The Luddite Version

It was a pizza and comic book kind of night. Well, sort of.

A friend was in town from Maryland and wanted to catch up over happy hour.

Conveniently, Wednesdays are half-priced wine by the bottle nights at Rowland's, which meant they were practically giving away Pocco Prosecco.

She and I are what her boyfriend calls "fast processors," meaning we often only have to allude to a thought before the other one gets it.

It not only saves time, but allows us to cover so much more ground given our infrequent meet-ups now that she lives somewhere other than Richmond.

I heard about her recent trip to Las Vegas and an artery-clogging meal at Gordon Ramsay Steak while they were there.

Having eaten half of a massive steak at lunch today, I was looking for something a tad lighter tonight, so we agreed to share one of Rowland's new iron skillet pizzas.

I'd have chosen the pizza blanco, but Friend wanted the Plain Jane of Roma tomato marinara and Mozzarella.

Except we couldn't leave well enough alone and added applewood bacon.

And crimini mushrooms, Bermuda onions and roasted garlic.

Suddenly our plain Jane was pretty elaborate but extremely tasty.

By the time I finished hearing about her upcoming trip to Jamaica, it was time for me to cut out for culture while she moved on to Buckhead's with some mutual friends.

She was making the rounds while she was in town.

Tonight's mental stimulant for me was Richmond Shakespeare's Bawdy Bard staged reading at Capital Ale House.

In a unique twist for live theater, the audience was granted permission to tweet and text as long as they did so about the play.

But instead of a staid Shakespeare reading, we were in for a much more recent play tonight.

"Rough Magic" was a laugh-out-loud look at what would happen if the characters from "The Tempest" came to life and decided they wanted to destroy New York City. 

And it was the kind of reading where the actors leaped on and off stage, slid down brick walls and removed a severed head from a grocery bag, not the kind with actors in chars reading lines.

The best kind, in other words.

The author writes Marvel comic books and the story very much felt like it had been torn from the brightly-colored pages of comics.

Because Richmond Shakespeare is currently doing "The Tempest," tonight's production used actors from that along with an energetic cast of young Richmond talent.

The story of a young woman named Melanie with the super power to pull characters out of books and into real life and the posse of oddballs who got along for the adventure had some funny dialog.

Working at Morgan Stanley is like committing suicide slowly.

This is New York. I think we can handle a fairy.

Even better, there was so much theater humor that relied on the audience knowing their Shakespeare.

When Melanie needs to pull a character from Shakespeare who will be fearless in the face of the wrathful Prospero, she immediately knows what kind of man she needs: Coriolanus.

"Dumb as a stick and a total Mama's boy."

Yep, just the type a woman can control with no problem.

Luckily, Melanie's posse has her back for all the action.

They're three Greek furies who carry a Nerf gun, a Nerf bow and arrow and a spear of destiny to handle the bad guys.

The only thing they lacked was Batman-like subtitles saying "KaPow!" and "Bam!"

Feet were cut off (and black socks worn to indicate missing feet) and reattached (a zig-zag pattern showing reattachment) and a 17-year old drank a margarita (gasp!).

It was all highly entertaining.

But no doubt you've already heard that from the tweeters and texters.