition and a new record deal.

The second festival, Old Town Blues Festival, further did its part to celebrate local music and talent with a waterfront barrage of good times and high energy to benefit the Breast Cancer Resource Center.

On the theater front, Tacoma Musical Playhouse opened its staging of “Cats.” This musical phenomenon telling of T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” by Andrew Lloyd Webber runs Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through the end of the month. Cats tells the story, in song and dance, of the annual gathering of Jellicle cats, when one special feline is selected to ascend to the Heaviside layer. While it contained solid performances throughout the playbill, some of the lyrics were drowned out by the orchestra. Both rocked the songs, but the balance was often a bit off, making it a very fixable problem in future performances.

Beaming with Tacoma pride, the weekend ended.