A Rich, Little Plum Again

What good is sitting alone in your room when you can come hear the music play?

Life is a cabaret, old chum, and tonight's, called "You're Gonna Hear from Me," featured the considerable talents of Billy Christopher Maupin. Having seen BC in cabaret mode before, I knew to get my butt in gear, walk the mile to Firehouse Theatre and get my name on the waiting list for the sold-out show.

Arriving early, the woman at the ticket desk informed me that tickets wouldn't be available until 7:00. Just then Firehouse's producing artistic director showed up, so she inquired if she could start selling tickets then. "Can you?" he asked. "This is Karen! Of course you can sell her a ticket. She's a VIP."

And there's the proof that the requirements for being a VIP have never been lower, although I was very happy to have gained entry. I wiled away the time before the house officially opened talking to a woman waiting for four friends to show up and complaining because, despite the fact that they're all ushers at multiple theaters around town, her friends have a tendency to show up five minutes before curtain time.

They should know better, she asserted. Someone needs parental guidance.

Once seated, I saw plenty of familiar faces: Byrd manager Todd came over to discuss last night's screening of "Vertigo," a fellow theater alliance panel member and her husband, a longtime member of the theater community I hadn't seen in eons and loads of local actors and dancers.

Best line overheard: "Distinguished character actors never go out of style!" said to, who else, a distinguished character actor.

The woman in front of me returned from the loo to praise the brand new bathroom to her daughter, who decided to go solely because her mother insisted she needed to see it. Daughter came back just as wowed, effectively leaving me no choice but to go see what all the fuss was about. I'll admit, I was impressed with the clean lines, spacious design and proximity.

When Joel came out to welcome the crowd and exhort us to visit the bar often, he, too, jumped on the bathroom bandwagon, suggesting we check out the new loos and perhaps, for nostalgia's sake, make the trek upstairs to look at the old bathrooms.

I made do with two trips to the new and called it a night.

BC arrived onstage to start the show in front of a red curtain in tight black pants, a black shirt and a white tie and barefoot, as he always is for these performances. Nearby was his fellow Campbellsville alumni  Joshua Wortham on keyboard (and sly commentary) as they launched into "It's a Lovely Day."

"I feel like Norma Desmond!" he said dramatically when the song ended. Tonight or always, BC?

Since this wasn't my first rodeo, I knew that BC would make brilliant song choices, never more apparent than in the choice of "Nobody's Chasing Me" (which could have been my theme song from 2009 through 2018, but I digress) and his spirited delivery of it.

The breeze is chasing the zephyr
The moon is chasing the sea
The bull is chasing the heifer
But nobody's chasing me

The cook is chasing the chicken
The pea wakes up pee-wee-wee
The cat is taking a lickin'
But nobody's lickin' me

I mean, why go see a BC Maupin cabaret if you don't want to hear how he changes lyrics and chooses just the right songs to describe his life? We should all be so talented.

Between songs, he talked about moving back to Kentucky where he grew up and went to college ("I live in front of a farm now") and currently works a corporate job ("I don't fit in so well. Surprise!"). Then the guy whose favorite tag is #imakethingssometimes admitted, "I haven't made anything for a year and then this opportunity came up."

How's a boy supposed to resist that?

Alternating between standing in front of a mic stand and sitting on a stool, the evening unfolded as a series of songs interspersed with reminiscing about how he got to Richmond, his time in New York City (illustrated by singing Sondheim's "Another Hundred People"), his love life and his return to Richmond, always told with a healthy dose of self-deprecation and only occasionally, shaking hands.

Naturally, he managed to toss in a reference to having won an ARTSIE last year for having directed "Preludes" on the very stage on which he stood, hilariously following that with a casual mention of having previously won an ARTSIE for directing "Carrie."

"I may as well milk it while I'm in Richmond and people know what it means." Shout it to the rooftops, BC.

Calling dancer/choreographer Emily Berg-Poff Dandridge to the stage, the two of them became contestants on a game show with pianist Josh as the host. Using white boards to write their answers, they didn't manage to match even once, but their attempts were reliably funny. Asked if BC won the lottery what he would buy first, BC wrote "a theater." Emily wrote "booze, boys and Patti Lupone."

With enough lottery winnings, both seem achievable, they agreed.

After the game show portion ended, the two dueted on "Sisters" from "White Christmas," as unexpected a choice as it was charming. Their synchronized stool dancing was limited to leg crossing but the energy was high and the smiles were major wattage.

Explaining that everyone had told him that he couldn't put a cabaret together in two days, BC belted out Sondheim's "Everybody Says Don't" to refute that and then the  emotional "I Was Here" before instructing us to use intermission to get a drink because it would make everything better.

Judging by the line at the bar, it was an obedient audience. Well, that and theater people love to drink.

For the second act, BC returned in the same ensemble except with his top button unbuttoned and a black tie, this time to sit at the keyboards and plink out a song before Josh seamlessly sat down to really play.

"It's nice to be back in Richmond," BC said, beaming at all the old friends in the audience. "I know that Virginia Rep is doing 'Chicago' next year, so here's my audition!" and launched into "When You're Good to Mama" with all the passion of a man who wants a role.

Finishing, he smiled devilishly at us and suggested, "Somebody call Nathaniel Shaw right now!" Too bad there wasn't a hot line to Virginia Rep.

Calling up Katrinah Carol Lewis, the two took stools as BC told the story of them seeing Audra McDonald together at the Carpenter Stage, a major event for the uber-Audra fan Katrinah. They both marveled that Audra's glass of water stood untouched all evening as she sang her heart out. "She did not touch it," BC said, clearly amazed. "Just to mock us," Katrinah added.

During an audience singalong, Audra stopped to ask who the beautiful soprano voice belonged to, leading to a one on one conversation with Katrinah about what she sang. When she answered "Your songs," Audra told her that the world already had one of her and needed one of Katrinah, too.

"When I got home that night, I put that in my pipe and smoked it," Katrinah laughed.

The two went on to do a soul-stirring version of "C'mon Get Happy/Happy Days are Here Again" that could have gone on for another half hour without anyone in the room complaining. When Katrinah took a bow before leaving the stage, audience members begged for one more from the two strong voices.

Instead, BC did his third and final tribute as uber-fan to his idol, Patti Lupone.

Saying that he and Josh hadn't wanted to use too much from their last cabaret, BC admitted that they had "Frankensteined this song back together" and I could barely stay in my seat for what I was hoping was to come. That's right, he did "Wonderful Guy" from "South Pacific," which went seamlessly into "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," which slid right into "I Wish I Were in Love Again" - modified to "The classic battle of him and him" - with a brief tangent for "My Funny Valentine" before ending up back with "Wonderful Guy."

Sigh. It was fabulous and brilliant, or, as BC himself would say, Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

While he said that he'd wanted to end the show with a Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney put-on-a-show-in-a-barn kind of vibe, he also admitted that it didn't feel right. "So I'm going to do a song by a tree," he announced, signaling the end was near.

Listening to BC sing us out into the night, I couldn't have been the only one struck by how fortunate we were that he'd made his way back to Richmond to make a thing for us again, like he does. Wouldn't it be wonderful to think that he's considering bringing his award-winning talent back to the city that's already acknowledged twice that we like him, we really like him?

If I had any recommendation for such a talented man, it would be to buy a lottery ticket. But only if he promises to schedule regular cabarets with boys, booze and Patti Lupone at his theater. A healthy does of Richard Rodgers would be nice, too.

It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret

Hey, if he can put a cabaret this wonderfully entertaining together in two days, the boy can do anything.

Take What You Want and Leave the Rest

Being ridiculously happy seems to leave little time to blog.

It's not like I'm not still doing stuff because of course I am. After all, I'm me, so how could I not?

After a meal in service of my hired mouth, Mac and I went to the Basement to see TheatreLab's production of "Topdog/Underdog," marveling at the tightly wound performances of Jeremy Morris and Jamar Jones as brothers with issues in the Pulitzer prize-winning play.

The production clocked in at a hefty two hours and 45 minutes (I knew I had that padding for a reason) and I thought Mac might have to dip out at intermission because of having to go to work early tomorrow, but instead she admitted how sucked in she was by such compelling performances.

Props to first-time director Katrinah Carol Lewis for providing her actors enough room to the create full, albeit flawed, characters before us.

Granted, we walked out of there feeling as if we'd been beat up, but truly great theater is always affecting in some way.

I finally made it to Goatocado, notable for the killer Tuscan arepa (Oaxacan cheese, red pepper, greens, guac and corn in a corn cake) I ate along with a pomegranate ginger-ade, but also for the 50 minutes it took some hapless, young employee to hang the canvas triangles that provided the scant shade on a sunny, blue sky day.

After ten minutes, I was feeling his pain because he was out there in the blinding sunlight without sunglasses. When I questioned the wisdom of that move, he explained that he didn't like clipping sunshades to his regular glasses. But isn't it excruciating to be out here with no sunglasses?

"I'm thinking next time I get glasses, I'll get that kind that darkens in the sun," he explained. "You know, 'cause I don't want to get cataracts." How cute is that?

And for the record, he hung and rehung those triangles unsuccessfully and repeatedly, finally asking two fellow employees to help - one to hook the pieces and the other more knowledgeable one to direct - for over 50 minutes before they were hung properly. Meanwhile, customers like us who wanted to eat outside (inside was full) had a choice of minimal shade or no shade, not the best options on a bright June day at high noon.

Fifty minutes. Have I mentioned that I weep for the future?

Lady G had finally re-surfaced and since our last rendezvous had been March 30, we were in dire need of a blather. Her suggestion was Lemaire at the Jefferson, fine by me as long as we ate outside on the patio and not inside with the business stuffy clientele.

Our table afforded a view of Franklin Street and featured a music speaker that looked like a rock in the flower bed adjacent to us. Yea, it was corny and kind of Flintstones-like, but, hey, it worked, turning the miscellaneous noises of the city into background for the jazz that was playing.

Because our time apart had encompassed April and May, Lady G insisted that it was a birthday celebration and let me choose the bottle: Argyle Brut Rose from a winery I'd visited. And while it took an inordinate amount of time to arrive (it appeared to be our server's first night and he was doing his best, at least at joking with us), it was worth the wait.

When our young server made the rookie mistake of placing the stand holding the wine near the outdoor server's station rather than tableside and G's glass went dry, she did what any self-respecting woman does: walked over, took possession of the stand and bottle and set them in their rightful place within easy reach of us.

The five-top table of young millennial women next to us knew they were in the presence of greatness. "We applaud you taking control!" one called out as the others clapped.

Someday you, too, will just take what you want, grasshopper.

We swapped updates over chilled English pea soup, crispy fried deviled eggs with cornichons and red pepper jelly and Pernod-steamed mussels with apple, fennel and chorizo while we watched people sit down and wait 20 minutes for anything more than water. Luckily, we were in no hurry, not with all the life evaluating we had going on at the table.

At one point, our charming server arrived unexpectedly and a tad out of breath, smiling and saying apropos of nothing, "I've missed you both so." What can you do but crack up at that? At the very least, a sense of humor is essential in the service industry.

We ended the evening on my balcony, where Lady G's birthday gift to me - a bottle of Chateau Kalian 2015 Monbazillac, an organic dessert wine with gorgeous notes of orange and lemon, but also with nice acidity - was opened and sipped chilled as dusk descended on Jackson Ward.

As she does every time she's on my balcony, she commented on some of the high-up architectural details on the house next door. The kind of flourishes barely visible from the street, but striking from mere feet away on the second floor. The kind of thing an artist notices and that's what Lady G is.

She and I have been swapping stories and keeping each other abreast of where the bodies are buried for two decades now, and if that's not worth toasting, I don't know what is.

Check that. Also worth celebrating is finding someone who keeps me so busy talking, laughing and traveling that blogging is all but forgotten.

Sorry/not sorry. Happiness and devoted attention, I have missed you both so.

Getting Along for Good

Have we made no progress in 25 years?

That could have been the theme for TheatreLAB's production of "Twilight: Los Angeles 1992" about the Rodney King beating and ensuing riots and also my first foray into verbatim theater, a genre I didn't even know existed.

Playwright Anna Deavere Smith had used interviews with people associated with the events - everyone from the police chief to King's aunt to a Korean woman whose husband was attacked - as a way of gathering monologues for the one-woman show.

I had gathered up a favorite photographer who also remembered the historic events so I'd have a companion to discuss the play with afterward. No point in going with someone who was in elementary school during the seminal events.

Fortunately for the audience, that one woman was Katrinah Carol Lewis, a fierce presence who with each monologue and minimal costume change managed to display a different take on the crucial events, each distinct, memorable and tragic in his or her own way.

It was while she was playing a Mexican sculptor that the audience nervously laughed when she said, "I'm not a racist. I have white friends," one of those decidedly uncomfortable moments for anyone who recognizes how common that particular justification is despite its meaninglessness.

On the other hand, it was infuriating to hear one of the white jurors at the trial (of the cops who beat King 56 times in 81 seconds) say she felt like a pawn used to get a non-guilty verdict. That the juror later got a letter from the KKK - thrilled at the verdict and inviting her to join - drove the point home most unpleasantly.

In a sign of the times, more than one character made disparaging comments about Jesse Jackson. Oh, Jesse.

Lewis' convincing Cornel West character explained the difference between "optimism" and "hope," the former being secular, and the latter based on nothing, and also predicted that if whites could experience black sadness, it would be overwhelming for them.

No doubt. As it was, the incredibly well-acted play was overwhelming for its unfortunate reminder that there can be no progress until, as Rodney King pleaded, we can all get along.

Props to TheatreLAB for the win, both in thoughtfully choosing a piece of theater that's as relevant today with #blacklivesmatter as when it was written and for the assured execution by Lewis.

Sadly, we still need all the optimism and hope we can get.

Artsies Fever, We Know How to Show It

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here tonight to get through this thing called the Artsies. Preferably before midnight.

Many things happened at tonight's Richmond Theater Critics Circle awards show, many of them in glittery shoes and sparkly clothing.

I wore neither, yet the man who won "Best Actor in a Leading Role, Musical" complimented my ensemble as sexy and demure ("How are you pulling off both?") and referred to his own striking suit as looking "like a couch."

For the record, few couches are that shiny.

Naturally, things got topical. There was last year's Best Supporting Actor - a child actor, mind you - playing the Donald in a blond wig and patriotic ball cap and, when challenged on his fitness to do so given his diminutive stature, responded, " My hands are the right size!"

When the cast of "Green Day's American Idiot" did a medley, it involved a figure in a Trump mask and the entire cast finishing by giving the audience the finger. I like to think they were really giving it to Trump.

Calling a spade a spade, the Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Play called Richmond Triangle Players the "best-run theater in town," and he should know having worked for almost all the others as well.

Even her move to D.C. didn't prevent last year's Best Actress in a Play from being the butt of jokes about her frequent nude scenes, from showing up as a presenter tonight and from reminding us that we are more than a piece of ass.

Winningly, the multi-talented Best Actor nominee in both leading and supporting roles sang a song with green frog hands on.

Prince's "Let's Go Crazy" became the basis for the winner of Best Actress in a Lading Role, Musical and the winner of Best Director, Play to imagine a gospel-inspired MLK musical set to the Purple One.

One of the actors who was part of the deserving group who won the Ernie McClintock Best Acting Ensemble award - the one who's leaving us after five years for a bigger sandbox to show off in  - announced, "If you're not seeing TheatreLAB's shows, you're not really paying attention."

Five awards tonight? Everybody should be paying attention by now.

Because last years's winner of Best Director, Play was unable to attend, her esteemed Shakespeare leanings became the basis for jokes involving tests, balls and cunning linguists set to iambic pentameter.

Behold a 97-year old dancer (who could have passed for 75) accepting an award for Ongoing Contribution to Richmond Area Theater who not only did a few dance movements when she walked onstage, but also said, "I'm grateful to have had a long lifetime in order to achieve so much."

The young 'uns (particularly) in the audience gasped audibly when her age was given and clapped mightily when she sashayed offstage.

Just as moving was the 87-year old actress and mezzo-soprano accepting the same award and sharing her black history in the process. When told by a restaurant server in her youth that, "We don't serve n****rs here," she had the presence of mind to answer, "We don't eat 'em."

And when she told us to hold hands with the people on either side of us, we did while she prayed for a less divisive country and better treatment of women.

One critic's reviews were mocked as too short and another as too long. Both statements were true.

The audience went nuts when nominees for Best Supporting Actress, Play and Best Actor in a Leading Role, Musical sang "Suddenly Seymour" with charm and drama to spare.

There was more Girl Power than you could shake a stick at, like last year's Best Actress winner pointing at another actor in Colonial garb a la "1776" and saying, "This is what a President looked like in the past," and then doffing her own Revolutionary costume to reveal a sexy red dress underneath.

"And this is what a President will look like in the future!" Hear, hear.

Oh, and for the record, 5th Wall does more than "plays where smart women holler at each other." Why is it "hollering" when we do it and "discussing" when men do the same?

You'd never hear the Dowager Countess say such a thing.

The Promised Saturday Night

Nonsense coming out of a pretty woman's mouth ain't nonsense at all. It's poetry.

Which begs the question, what does that make nonsense coming out of this ordinary woman's mouth?

Had you wanted to know, you needn't have gone any further than Graffiato tonight, where a favorite girlfriend and I landed in the middle of the Saturday night rush in search of nothing more than a pizza.

The only possible place to situate our backsides was at the community table, where we were surrounded by first-time visitors, suburbanites and couples who went to college in the '70s, one of whom observed, "When I was in college, I never expected to see such undesirable people running for the Presidency."

We gave her a round of applause.

While it appeared that there were at least three dozen black-shirted servers working, service did not come quickly, so when it did arrive and knowing we had a curtain to make, we wisely cut to the chase, ordering two Proseccos and a Porky's Revenge pizza in one breath.

Somehow or another, the pig-laden pizza (Soprasetta, sausage and pepperoni) arrived prior to the bubbles, don't ask me how. When our vino did show up, my friend immediately informed our server we needed two more in an attempt to jump-start what was clearly a  moribund process.

Given our time constraints, we'd no sooner polished off the stellar pizza when we requested the dessert menu, gave it a cursory glance and asked for the chocolate fudge cake with salted caramel gelato.

I mean, those second glasses of Prosecco were practically begging for an accompaniment.

As our forks slid into the cake, the foursome next to us turned their attention our way. The woman next to me leaned back and her husband leaned toward me, spoon in hand, eyes big as saucers. He didn't say a word, so I smiled at him.

"Don't you know what it looks like when a man begs?" he asked plaintively. I smiled again. Actually, yes, I do know what it looks like when a man begs, I told him sweetly.

The quartet roared. "Best retort ever!" the husband across the table from me laughed. "Good for you!"

Do I get extra points for quickness, for lying on the spur of the moment, for saying it convincingly?

Because we could see the theater from our seats, we lingered until 7:50 and still easily made our curtain for Cadence Theatre Company's "The Mountaintop," even having time to jump into a theater discussion before curtain time.

When we overheard the theater critic behind us talking about watching "the most Anglicized Italian family" and about "how foreign an ethnic family is to Richmond Baptists and Republicans," both of us swiveled in our seat, sure that he was talking about "Saturday, Sunday, Monday," a play the two of us had just seen and been underwhelmed by (where were the Italian accents, the hand gestures, the signature Neapolitan passion? All MIA).

Dissecting a disappointing play turned out to be an ideal segue to a fiercely powerful one without a weak link in the cast, albeit a cast of two.

"The Mountaintop" told the story of Martin Luther King's last night on earth, and his imagined conversation with a maid at the Lorraine Motel who brings him coffee.

During the time they smoke Pall Malls ("My Momma said those Winstons'll kill you") and talk, it gradually comes out that she's not a maid, but an angel come to prepare MLK for his final hour. But it's not all dour doings because along the way, she tells him how she'd lead the movement, informs him that god is a woman and engages him in a raucous pillow fight.

A two-actor play rests squarely on the shoulders of the talent and there was no shortage in such a compelling production.

Nailing the inflections and cadence of King's distinctive preacher-man speaking voice - when he answers the phone, it's always in a deeper, more heroic voice - Jerold Solomon conveys both the charismatic leader determined to leave the world a better place and the weary and worried Everyman who knows he's a walking target.

Commanding the stage in her turquoise blue uniform and white apron, Katrinah Carol Lewis plays Camea with all the passion of a deeply flawed woman who has a chance to redeem herself by doing this job for the woman upstairs.

She's sort of the Clarence to Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life," in that she's studied her subject - his file was thicker than the one the FBI had and thicker than the Bible - and she's just as determined to earn her wings.

Let me put it another way. You know how Ginger Rogers had to do everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels?

Well, Katrinah had to portray not one, but two characters, perform a fiery monologue wearing men's shoes while standing on a bed and voice/sing a video montage of the future.

Oh, yes, and wear high heels.

While I've long been a fan of Cadence's top-notch productions, it was the first time for my friend - who worked in the theater business for years - although I'd assured her she'd be impressed.

When the play ended, she turned to me and exclaimed, "Now, that's theater!"

Neither nonsense nor poetry, that was just fact.

Mind Racing and Blown

If you're the least bit curious about the state of Richmond's theater scene, run, do not walk to see "Race."

Your mind will be blown and you will leave wishing you had a bigger brain to process what you just experienced.

My hired mouth and I had dinner with a girlfriend before I drove home, parked the car and walked over to Virginia Rep Center for Carol Piersol and the African American Repertory Theater's production of David Mamet's "Race."

As much as I adore good theater, I'd only seen one Mamet play produced before and that was 1999's "Boston Marriage," which I saw in Philadelphia back in the mid-aughts.

"Race" was written ten years later and boldly delves into racial differences in processing shame and guilt through the eyes of one white and two black characters who work in a law office and are defending a white man accused of raping a black woman.

An elegant and eloquent set greeted us in the Theater Gym and our usher warned us that the play ran 80 minutes, no intermission.

Fortuitously, I'd already made a pit stop.

Ten minutes of intense Mamet-speak dialog in and it was obvious why there could be no break in the action; the audience was already as enmeshed in the machinations of the story as the actors.

There were so many levels to the play: the black to black conversations, the white to black exchanges, the male to female, male to male, accused to defenders, all within the bigger context of the law and played by an all-star Richmond cast.

Billy Christopher Maupin and dl Hopkins as the two lawyers who've recently taken in a young, black female associate, play off each other with post-modern respect tempered by acknowledgement of wholly different cultural experience due to their racial differences.

Causing problems for them and their client is Katrinah Carol Lewis, who brings her own baggage to the case by being black and female, meaning she presumes their white, male client is guilty from the get-go.

The questionable client role was handled oh-so capably by Joe Inscoe, the focus of everyone's attention because he claimed the sex had been consensual, not rape.

With a Mamet play, dialog is always king ("I think all people are stupid. I don't think black people are exempt.") and provocative; between unfinished sentences, people talking over each other and as much politically incorrect dialog as could be crammed into 80 minutes, the play never let up for a second.

Twice the lights dimmed to indicate that we were going from one time of day to another and truly, it was only for those few seconds that your brain got a moment's reprieve from processing so much.

It was wildly stimulating in a way that reminds you of the wonder of live theater and the headiness of being fully mentally engaged.

When the play abruptly ended, it was with more questions than when it began and not so much as a whiff of answer in the air.

The audience was stunned and thrilled at the same time for what we'd just experienced.

My friend and I stood up but the woman at the end of our row was already asking us questions about the play.

We stood discussing it with her for about five minutes before taking our talk-back to the lobby where we found a cluster of astounded people ready to talk.

"I want there to be  a second act!" an actress lamented. "I wanna know more."

"Damn that Mamet! He throws so much at you and doesn't give you a hint of how things might go," another woman said.

"Shakespeare does the same thing; look at "King Lear" or "Merchant of Venice," someone said. "Besides..."

A half dozen or so strangers stood there for the next fifteen minutes talking about the play and the issues it raised about the court system, race relations, sexual relations and how everyone brings their own baggage to them.

It was less than an hour and a half of superbly-produced theater and I can almost bet the farm that everyone who sees it will continue to question, re-examine and return to thoughts of "Race" for weeks to come.

You know how cities choose a book and everyone reads it (Richmond Reads or something like that?) so that there can be discussion groups all over town about it?

I  make a motion that we have a Richmond Plays and everyone goes to see "Race."

Besides the thought-provoking discussion topics such a thing would raise, it would serve an even greater cultural good.

It would make a theater lover out of every single person who saw it.

Playing with the Borrowed Boyfriend

This is what it's come to: asking permission to go out with someone else's boyfriend.

I had tickets for a play and no one to go with, so I did the only logical thing - asked a friend (who had to work tonight) for a loan.

Before long I heard from the boyfriend. "Sounds great. Which show? Can I treat you to dinner beforehand?"

Well, that was easy. Sure can.

We originally planned to got to Bistro 27 because of its proximity to the November theater, but they were full up so we ended up instead at Avenue 805, a place I hadn't eaten in probably four years.

They had the front door propped open, which I appreciated, and all the ceiling fans on, which I did not.

Rather than be the one to ask them to lower the wind velocity, I waited until another woman sat down and she immediately asked for them to be turned off. Well played, I thought.

Given the recent chill, I began with one of tonight's soups, a French onion with a peppery, dark broth and no cheese on top.

For old times' sake, I ordered the SSC cakes of shrimp, scallops and crab with lemon dill aioli over a mixed green salad.

I wasn't expecting two cakes, I wasn't expecting them to be as flat as pancakes and I wasn't expecting them to be without any discernible lumps of shrimp, scallops or crab.

The borrowed boyfriend was a good date, asking me questions about my dating life and recent work while supplying his own colorful stories so that the conversation never really lagged.

As a fellow dessert lover, we had high hopes for a sweet course after our so-so meals, but our nice but tentative server said there was only one: bread pudding.

I don't care if the restaurant is for sale, that's an appalling showing for dessert, so we opted out.

Then it was onward to the theater to see Cadence Theater's production of "Good People."

My considerate date tried to make up for the dessert fiasco by offering to buy me some candy when he went to get wine and I succumbed when I spotted Rolos.

After taking our seats in the tiny black box theater, we sat back to enjoy a play that won a New York Drama Critics award and was nominated for a Tony award for Best Play.

If you're going to borrow a date, better to borrow him for something good.

The story was set in a blue-collar neighborhood in South Boston and began with Margie, played with depth and grace by Dawn Westbrook, getting fired from her job at the Dollar Store.

As her boss is trying to fire her, she informs him everyone thinks he's gay. Why, he asks. "Cause you go to bingo a lot," Margie says to the first big laughs of the evening.

Worried that she and her adult, mentally-challenged daughter will end up on the street, like former classmate Cookie who died on the sidewalk and no one noticed for two days, Margie visits an old flame who's now a doctor, in hopes of finding work.

Before she goes, her friend Jean, played to wise-cracking perfection by feather-haired Jacquie O'Connor, suggests she tell him her daughter is his.

"I could just pull a Maury Povich on his ass!" Margie squeals with delight.

It was the second act when Margie visits the doctor at his home in a tony neighborhood and meets his much younger, black wife that she begins to lie about the paternity of her daughter in hopes of getting financial help.

But not before getting a lesson in fancy cheeses ("The worse they smell, the better the cheese")  and finding out what a "push" present is (think childbirth reward).

That scene, the heart of the play, had the audience alternately laughing and gasping as the three of them say and hear things better left unsaid and heard.

Katrinah Carol Lewis played the wife, conveying the entitlement of a privileged upbringing, the pain of a spouse who had been hurt repeatedly and the fire of a fierce and devoted mother to her own daughter.

Even though it was opening night, the cast was on point, even skillfully changing the elaborate sets (for so small a space) in a timely manner so that just as the song clip ended, the actors took their places, every picture hung, every newspaper folded.

"Good People" was about how each of us determines our life by the choices we make while fate occasionally steps in and throws us a curve ball.

Yet again, Cadence has chosen a compelling, new play, filled it with strong actors and left the audience to absorb the fireworks.

As a theater friend enthused as we were walking out, "Wow, what did we just see?"

We saw a play where theater reflects life with lines like, "Cause what guy could resist a middle-aged lady in Goodwill clothes?"

Hopefully none, although, for the record, my ensemble came from Diversity Thrift, not Goodwill.

My loaner date was too impressed with the play to even notice.