Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by the Arizona Theatre Company Sponsored by Yelp.com

Last week Chris and I saw the play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the Herberger Theater. We received free tickets from Yelp.com, which was great! I really enjoyed the play. The production was extremely creative and in my opinion good. To my surprise a number of people left at intermission (one couple in front of us and another behind us). I suppose that means they didn't care for it as much as I did. But everyone has different preferences. Plus, the last live theater I saw was so horribly amateur and this one far superior.

If you're interested in seeing the play, you can get discount tickets by calling the Arizona Theatre box office at (602) 256-6995 and mention the code word YELP. You can see Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for just $20! (That’s over 50% off the regular box office price.) Hurry because it's only around through February 24th.

Yelp.com is a review site that I've been using for awhile now. (Check out my reviews at http://ericalucci.yelp.com I've always been very impressed by the quantity and quality of reviews on it. Plus, I have a few friends in Austin who are very active in the Yelp community and speak very highly of it there. So I'm trying to get more involved here. Unfortunately, my first in-person Yelp experience was poor.

The play was great and getting it for free was really, really awesome. So Yelp gets a big thumbs up from me for that. However, they lose when it comes to the dinner before the play. First, the posting about the event was confusing...it wasn't clear that dinner was in a different place than the theater. Second, no one from Yelp was there to actually host the dinner. So when Chris and I arrived at the restaurant, no one greeted us. We didn't see any signs or other indication that we were even in the right place. As we stood around looking confused, someone from the restaurant finally pointed us in the direction of a small buffet. The only indication that it was Yelp sponsored was a yellow legal pad on the table asking for us to sign in. The Yelp community organizer for Phoenix apparently couldn't make the event and disappointingly didn't get anyone to stand in. The food was completely disappointing and certainly shouldn't have been served to a bunch of people who write restaurant reviews in their spare time. It's a shame too, because I have a client across the street from this restaurant and would have actually tried it for lunch someday.

While this was a disappointing event, I'm not going to write Yelp off just yet. It's still a great place to get restaurant reviews. Through Yelp, I've been invited to a fashion show this weekend. I'll give that a try and look forward to meeting some new people in Phoenix. Hopefully the next Yelp event will be better than this one.