A Ripping Good Time

We should confine ourselves to conversation and not attempt anything intelligent.

So wrote Noel Coward, inspiring a decidedly urbane evening.

A favorite girlfriend reported to Jackson Ward exactly on time, notable because she is usually not the punctual sort.

The conversation began the moment we were in the car together, both of us unwilling to wait to hear the latest.

Stop #1 was Virginia Rep's box office to score rush tickets and where the ticket seller informed me that there are three other people with my exact name in their database.

I was a little surprised, never having met another.

Tickets in hand, we got ourselves downtown for a little pre-theater supper by candlelight.

As many times as I've had lunch at La Parisienne, I'd only been there once at night and that was before they had a full dinner menu.

Our host led us to a two-top by the big front window, advising us to, "Imagine you're in New York City."

After a few minutes ensconced at our table, my friend dryly noted, "Well, it could be New York except there's no people walking by."

She had a point.

We began with glasses of Cotes du Rhone and a little verbal volleying with our server whom, we learned, was named after his grandfather and father, meaning he used his middle name.

I assumed that meant his predecessors had a different middle name, but I was mistaken.

He was a most affable guy, friendly and willing to accommodate our truncated visit, even bringing us an extra table when we ran out of room on ours.

We started with caramelized onion dip with fried crepe chips, surprised at the huge mound of salted and seasoned chips that accompanied the tiny ramekin of dip.

The richness of the dip soon explained itself as the reason why so many crepes had died in service to it.

Once we heard tonight's specials, we chose one of them, a half a lobster tail with Chimay sauce and a carrot slaw over micro-greens.

When we informed our server of our ignorance of Chimay, he offered that it was a reduction of a beer made by Trappist monks in Belgium, "And that's about the extent of what I know."

I like a man who acknowledges his limitations.

All that mattered was we both got a piece of a lobster tail and I got a nice little slaw and salad because my girlfriend doesn't care for mayo.

Next came Zee Onion Soup, a house specialty and ideal when you're sitting next to a window on a cold evening.

It arrived a bit tepid, but our gracious server whisked it back to the kitchen and returned the two crocks piping hot.

The owner came over and when I asked about the music they have on the second Tuesdays of the month, he did a little hip shake, saying, "You should come and dance the salsa."

I clarified my (sadly) rhythm-less state, citing my whiteness, and he laughed saying, "They look at me and think I can dance when I can't. I'm the same as you!"

So we were looking at a man who can't dance because he's white and French, I suppose.

Although we were rapidly running out of time to make our curtain, we couldn't leave without a sweet, choosing a cream puff from the front case rather than something off the dessert menu.

To accompany it, we had a Merlot/Grenache blend from Pomerol in the heart of Burgundy, with dark fruit, a little spiciness and beautiful balance.

Then, like Cinderella's clock chiming midnight, we jumped in the car and headed up the hill to the November Theater.

If I'd forgotten for a minute that it was First Friday art walk, I was soon reminded as clueless pedestrians stepped off curbs against the traffic lights again and again.

"You're better than me," my friend noted." I'd have never seen them and they'd have been hood ornaments."

It's better that I drive when we are downtown.

We made it into the theater and our second row left seats (surprisingly good for last minute and cheapo) with time left to peruse the program.

When the curtain came up on Noel Coward's "Hay Fever," it was on a lovely set of the drawing room of an English country house, complete with windows overlooking the garden and staircase to the second floor.

Not to mention being immediately plunged into the wildly dysfunctional Bliss family and their full house of weekend guests.

I warned him not to expect good manners.

With a writer father and a retired actress mother, the grown Bliss children, Sorel and Simon, are very aware that their family is weird.

And not just aware, but completely accepting of it.

We're very slapdash.

All the members of the very bohemian Bliss family are appalled to learn that each has invited a guest for the weekend without the rest of the family's knowledge.

Needles to say, afternoon tea is very stilted with so many unwanted visitors.

You do say ripping things.

During the first intermission, two women came to stand and chat behind me and I overheard them trying to one-up each other.

"My husband died in 2007," one said about coming to the theater alone.

"I lost mine in 2001," the other countered. "Boy, it goes so fast, doesn't it?"

Anybody got a tissue?

The second act begins after dinner and the fun begins as they all try to play a parlor game involving adverbs and guessing,

These games are too brainy for me.

The cast was extremely high energy, with Irene Ziegler leading the charge as the matriarch, all high drama and garden hats.

I'm a big fan of Molly Hood, who played Myra, one of the visitors, and here she was a saucy brunette, but as always, her diction was superb.

It was great fun seeing Maggie Roop as Jackie, a flapper with no confidence, smiling and crying at the same time, as she tries to navigate a houseful of insanity.

Once the game dissolves, the oddest people pair up and next thing we knew, there was a whole lot of kissing going on.

I never realize how dead I am until I meet people like you.

But it's the Bliss family, so it's kissing for kissing's sake and no one's really in love.

You kissed me because you were awfully nice and I was awfully nice and we both liked kissing very much. It was inevitable.

After the second intermission, it was the next morning and by now all the guests have realized they are visitors at a nuthouse and go to pack.

Do you think they know they're mad?

By the time the Bliss family convenes for breakfast, it's back to business as usual, meaning endless bickering, sibling smackdowns and general chaos.

They never even notice when the guests sneak out the door to escape back to London.

Given so much witty dialog, all kinds of era-appropriate costume changes and two intermissions, I was amazed to find us out on Broad Street only a little after 10:00.

I feel certain Noel Coward would have expected our sophisticated little evening to have lasted a tad longer.

Fortunately, the conversation we'd confined ourselves to had been outstanding, so we'd barely missed anything intelligent at all.

Maybe that just means we're okay with being slapdash.