Cheers, Big Ears

It's got to be pretty early in the morning before J-Ward rolls up the sidewalks.

The proof was everywhere when I got home at 1:43 on a breezy, 64-degree November night with signs of life buzzing all around. Next door, a woman is knocking at the front door. Double parked is a pizza delivery guy. A guy is walking down my side of the street, while on the other side, close to a dozen people are milling abut in front of house, red party cups in hand, as music plays from the porch.

Fortunately, I keep similar hours with the people on my block.

When I'd left my house at 5:15 to walk to Lucy's, my next door neighbor was sitting on his porch and called to me, "Hey, you look nice. Got a hot date? I bet you have a hot date." It is to laugh, but I nonetheless assured him I was merely meeting friends for dinner and a play and kept walking.

When I'd suggested Lucy's for dinner, I'd been unaware that Beau and Pru's Mom (who's currently sporting the most gorgeous purple hair) hadn't been there before, which is just short of amazing given how often they/we eat out. Luckily, we had plenty of time to introduce them to one of Jackson Ward's finest.

Beau likes to joke that he has protect himself from his all-female company - aka the intellectual dominatrices, a moniker the three of us are fine with - on outings such as this, but for the most part he handles it as well as can be expected for a mere male.

In the hands-on spirit of the conversation that was already flowing, we began with a bottle of Villa Wolf Rose of Pinot Noir and by sharing a righteous fondue of Boursin and Gorgonzola, into which we dipped fried cauliflower, apple slices and fried croutons. When our server came to check on our progress, Beau (who's been known to pun with impunity) told her to take the empty dish away because we were "fon-done."

He redeemed himself by suggesting a second bottle of Rose as we moved into entrees. Pru and I had both chosen the seared flounder over butternut squash puree with collards and housemade bacon in apple cider vinaigrette (some of the finest collards I've had in a while), while Beau went meatless with Non-Spaghetti and Meatballs (fried artichoke, spinach and avocado balls over sauteed spaghetti squash) and the Purple One had fettucine with braised short ribs.

All around us, Lucy's had gotten crazy busy with people hovering waiting for tables, while we were comfortably ensconced in our booth looking at a dessert menu and feeling no pressure to turn over our table to latecomers. We finished up with a flourless chocolate torte, apple crisp and a housemade ice cream sandwich that Beau attempted to eat with a fork until Pru set him straight about ice cream sandwich etiquette.

She and I used to assume that clueless people had been raised by wolves, but in some cases, it seems they merely lived in Ladysmith and thus had no access to basic civility practices.

We followed dinner with CAT Theatre's production of "Ripcord," a play about two nursing home roommates who try to best each other in terrible ways to win a bet and get the bed with the best sunlight and view. If this is old age, kill me now.

The play began with a warning that it contained mild profanity which had apparently already offended some attendees, although my guess would be that anyone offended doesn't see much theater in this town because that barn door was long ago flung open.

Surprisingly, the audience was probably half millennials, not a typical representation at the theater, with the exception of TheatreLAB. It was kind of refreshing to see. In the row in front of us was a guy with a loud, distinctive laugh who seemed to find almost everything funny and let loose at lines that no one else laughed at.

Some lines - "Why can't people be peculiar anymore?" - were funny, while others - "You're turning into an old lady" fell flat as the two women did awful things (tearing up a grandchild's painting, faking suicide, putting a bogus ad in the classifieds) to each other, presumably because they had nothing better to do. I did wonder if the fact that the play was written by a man had anything to do with how difficult it was to like either of the two unpleasant female characters.

Walking out afterwards, the weather was still as breezy and warm as when I'd first walked over to Lucy's, so it only made sense to head back to Pru's screened porch and see what happened. Intellectual dominatrices-led conversation, that's what happened.

When the wind kept turning on the motion sensor lights outside, Beau gave us a mini-science lesson about motion sensors versus heat sensors. Pru, somewhat of a science nerd herself, explained the theory of bio-mimicry and I did my best to understand. We also had a lesson on lake effect snow and Alberta Clippers, neither of which have much practical application in Richmond.

Discussing their shared bent for sciences, Beau asked Pru if she hadn't been good at biology. "I was exceptional," she deadpanned.

When Beau was found to be in error because of assumptions made, Pru threatened to cut him off. "Please don't take my assumption abilities away!" he pleaded.

Because it's all the news lately, we had to discuss all the men behaving badly, taking it further to the gradations of what men have been getting away with for centuries now. We reached a consensus that sticking an unwanted tongue down a woman's throat is not as bad as grabbing a woman by the you-know-what (incidentally, something that had happened to all three of the women on the porch. All. Three.), not that either needs to happen.

This topic went deep and Beau wasn't always able to participate fully since his gender was the one being skewered and he was quick to admit that there was no justification for bad behavior. But we had to acknowledge how times have changed and what was tolerated then is punishable now.

One of the most satisfying conversations began when Beau pointed out that what we'd been doing for the past three hours - sitting around sharing opinions, making a case for your beliefs, sharing experiences and lessons learned, positing ideas - had been exactly what he'd done in college. "But then I stopped doing it," he pondered. "And now I'm doing it again."

Why, I asked, would you ever stop sitting around exchanging ideas with friends? Trying to convince them of your point? Sharing a point of view they may not have considered? I prefer to live a life where that's business as usual.

Because any intellectual dominatrix will tell you the way to be exceptional is to be peculiar like that.

Irish Roots, Plenty of Napkins

It was a red letter post-snow day. I got driven in a car.

Let's see, I believe the last time I motored was last Thursday, so the fact that a friend could show up (laundry in hand to use my washer and dryer, but that's another story) to drive us to dinner and a play was big news in these parts.

That said, it took a ridiculous 25 minutes to get to a restaurant a mere two miles away given the slow-moving traffic, massive piles of snow still blocking lanes and idiots with low-to-the-ground cars attempting to conquer snow drifts.

We are our own worst enemies post-Jonas.

Regaling me at dinner with his snow day problems - cat escaped, a movie that wouldn't play, no beans for nachos - my friend caused me to almost shoot liquid out of my nose when he took a tangent to sing the praises of his small appliances.

"I looove my toaster oven," he gushed, then raised his voice two octaves, "Holla!"

Someone's been spending way too much time in the house alone.

Despite more massive snow piles, getting to Chamberlayne Actors Theatre turned out to be surprisingly easy, not that we didn't manage to miss our final turn, but then everything looks different in the snow, doesn't it? It's not like I haven't been to CAT's cozy theater before.

Inside, my driver went off in search of chocolate for me, returning with a Hostess cupcake and earning my eternal gratitude, while I chatted with the play's charming sound designer, a playwright I hadn't seen in months.

Hardly surprisingly, tonight's crowd was small and included lots of theater insiders - actors, critics, devotees - to take in a collaboration between CAT Theatre and 5th Wall of Israel Horovitz's "Unexpected Tenderness," a snippet of which I'd seen at 5th Wall's preview party last April.

But a snippet could not have prepared me for such a powerful look at domestic terrorism and family dysfunction circa the early 1950s.

The memory play is narrated by the older version of the son, so we alternate between seeing him as part of the family dynamic trying to deal with a paranoid father who rigidly controls the family's lives and as the grown man looking back on it.

Early moments of politically incorrect humor ("No napkins, are we eating like Irish people now?" or "No socks? What are you, Italian?") spewing forth from the mother, Molly, played by a fiery yet fearful Eva DeVirgilis, set a scene of Jewish life in Massachusetts during the Eisenhower years.

Fred Iacovo delivered as the pathological husband Archie who is obsessively convinced that every time he leaves the house, his wife cheats on him, a misconception he tragically comes by honestly since his Parkinson's-ridden father felt the same raging jealousy about his wife ("It was hell being married 47 years to a beauty like your grandmother").

Like poverty, you wonder if it's a cycle that can ever be broken.

Strong performances by the entire cast ensured that the audience wouldn't look away while the darkness of the story made it difficult not to wince watching. In one particularly ugly scene, an involuntary moan escaped my mouth when Archie hit his son. It's wrenching to watch actions you can't fathom.

Dark as the playwright's memories were, the complex play wound down on a hopeful note. "Things have got to keep changing," Molly tells her children. "This is life. Thank god for that."

And while we're at it, thank goodness for CAT Theatre supporting 5th Wall's long-time devotion to the work of Israel Horovitz. Like life, it's not always easy. Like the best theater, it makes you feel deeply.

And for the reminder that tenderness should never be unexpected.

Chance Rules My Life

Sometimes you go for a comedy of manners and wind up with long-term relationship advice.

Call me a Coward fan, because there is nothing like the sparkling dialog of a Noel Coward play like the one I saw tonight at CAT Theater.

In "Private Lives," sure, some of the action is dated (non-stop smoking, rampant sexism), some of the pronunciations different - hic-cough not hiccup - and phrasing antiquated - let's get this straighted out - but some of it is just the audience's awareness of greater sensitivity. It's a good thing we no longer make jokes about stillborn babies.

Are you going to understand and manage me?

But overall, I was enchanted with a good cast telling a 1930 story about two well-off couples honeymooning in the south of France when they're really still in love with their divorced spouses, who naturally are staying in the suites next door to each other.

If I start going at it with you now, our lives will be unbearable.

Honestly, the whole discussion of who is normal and how undesirable living normally is was worth the price of admission alone.

Much as I was enjoying every delicious sentence of the play, some of the night's best lines came from the British couple sitting next to us. Returning from the first intermission, he went to climb over the railing to reach his seat next to me. His wife nipped that in the bud. "Don't!"

When he obeyed so quickly, I remarked that theirs must be a long successful relationship and he proceeded to share an anecdote about being in the Bahamas at a bar with his wife and mother. He set off to procure two Bahama Mamas for them but was distracted by two women.

"Like you two," he said to my friend and me. "But far more desperate looking."

Putting her hand over his mouth at this point, his wife said, "I'll tell the story from here," and did.They wanted their drinks, he was still flirting, so she walked up to the bar, reached between them and got them. When one of the women asked who she was, the husband responded, "My sister."

When I asked if she minded his lie, she said no, they just wanted their Bahama Mamas.

Then the lights went down and they took each other's hands. Be still my heart.

The second act took place in Paris once the couple had abandoned their new spouses and, appropriately after our intermission chat, began with relationship talk.

I feel rather scared of marriage. 
It is a rather frowsy business, really.

This was the act where it became clear that Amanda and Elyot can't live with each other but can't live without, either, making for some world class bickering.

He was in love with you.
Why not? It gave him a lot of pleasure and it didn't hurt me.

This act also showed its antiquity with a discussion of their sexual partners while they were divorced. He's aghast that she had any despite that he did. They were also the kind of couple that physically beat up on each other, no longer an acceptable relationship coping strategy.

Much as I was loving the play, I couldn't wait for the second intermission to talk to our Brit friends again.

Turns out they've been married 45 years. On the eve of their wedding, he called her up - she was 21 and still living at home - to say he was leaving town. Her brilliance was in saying okay. What about the food and everything for the reception, he asked her.

"Oh, we'll have a good party without you," she assured him. They spent two hours talking that night and came up with the most brilliant marriage plan ever: they'd try it for one year and then decide if they wanted to re-up.

"I still have the card he gave me that day, " the wife said smiling. "It said, 'one more year?"

They both remember the exact moment when they knew this relationship was for keeps. He was leaving to drive to Canada on business but returned to the house 15 minutes later saying he didn't feel right. She said she felt off, too and poured a glass of sherry.

They sat on the steps sharing the glass of sherry and not saying a word. Finally he stood up. "I feel better now." She did, too. "And we both knew that was it. And we've had a lot more sherry since."

These people were my new heroes. I can't imagine marrying someone at 21 and still being with them 45 years later. Hooray for them.

I asked about their taste in plays and learned that "The Full Monty" had taught them that they like to leave the theater laughing. "No heavy dramas for us," he said. "We laughed all the way across the parking lot after that!

Once again, she interjected. "We laughed for days!"

Some women should be struck regularly...like a gong.

Noel, this is where you lose me. I know things were different in 1930, but that's just not a funny line.

Heaven preserve me from nice women.

But almost all the rest of it was laugh out loud funny and we did, unable to resist such witty and pithy observations about both sexes and their repeated attempts at d'etente. Well written, Mr. Coward. Well acted, CAT.

Best part? The 45-years and going strong couple were laughing heartily as they made their way out.

On some people, marriage doesn't look frowsy at all.