Amused Until Midnight

I don't know when the next time will be that Amuse lets me stay until midnight, so I had to take advantage of their hospitality tonight.

It was all part of my couple date, you see. We met at Black Sheep for a pre-theater dinner and managed to sneak in just before the Friday night crowds arrived and began the waiting game.

With a bottle of white Rioja and plates of the crawfish etouffe biscuits and the barbecued shrimp, we recounted recent meals (my rabbit and softshells and their brains and liver) while ogling the battleships being served around us.

Dinner ran the gamut from the smoked trout salad to the barbecued duck leg with Israeli cous cous to the Cardinal, a perfectly balanced salad of mixed greens, dried cherries, roasted beets, pickled onions and "bird seed," a mixture of various seeds.

The unsurpassed LaBrea tarpit (dark chocolate creme brulee) finished the meal, as usual.

Tonight's cultural offering at Firehouse was Israel Horovitz "Shorts,"  four very brief plays interspersed with short dance pieces and two violinists providing musical interludes.

"The Bridal Dance" underscored every negative stereotype about womanizers, body image and relationships, including marriages gone bad from the get-go (as in at the wedding).

"Stage Directions" was the knockout piece, a story told entirely through three characters' speaking their stage directions only. It sounds like such a simple construct and yet it was very powerful.

During intermission, I headed to the head only to hear my name called. It was Treesa Gold, one of the Richmond Symphony's violinists who'd been called just hours before to sub for the scheduled violinist.

"You are everywhere!" she said, hugging me. "And you're sight-reading music in the dark of the theater!" I told her. Mutual admiration all around.

"Inconsolable" was about a mother's suicide and a failed marriage and was heartbreaking. especially when told through the eyes of the daughter who discovers her moms' dead body.

"The Race Play" ended things on a lighter note with the tale of a charity race where the younger runners allow the iconic older runner to take the race. The play required the actors to run in place the entire time and all were glowing by play's end.

Playwright Horovitz was in the audience and it was hard to deny the power of the stories he told so succinctly. The capacity audience was clearly impressed.

My couple date and I left for Amuse with our intellects stimulated, some built-in conversational material and seeling some late-evening libations, not sure how much of a crowd to expect.

At 10:15, the ticket lines at VMFA were headed almost to the entrance. Most people in line appeared to be under thirty, no doubt having decided that Friday night would be a great time to finally check out Picasso.

Upstairs at Amuse, there was a decent crowd which only grew over the next hour as people streamed in after seeing the show.

The bar was full, so we snagged a table by the window. Later the manager came over and playfully asked me if I'd ever sat at a table at Amuse. Why, yes, a couple of times...and never by choice.

There was a couple making goo-goo eyes at each other at the bar; later the manager told us that they had gotten engaged at the bar tonight. It was very sweet, although it seemed an unlikely location at which to propose, at least to us.

The green fairy floated over to our table with glasses for us womenfolk while the masculine one had a cocktail of some sort. All around us, tables were abuzz with post-Picassoites enjoying an uncharacteristically late night at Amuse; I saw musicians, servers and former neighbors.

With the cool glow of the purple lights overhead, it definitely didn't feel like we were in Richmond anymore. Do it again, Amuse. We'll stay as late as you let us.