You know that you’re really enjoying something when you don’t want it to come to an end – that was the experience I had on Friday night.

My boss was unable to use her two tickets to a performance of Pippin at the SHN Golden Gate Theatre in San Francisco so she generously offered them to Steve and me. At 10:50 p.m. when the actors took their final bow on stage, I could have happily had the show start all over again and enjoyed every minute of the almost three hour performance – and enjoyed it even more than the first time.

There are several reasons that this was such a wonderful evening for me starting with the history I have with Pippin. This production is a 2013 revival of the play that originally premiered on Broadway in 1972. The play was still going strong on Broadway in 1976 when I spent the summer in New York City. My best friend, Janet, went home to Stamford, Connecticut in the summers and she would often join me in New York City for the weekend.

Being dancers, we loved Broadway musicals and would go to the TKTS Booth to buy half-price tickets for a Broadway play the same day. We were one year away from graduating from college, so the story of the play which is Pippin’s quest to find himself, spoke very strongly to where we were in our lives. We probably saw Pippin four or five times that summer, listened to the soundtrack over and over, and worked on perfecting our Bob Fosse jazz hands.

But even if the play hadn’t transported me back to a memorable time in my life, Friday evening still would have been hugely entertaining. Our seats were on the first row! Unlike when you’re sitting on the front row of a movie theater, there was still the orchestra pit between us and the stage so you’re not forced to sit with your head looking straight up. Instead, the closeness made the actors seem more accessible. Sometimes watching actors from a distance makes them seem like extremely well programmed animatronics but not when you’re seeing them sweat and can appreciate their subtle expressions and gestures. It made the emotion behind their acting seem that much more real to me.

All the members of the cast were wonderful but it was a real treat to see one of the actors perform the role for which she had received a Tony Award last year. I came home and looked up Andrea Martin who plays Pippin’s grandmother and at 67, she truly is old enough to be his grandmother. Yet she looked adorable, sounded fabulous and totally stole the show when she and one of the handsome dancers went through their moves on the trapeze bar.

When Pippin ended, I felt like our youngest daughter used to when she was pre-school age and we would go to see a Disney movie. When the lights in the theater came on and the credits started rolling, she would immediately start sobbing because the transporting experience of being immersed in a fantasy world was over. Sure, I was a little teary on the way home; it was that good.