My Present Reality

I've been in Richmond a while now and this is the first time I can recall seeing a play start with a straight shot of the underside of a guy's twigs and berries

As my friend said when we took our seats after chatting in the lobby, "If I'd known about this, I'd have sat down right away."

Wouldn't we all?

It was Firehouse Theater's opening night for "Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them," as absurd (and yet strikingly relevent) a social commentary as I've ever seen.

It's hard not to laugh at a violence-obsessed father who masks his shadow government headquarters with tales of being a butterfly collector.

Or an operative named Scooby Doo whose panties keep ending up around her ankles.

Or a girl who gets drunk and wakes up (naked) in bed with a short-tempered (naked) guy she married the night before at Hooter's.

Or a mother who is obsessed with theater in hopes of figuring out what is normal.

Her personality could be summed up with a line she quoted by the French playwright Giraudoux,

 "There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon."

Theater was a recurring motif, with lots of inside theater jokes, including a reference to suicide being preferable to sitting through an evening of Tom Stoppard plays.

Ha!

Probably the most interesting construct of the play was how the heroine decided partway through that she didn't like the violent direction the story had taken.

"Felicity did not like her present reality," the announcer told us.

With the sounds of voices being rewound, the cast did a couple of do-overs until Felicity was satisfied with getting off on the right foot with the guy she'd met at Hooter's.

Whether things worked out better, we'll never know because the play ended, but it's an alluring premise.

Socializing afterwards, my friend motioned me over to introduce me to her college roommate whom she hadn't seen in years.

Explaining to the former roommate that she was here with her friend Karen, a blogger, the friend asked, "Is she 'I Could Go On and On'?"

Is it just me or does that seem like a huge leap to make from those two clues?

Apparently the theater-going and blog-reading groups have more overlap than I knew.

Walking out of the theater, the actor who had played the lead in all his naked glory was standing outside.

The temptation to say something about having admired his naked body was tempered by good breeding (well done, Mom).

Still, I thought about it. It's not the first time I've seen someone naked on screen only to see them clothed in real life.

Last time I said something, only to make the guy blush. This time I held my tongue instead of using it.

Instead, I took my tongue to Amour for a post-theater glass of wine and dessert.

A trio of housemade sorbets (cantaloupe being my favorite) and a selection of macarons provided a fine backdrop to a discussion of the play, French movies and the challenges of a relationship.

Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the sweets, but it all became crystal clear.

Karen is not happy with her present reality, but is convinced that there is nothing so wrong with it that a sensible woman like herself couldn't set it right in the course of an afternoon.

Would tomorrow afternoon be too soon to try?