Haunted By the Legs of a Woman

"Are you here to audition?"

As if.

Not unless you have to audition to be an audience member, I told the woman at the table with the clipboard.

Actually I was there to get on-stage seats for "Spring Awakening" at the Empire Theater, four blocks from my house.

Once I'd learned that there were a dozen seats available up close and personal with the cast, I was determined to plant myself in one of them.

Well, that and the fact that stage seats are $5 and regular seats are $44, well out of the range of this poor writer's pocketbook.

We were escorted to our seats by the House Manager who instructed us to sit in any seats except those that had drawers on the back.

It wasn't long before two cast members took the seats with drawers next to us and the play was off and running.

What I hadn't realized was that the cast members next to me were going to be singing from where they were,

Sometimes sitting ("Mama Who Bore Me"), sometimes standing on their chairs ("The Bitch of Living"), they were performing inches away.

It may have been the coolest theater experience I've ever had.

And just for the record, while the on-stage seats were not as comfy as the regular theater seats, they were located directly under the box seats, always the priciest seats in the house, so the view was spectacular.

Frankly, for a play dealing with child abuse, masturbation, abortion, suicide and sexual abuse (not to mention a bare male butt), I want a good view.

Of course I was going to love a musical with an alternative music score by singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik, but I was equally as enthralled with having a band (guitars, bass, drums, cello, violin, viola, keys) accompany that music rather than an orchestra.

The story of hormone-driven teenagers ("Why am I haunted by the legs of a woman?") living in repressed 1890s Germany (but one with neon shoelaces, wildly gelled hair and jeweled sandals) took its spark from the energetic young cast, many of whom couldn't legally buy a drink during intermission.

But wow, could they ever dance and sing. And they nailed teen angst magnificently.

From "My Junk" to "Totally F**ked" and whether they were laying on stage singing to the rafters or pulling a mic out of their pockets to sing rock star-style, you really couldn't take your eyes off of them.

During the ensemble numbers, the actors were literally a couple of feet from my face.

I don't want to brag, but I could see them spit. And, yes, I like that.

And John Mincks, your ability to spring from stage to mid-air (mid-note) was nothing short of breathtaking from where I sat.

During intermission, I heard a woman tell someone that she'd seen "Spring Awakening" at a Broadway matinee a few years back and had been so impressed by it that she'd gone back that same night to see it again.

Pshaw. I'd realized that I would do the same before the first act was even over.

And at five dollars a pop, I can easily afford to see it again.

Fortunately, I think I passed the audition to be a stage-sitting audience member.

Pardon my enthusiasm, Virginia Rep, but there's nothing quite like the view from the cheap seats.

Broad Appetit ISO Virginia Dionysus

Okay, so Broad Appetit.

The good: it brings people to Jackson Ward (not so scary in the daylight, is it, people?), it allows people who dine out infrequently to try restaurants they haven't (on the cheap - $3 a pop) and it's a unique way to eat lunch.

The bad: street stands offering fair fare (cheese fries, really?), not enough room for the lines (would one or two more blocks of Broad kill city officials on a Sunday afternoon?) and the absence of any wineries worth tasting.

For me, being two blocks from the event, there are no parking hassles and I can be there when it opens and is still civilized.

And even if I go alone, which I did, I'm guaranteed to know people.

From the second I got close to Broad Street, I ran into friend after friend.

The boutique owner doing her first Broad Appetit. The man about town in a seersucker suit. The frustrated restaurateur's wife. The favorite couple with their Broad Appetit game plan printed out on multiple sheets of paper.

I spent the first hour with a teenager who shares my love of eating everything odd.

I talked her into trying blowtoads for the first time ("Mmm, fish tail!" she crowed) and she bought me apple cinnamon churros in caramel sauce in return.

An early stop was Bistro 27's table for Moroccan lamb meatballs and one of mixologist's Bobby Kruger's famous watermelon lemonade with a mint leaf smacked into it.

After two years of drinking it as I promenade through the event, I think it should be the official drink of Broad Appetit.

He and I placed bets on when he'd run out of the fifteen gallons he'd made.

I spent the second hour with a BA virgin, trying Magpie's goat curry for the first time and mozzarella ice cream with cherry tomatoes for the second.

At Lehja, we had the ginger curry leaf scented sea bass and the chickpea/potato dish.

I really must make the trek to Short Pump to enjoy Lehja's food to a larger extent.

Amour provided the last course, divine chicken liver mousse with bacon and chive in puff pastry.

We stopped in the Empire Theater for the open rehearsal of "Spring Awakening," a Tony award-winning play I am eager to have open in Richmond.

Let's shock the bluehairs, shall we?

Back on the street, we opted out of the madding crowds and took Marshall Street home, still hearing the bands playing and dodging suburbanites looking for parking spaces in what they no doubt consider "the hood."

The conclusion: I love having so many visitors here in my beautiful, historic neighborhood. It's fun to get to eat from so many different restaurants in one day.

But why in the world can't we make Virginia wineries a viable part of Broad Appetit? Virginia beers were certainly well represented.

Broad Appetit, you're on the right track, but you're not there yet.

You've got a year to get it right. Let me know if you need some suggestions.

As an upstanding local citizen, I'm always eager to help improve things in the 'hood.

Here's to number six, Broad Appetit!

February: Richmond City

When you want to see a Pulitzer Prize-winning play in Jackson Ward, you just walk a couple of blocks up and over.

Or across the street, depending on where you live.

And voila, you find yourself in front of the lovelier-all-the-time Empire Theater, which houses Theater Gym.

Where, it just so happens, Cadence Theater Company is doing the Tony Award-winning "August:  Osage County,"

An usher shows us to our seats, me on one side of the aisle and my companion on the other side.

I sit down next to a man who is alone. He looks at me, looks across the aisle at my partner-in-crime and says to him, "Get over here! What's wrong with you?"

He does, they switch seats and a play about the mother of all dysfunctional families unfolds.

Literary references feed this reader's soul; the play begins with a discussion of T.S. Elliott.and later a character tells someone, "Don't get all Carson McCullers on me."

Dialog about shades of a word's meaning (ironic versus incongruous) stokes the fires of the language-obsessed.

I am both.

It soon becomes clear why this play got noticed immediately. The dialog is fast and true and there are vices of every kind on display.

"There's something to be said for alcohol," a sister says. "But not much."

It's a dark comedy with bitterness throughout ("Marriage is a cruel covenant") that takes place in Oklahoma, which is also considered a state of mind ("I got the Plains").

When the three sisters sit around getting drunk, they try to figure out why everyone makes such a big deal about their parents' generation.

"Greatest generation, my ass," the oldest says. "Just because they were poor and hated Nazis?"

As if having a top-notch piece of new theater to show Richmond wasn't enough, the up and coming Cadence Theater Company assembled an excellent cast, utilizing some of RVA's best actors.

They spit and yell and throw things and generally act like dysfunctional people might act.

Everyone's lives are messed up, falling apart or based on lies and eventually even that is acknowledged as that awful place "in the middle...where everything lives."

Oh, yes, that depressing place. I try to steer clear of it.

During one of the two intermissions during the three-hour play (which never for a moment lagged or felt anywhere near as long as three hours), a woman coming up the aisle nearly joins my companion in his seat.

Picking herself up, she says to him, "I got distracted by her fun tights. Sorry, I almost fell into your lap."

He now sees me as an asset who can deliver women into his seat with him.

The play continues and I can relate when a character says about her mother that she "Doesn't believe in air conditioning. Like it's something you believe in."

Just for the record, I don't believe in it, either.

The third act brings even more drinking, sex and arguing, with the actors inhabiting the characters so completely that you feel like the sister Barbara who mistakenly walks in on a private and painful conversation and can't move to escape hearing it.

When the lights finally came up at the end, the crowd was on its feet for what we'd just seen.

You know, just another night of exquistely exiting theater in J-Ward.

Feel free to stop by if there's no Pulitzer-winning play in your own neighborhood.

Faithfully Yours in Fantasy

Faith can mean so many things.

I used to consider it a supreme act of faith that my 90 plus year old neighbor planted bulbs every Fall, fully expecting that she'd see them bloom come Spring.

Once you've had your heart broken, certainly falling in love again is an act of faith and people do that all the time.

It's that range of definitions of faith that make up the fifteen productions in this year's Acts of Faith Festival, which previewed tonight at the Empire Theater, right here in lovely downtown J-Ward.

Some choices are obvious, like "God of Carnage" or "Jewtopia" while some require a closer look to figure out the faith connection.

"Always...Patsy Cline"? Er...? "Ain't Misbehaving"? Um...? Okay, "The Tragedy of Macbeth," sorta, kinda.

Tonight's preview offered brief snippets of all the plays, hopefully whetting the audience's appetite for seeing the full productions.

The brief scene from Henley Street's "Lord of the Flies" reminded me how unsettling that book had been back when I read it in school.

"Shakespeare and Galileo," which I actually saw when it was first produced at the Carpenter Science Theater, imagines that Shakespeare went to Italy and met the great scientist.

This one was obvious. Galileo's description of the moon was the perfect melding of art and science, aka a higher power.

There were plenty of humorous moments, too.

We were told by the director of the Seminary Shoestring Players from Baptist Theological Seminary that he'd started the group because, "I thought it was a good thing for students going into the ministry to learn how to act."

Major laughter greeted that remark.

Likewise there was tittering for Cadence Theater Company's scene from "August: Osage County" where the woman says, "Men always say crap like that, as if the past and future don't exist."

You guys know better, right?

Despite most people probably not even noticing, one moment that brought a smile to my face was during the Patsy Cline song, "Walking After Midnight."

Instead of a band, she had a pianist accompanying her tonight and for sheet music, he was using an iPad.

That's right, touching the screen periodically to go to the next page of music to play a song from the fifties.

He must have had faith that technology wouldn't fail him in the midst of the performance.

And while I'm a card-carrying heathen, one thing I appreciate about the Acts of Faith Festival is that they have talkbacks for every play, inviting audience members to share their take on the issues presented in the plays.

So it's safe to say that once the festival begins, I'll catch a few of the plays and maybe even share my opinion with a roomful of strangers.

I moved from faith to fantasy by going to Eric Schindler Gallery for the opening of Lily Lamberta's new show "Pageant Style Puppetry and Folk Art."

Lily is the brains and talent behind All the Saints Theater Company and the fantastical puppets and masks used in the Annual Halloween and May Day Parades, two events I love participating in.

Her fanciful mounted heads look down from walls oozing personality like no actual stuffed animal ever could.

"Grandma Forest" had lace eyebrows."Watchman of the Woods" had a burgundy velvet head wrap with tassel.

"Winter White Caribou," the piece I coveted, was extravagantly feminine, pink, lacy and with delicate twig antlers.

From the front brightly lit gallery room to the second room represented a colossal shift in mood.

In that space, Lily had crafted a luminous shrine to her parade works. This, I knew, was Lily's world.

Enormous puppets, heads, hands and skulls hung from the walls with fairy lights strewn around them.

Familiar faces from past parades looked down, including George Washington, whom I remembered from the Founding Fathers-themed parade.

It was here I found the artist herself, dressed in a short black taffeta prom dress and cowboy boots, looking like she was having the time of her life among the capacity crowd.

But she didn't seem in the least surprised about all the people raving about her work, snapping photos of it or that she'd already sold three pieces.

And why should she? As far as I can tell, being an artist is a full-time act of faith.

And the Award Goes to...

I got to play dress-up tonight because no cute boys were available.

My friend the theater critic hadn't met anyone he wanted to invite to the Richmond Theater Critics Circle Awards so he settled for inviting me.

"It's formal," he wrote. "Do you have a nice evening dress?'

Conveniently, I do and I can cover up my legs when it's required.

Despite me not being of the sex of his dreams, my date was gallant enough to pick me up since driving in a full-length dress is a pain.

The evening began at Popkin's for a reception and the first person I saw was singer Desiree Roots in a dress with a train.

A train. In Popkin's. Think about that.

After schmoozing and glad-handing for an hour, we moved across the street to the Empire Theater for the awards.

I didn't see many open seats and the crowd was a lively and stylish one, so it felt more like a seated party than a stuffy awards banquet.

And because these were theater people, there were not one but two intermissions to allow people time to get their drink on.

The entire show had been scripted with loads of inside jokes and lots of theater humor, including critic roasting.

When two of the presenters talked about acting versus teaching, one said that the advantage of teaching was that you could send difficult students to the principal..

Or even suspend them.

"I know some critics I'd like to suspend," actress Susan Sanford cracked. "From a bridge. Or a tall building."

Singer Susan Greenbaum asked co-presenter UR basketball Coach Chris Mooney why he'd wanted to participate, given his non-arts occupation.

He answered, "I'm not really known in this part of town." The audience loved that.

One of the biggest laughs went to Anne Holton when she was asked about the high points of being First Lady.

She mentioned the Queen's visit in 2007 and the challenges of learning all the protocols required.

"Thank God there are no queens here tonight," she deadpanned.

Another good pairing was Culture Works' John Bryan with DJ Melissa Chase.

Talking about the contribution of costume design, Bryan said, "Without costumes, theater would just be a bunch of naked people sitting around."

Pause. "Like in radio," he said.

"Hey, we wear headphones," Chase corrected him.

But it wasn't just banter. A song from each of the nominated musicals was performed throughout the evening.

Favorite lyric: "I'd rather be nine people's favorite than a hundred people's ninth favorite."


I, too, aspire to be nine people's favorite. I just want some say in who the nine are.

Like any awards show, there were surprises.

The very first  award winner wasn't present.

Another acknowledged how surprised she was with her win by saying, "I was so unprepared that I'm still chewing gum."

The very talented Alan Sader got my vote for most dapper evening attire for a male in his red plaid kilt and high socks.

He looked magnificent accepting his award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Play (for King Lear).

My money is on him winning next year for playing Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Best Musical was a tie between "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" and "Title of Show," prompting comments about RVA having room for the biggest musicals as well as the smallest (budget).

I had just turned to my (critic) seatmate and commented that Henley Street Theater hadn't won anything (she gave me a cryptic smile) when lo and behold, they won Best Play for "Last Days of Judas Iscariot."

When all was said and done, the crowd was well-lubricated, a bit hoarse after so much yelling for favorites and savoring the camaraderie of the Richmond Theater community.

What else could we do but go for munchies and rehash it all?

My handsome date who opened doors for me and introduced me all night long by saying, "This is my date. Isn't he pretty?" and I were joined by another couple at Third Street Diner.

Over diner food of nachos, cheeseburger, chicken fingers and fries (in our defense, they were out of lettuce), we watched a waitress clean the floor with the vacuum cleaner strapped to her back.

We talked about gay men with girlfriends for beards and which lecture topics attract lesbians.

And before we left, we ogled the contents of the vending machine at the front of the restaurant

Cigarettes, Advil, tampons; all the essentials of life were there.

Our server said the machine used to have candy and condoms, too but, alas, no longer.

Not that my date and I needed either. We were full and neither of us was getting that kind of lucky tonight.

Not that we hadn't looked fine enough to tempt a couple of (very different) guys.

We just didn't meet the right ones.

Dirty Rotten Reckoning

The last time I went to a Barksdale production where people walked out, it was the older contingent and  because of full frontal male nudity.

Today it was wholesome families and because of crude humor and loads of sexual references ("Wrap your legs around my head and crush it like a grape").

Kudos to Barksdale. I say if you can't stand the heat of comedy, stay out of the theatrical kitchen.

We went to the matinee of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" at the Empire Theater, making for an easy five-block walk from my apartment to our ninth row center seats.

The story of two con men trying to see who can score with a wealthy woman first allowed for lots of physical humor and bawdy talk, but also several local references.

During Scott Wichmann's masterfully-done "Great Big Stuff" rap, he was singing about the things he could afford if only he had money.

"I can finally see a Barksdale show!" he sang to much amusement among the theater-going set.

Later when the seasoned con goes to divide up the world into con territories, he gives the newcomer the lowest locations: China, Iceland, El Salvador...and Goochland. Ouch.

Dialog was funny, often raunchy and quick, so some of the oldsters near me missed a lot of good lines.

You need to stay awake at the opera!
It was six hours!
It was WAGNER!
I don't want to have sex and eat bacon for SIX hours!


Because, as we all know, the barometer by which we measure pleasure in life is having sex and eating bacon. No, really.

But I think it was the references to shaved testicles, genital clamps, KY Jelly, and milkshake enemas that may have caused the happy family next to me to jump ship at intermission, leaving candy wrappers and soda cups strewn in their part of the row they had just vacated.

I could tell when they didn't laugh at seeing Wichmann in boxers with one cheek fully visible, much less at the political jokes, that Mom was not enjoying herself.

Too bad they couldn't just focus on the humor, like the character singing about her heart's desire:

Let me have love unending
Let me look good in shorts

What she said.

I know, it's asking a lot, but it's funny. That's why it's called comedy.

Easy as 1,2,3

I teared up over an imaginary beagle, I laughed my ass off as a friend shared his early dating adventures on stage and I did my best to keep up as a trombonist played both the melody and bass line concurrently. It was a really fun evening.

Beginning at the Empire Theater for the Acts of Faith Theatre Festival Preview, I snagged an aisle seat in a rapidly-filling theater.

The festival is a collaborative effort between the faith and theater communities and even a heathen like me usually finds productions worth checking out at the preview.

Not all the plays done during the festival are overtly religious (Romeo and Juliet) while some clearly have that bent (Godspell). The brief scenes we saw tonight gave a peek into what can be expected from this year's offerings.

Swift Creek Mill Theater is doing Once on This Island, which the emcee noted she had once performed in as part of an all-white Canadian cast. "Hey, we work with what we have up there."

Richmond Triangle Players are doing This Beautiful City, a play about an evangelical group that explores the separation of church and state, a subject on which I feel strongly.

Firehouse Theater is doing Dog Sees God: Confessions of a Teenage Blockhead about the Peanuts gang a few years on. The scene we saw involved CB discovering that Snoopy has become rabid and eaten Woodstock, an indication that he has to have his old beagle put down.

I got way more emotional than I should have when CB said that he just knew when Snoopy "didn't come bounding out of his red doghouse" that things were bad. Don't remind me.

Some moments were unintentionally comedic, like when the lead actor of The Choices of a Traveler walked on stage, and a gleeful voice in the audience squealed "Daddy!" to the delight of the crowd.

All in all, the festival looks to be presenting some provocative theater this spring and all the productions will offer an audience discussion after one of the performances. I, for one, like to talk back after seeing a play.

Conveniently, my second stop was just around the corner form the Empire and as I rounded the corner, I ran into friends leaving Comfort for the same show ("Look at you, switching those hips," I was told. No, I'm just walking fast because it's fricking freezing out here).

Gallery 5 was hosting the Comedy Coalition's Richmond Famous event. This is an evening where a local personality shares some true stories from their life and then the improv group goes for the soft underbelly of the story and improvises with scenes and characters stolen from the guest's stories.

Tonight's victim/guest was Kevin Clay, the tireless guy behind the GayRVA website and events and also a friend of mine. Kevin had bravely brought his college dating journal to share with the audience and it was a touchingly hilarious.

He told of trying to impress a date with a meticulously-assembled Easter basket, only to discover that the guy was Jewish. Oops.

He planned to reveal his heart's desire to another crush on top of the Empire State Building and when that didn't work out, he made a flow chart in his journal explaining why not.

You can imagine what ripe material this was for the lightening quick improvisational skills of RCC; two of them denied their love to each other using not only flow charts, but Venn diagrams, bar graphs and all kinds of geeky visual aids while the audience roared.

It was especially fun because I was in the front row, as were Kevin's boyfriend and best friend, both of whom laughed the loudest at Kevin's tales of being a 12-year old girl in a college guy's body.

By the time the comedy was over, I was starving and music-starved, so I went to Sprout to satisfy both needs. I love how they continue to keep the kitchen open for show-goers.

There was no way I was passing up the Blue Point oyster and mushroom quiche over mixed local greens with a balsamic reduction, a new item on the menu.

Even the bartender looked at it and said, "I haven't had that but it looks really, really good." It was and the peppery greens and dense, sweet balsamic were a nice contrast to the rich creaminess of the quiche.

I ran into a couple of musician friends (Sprout's shows are always full of them), providing the resources to answer any musical questions I might have during the evening, not to mention satisfying my conversational needs.

Tonight's show was billed as dueling soloists and performing first was Bryan Hooten (No BS Brass band, Ombak, Fight the Big Bull) on trombone and and then Chris Farmer on drums (with keyboards and loop), with a vague promise of something collaborative after that.

Bryan worked hard tonight, getting red-faced and sweaty and playing so fast and hard that you could hear the spit collecting in his instrument. Periodically he spit it out because he didn't have time to swallow it.

He improvised to a couple of pieces, did a most creative version of Ellington's "In a Sentimental Mood" and tore it up with a take on Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon."

Mid-song, I looked over at my multi-instrumentalist friend (who plays sax) to find him laughing. "I can't believe he's playing he melody and the bass line at the same time," he said by way of explaining his chuckling. It was quite a unique sound, that's for sure.

Between sets I got a piece of chocolate truffle cake and chatted with my friends. They were both getting antsy waiting to hear Chris do his magic on the drums.

And he was impressive, wrapping energetic drumming around those robot keys of his. My drummer friend told me that Chris is a big Brian Eno fan and I could almost hear that.

He also said he's a pocket rhythm drummer as if I understood that, but there wasn't time to have it explained during the performance, so that'll be another of my dumb non-musician questions next time we talk.

The crowd was full of serious head-bobbing Farmer lovers, including one annoying and tall guy who positioned himself in the very front, blocking everyone's view and taking endless pictures ("He's my main man!").

At one point, he even stepped up on the stage and then did a "stage dive," jumping five inches to the floor and bumping into people. Another oldster kept yelling for the Kinks. Spare me, both of you.

After the final collaboration with Bryan augmented by a friend of Chris' named Clint on keys and knob-turning, I went to pay my bill (the bartender: "I'm going to try that oyster quiche you had!" You should do that, my friend). Another excellent show and meal at Sprout.

I ran into one of the guys from Fight the Big Bull at the bar and we fell into a discussion of Keith Richards' autobiography (which he's reading and I've read excerpts from) and the British emphasis on the blues.

He was particularly disgusted that a much younger fellow sax player who had just left had confused Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. "But he's only 24, so what does he know?" Unlike me, he probably knows what pocket rhythm drumming is.

In my defense, though, I've never once confused Zeppelin and Floyd. Or, like the guy in tonight's crowd who compared a piece to Emerson, Lake and Palmer and then corrected himself to say Radiohead, confused those two.

So I've got that going for me. Which begs the question, is there anyone out there who will think that's enough?

Of course there is.

I'm Dreaming of Enough Bathrooms

Bob: Have you ever figured out women?
Phil: They're smarter than we are and they have longer hair.

A friend wanted to take me to see "White Christmas" today at the Empire Theater and it was impossible for me to pass up a chance to see someone I knew, a former actor-turned-restaurateur-turned-actor, do musical theater.

Of course I'm talking abut Barry Pruitt, the original owner of Davis and Main and the recent seller of White Dog. My best memories of White Dog are of late evenings with Barry belting out Sinatra and show tunes to whomever was at the bar, so I'd be the first to acknowledge that he had a great voice.

Barry was playing the General Waverly character and acquitted himself admirably in a production full of big dance numbers, frequent costume changes and classic Irving Berlin songs.

At the big Christmas Eve finale when it finally starts snowing at the inn, the audience got to share the experience as fake snow was blown out over us during the singalong to "White Christmas." Truth be told, I was a fake snow virgin before today; it falls prettily enough, but it doesn't amount to much.

During the singalong, I kept my singing to myself (my grandmother used to tell me that I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, so I know better than to inflict my singing on others), but the older woman next to me had a beautiful voice and was belting it out.

As a theater lover, I was happy to see that the show was all but sold out, happy except at intermission when the bathroom lines were so long that I knew I had no chance of using them. Giving up on bodily functions, I opted for a piece of coconut cake instead, courtesy of Rostov's Coffee.

The white-haired gentleman who sold it to me advised me to eat quickly and then leaned in and said, "Really you have four to five minutes once they call you back in." No doubt that would be so that the bathroom goers had a fighting chance of seeing the opening number of the second act.

Inadequate bathrooms aside, the production was very sweet, even if it bore very little resemblance to the classic holiday movie of the same name. Fortunately, when they didn't use the original snappy 50s dialog, they made up something almost as clever.

Betty: Let's just say that Bob wasn't the man I thought he was.
Judy: What man ever is?

Some lines are timeless...and always get a big laugh.