Tonight's lesson was downright blunt: you just never know what's going to happen to you.
Well, I knew I was going to dinner, a play and to hear music with an old friend. But he's been living in the 'burbs for a while now, causing him to ask a really dumb question when I suggested the plan for the evening. "Are we going to walk?" he messaged me.
Duh.
Now, mind you, it's not like he's some rube. This is a man who used to live in J-Ward, a man who's known me for a decade now and with whom I've walked to these places before.
Had he forgotten the J-Ward drill already?
Because he was coming straight from work and the play started earlier than usual, we decided to make Tarrant's Back Door for fish tacos our destination. It was also a sentimental choice because when we'd first met, he'd been bartending at Tarrant's. Right off the bat, he caused a sensation by asking if he could use Apple Pay instead of a card to pay for dinner. Turns out he could, but almost no one on staff knew that, so they all watched intently as he paid the 21st century way.
"Wow, I would have told a customer no, we can't do that," one of the managers admitted. Glad to help train the staff, son.
It was while we were eating our guac-slathered tacos that he shared that his relationship of the past few years was ending and naturally, that became the topic of conversation for the rest of the meal. While he'd long acknowledged that the relationship wasn't perfect (are any?), he hadn't foreseen its conclusion (but then, who does?).
As a long-time friend, I just hated seeing him sad about it.
After we ate, we strolled over to the November Theater for Cadence Theater Company's production of "Gloria," a multi-award winning play and Pulitzer Prize finalist. You know, the usual J-Ward fare.
We're grown-ups. We're supposed to choose our friends.
The utterly engrossing story followed a fictional publishing company and the Generation X editors, Generation Y editorial assistants and the Generation Z intern and receptionist as they try to figure out if they'll ever achieve their career dreams given that the Baby Boomers continue to hold on to all the top positions.
And now these Boomers aren't dying!
Where the play shocked the entire audience was in its depiction of how one disgruntled employee handled her resentment of others in the office. It was clear that none of her coworkers - much less the audience - had any idea what was going to happen to them when they went to work that day. Spoiler alert: intermission involved the stage crew removing lots of fake blood.
In the pre-Internet days, when you sat down at your desk, you had no choice but to work.
At intermission, everyone walked around half-dazed at the unexpectedness of what we'd just seen, sort of a witness-lite reaction to fictionalized trauma. The second half of the story showed how survivors - witnesses and those absent but part of the office - processed what they'd been through. And if they made money in the process, all the better to them.
It was exactly the kind of thought-provoking theater you can always count on Cadence Theatre Company delivering. My friend and I couldn't stop talking about it from the moment the applause began until we walked into Gallery 5, which for tonight, had been turned into a honky-tonk.
That meant sad songs, heartbreak and an unusually high number of cowboy hats in the room. Once it got hot in there, the hat owners began using said headgear to fan themselves.
DJ Mary was playing honky tonk vinyl when we walked in and the first person to throw her arms around me was the reason I was there. Musician Alison Self is back in Richmond for the first time in something like three years and there was no way I was missing seeing her and hearing that voice. Confession: I've been a devoted fan since I first met her back in 2008.
In fact, the evening was a benefit because Alison had been diagnosed with colon cancer back in December and been through a couple rounds of chemo. Talk about not knowing what's going to happen to you.
Meanwhile, my friend was totally digging on DJ Mary playing a cover of "Delta Dawn," a song that took him back to elementary school because his music teacher used to have his class sing it. I have to say, it was a real kick to hear a DJ playing nothing but honky tonk records for a change.
Then Alison took the stage in her fringed shirt, jeans and hat, holding her guitar and introducing her dobro player Mike before saying how nice it was to see all our beautiful faces. "It's like a family reunion!" she laughed before getting down to business. "Go ahead and swipe right on me on Tinder. I'm single!" Pure Alison.
So is her voice, bigger sounding than she looks and pure twang. As the night progressed, she did songs by Kitty Wells like "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," as well as Loretta Lynn's "Kentucky Girl" and originals I'd heard before and loved, like "When I Feel Weak, I Pour a Strong Drink," which she explained was about coping mechanisms.
But being Alison, she used the moments between songs to banter with the crowd of friends and fans, saying, "Y'all are so responsive and sweet, but this is a bar and we're going to get drunk!"
Explaining that she was going to put out a tip jar in case we wanted to contribute to the cause ("my butt hole!"), she sang another of her own, "Go Ahead, Girl," which she'd started because she wanted to use the word "strychnine" in a song. Honky tonk goals, I'm guessing.
Meanwhile, a photographer roamed the room shooting crowd footage for Alison's upcoming video and couples began two-stepping, although it was mostly all girl couples since my people tend to be the ones who want to dance.
"Are you ready for a dirty song?" Alison asked rhetorically, before introducing her classic, "I'll Buy the Plan B If You Buy the Whiskey," which she claimed hadn't been written as a political song but now very much felt that way in today's oppressive legislating. Then there was a Hank, Sr. song and a Buck Owens song and one about growing up outside of Petersburg, and wanting to escape, which she did.
I mean, who wouldn't?
And, yes, she offered to let anyone who wanted to touch her chemo port. I'll be honest, I wasn't one of them. But even with all the singing and joking, she included a PSA for the greater good: "If you have blood in your butt for a year, you should probably have that checked out!"
From there, it was only natural for her to launch into "I Wouldn't Kiss You If I Was Whiskey Drunk," an Alison Self classic if there ever was one and the ultimate statement about attraction.
Granted, we don't always know what's going to happen to us. Seems to me that that's exactly why I need to be out there having a ball every chance I get. Especially with friends who are going through the unexpected.
All I'm saying is, I'll buy the fish tacos if you buy the tequila.
Showing posts with label cadence theater company. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cadence theater company. Show all posts
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Monday, March 18, 2019
The Rest is Herstory
If we established anything this weekend, it's that I'm not hermit material.
I'm not talking about just living alone and away from people, even though I'll admit that's what I thought a hermit was until Saturday night.
It began innocently enough. Mr. Wright and I had plans to have dinner and see a play with Pru and Beau. No big deal. Then Beau asks if we mind if he brings a work cohort. Of course we don't mind. Next he shares that his friend is a former Benedictine monk. Well, as long as he knows he's breaking bread with a band of heathens, I'm fine with it.
But then, after we dodge green-wearing drunks wandering away from Shamrock the Block to get to Peter Chang's, we get the full story. He wasn't just a Benedictine monk, he was a hermit. As in, living away from society. Whoa. And he was part of a hermitage that was silent. As in, zero talking.
And even that's not the reason I'm not hermit material.
It was when he explained about the one meal, two snacks a day rule that I knew with the utmost certainty that I was not cut out for the hermetic life.
Go without three square meals a day plus snacks in service of religious beliefs? Don't make me laugh.
Why, just last week I said something to Mac about our healthy appetites and she was quick with the facts. "You can eat more than I can," she reminded me. She wasn't wrong.
Just yesterday, Mr. Wright and I drove out to the Kilmarnock Inn to have brunch with my favorite sister, her family and my parents, a meal planned to celebrate my Mom's birthday the day before. Now, mind you, we were meeting at 10:30 for brunch, but we had to be up at an ungodly 8 a.m. to make the drive.
So naturally, we had breakfast before we left. As I'm diving into my Stack the Votes (a plate of four enormous pancakes with bacon), I casually mention having had breakfast earlier and Mom laughs in surprise. "Karen!" she says, like I need a good scolding.
I remind her, not for the first time given the length of our relationship, that I can't function for three hours from waking up to having my pancakes placed in front of me, so I did the logical thing and ate first.
What's the fuss about?
I might also point out that after Beau's buddy explained hermit life, he also reminded us that he'd abandoned it. The fascinating part was that apparently being a hermit, even for only a while, gives you a lifetime pass to stay at a monastery should you ever want to.
That's because being a monk, even short-term, makes you a monk forever.
When presented with such unlikely information, all I can say is, pass the scallion bubble pancake.
Unfortunately, the ex-hermit couldn't accompany us to see "In My Chair" at Cadence Theater because the show was sold out, so after a stop at Bar Solita for dessert - in my case, double chocolate cake and Tawny Port - he thanked us for a delightful evening and vanished back to California and the IT security world.
The play we'd come to see had grown out of a TED talk actress and make-up artist Eva deVirgilis had created. Seems every time she has a woman in her makeup chair, the first thing the woman does is apologize.
For her bad hair, for the bags under her eyes, for her thin lips, for everything she can think of that's not perfect about her. Eva calls this "sorryosis" and set out around the globe to talk to women about changing beauty standards, self-esteem and body image.
And, just for the record, I hadn't even realized we were into fourth wave feminism.
Then she came back to take to the stage and make women aware of what she'd been told. She did it through vignettes using the accents and comments of women in her chair. She did it through the arguments she has with her un-confident inner self, who she nicknamed Norma after normative discontent. She did it through interactions with the audience.
Along the way, she shared her life story, including the part where she had to put up with a controlling boyfriend before meeting the love of the life, who also happened to be sitting in the front row that night, cheering her on.
Once during a Patriots' game, she'd asked him if he'd ever been body shamed, but he said no, other than being called short (which he is), he never had. I can't imagine there's a woman who hasn't been body shamed at least once in her life and probably more often than that.
Eva touched on many related issues, probably none so important as when she talked about accepting compliments, something many women, myself included, do poorly. "A compliment is a tiny gift someone brought to you," she explained. "Why would you drop kick it?"
Why, indeed? I had to admit, there's no good answer for that and I left hoping that's one bad habit I can unlearn.
Last night, Mr. Wright and I closed out the James River Film Festival by strolling over to Gallery 5 for the Silent Music Revival, but only after chowing down on fish tacos at Tarrant's Back Door. Don't tell my Mom, but it was technically my fourth meal of the day.
The thing is, when your first is at 8:15 and your second at 11 a.m., you've got to have something in the afternoon to tide you over until tacos show up at 7:30, am I right?
Life in the hermitage, clearly not for me.
Showing tonight was Jean Vigo's "Zero for Conduct," a 1933 French short film that was immediately banned for its content, with live music provided by the Wimps, whose lounge-like '60s vibe somehow made for the ideal accompaniment to French boys tying up their teacher, trashing their dormitory and marching through the streets victoriously.
Vigo was moved to make the film because of the repressive days he'd spent in a boarding school where he suffered with mean teachers. frequent punishments and, wait for it, insufficient food.
There you have it. Deny a person food and they might make a subversive film or they could return to the dark underbelly of IT security. Either way, they're hungry.
I'm better off just eating as frequently as possible. As for apologizing for my appetite, no sorryosis here.
I'm not talking about just living alone and away from people, even though I'll admit that's what I thought a hermit was until Saturday night.
It began innocently enough. Mr. Wright and I had plans to have dinner and see a play with Pru and Beau. No big deal. Then Beau asks if we mind if he brings a work cohort. Of course we don't mind. Next he shares that his friend is a former Benedictine monk. Well, as long as he knows he's breaking bread with a band of heathens, I'm fine with it.
But then, after we dodge green-wearing drunks wandering away from Shamrock the Block to get to Peter Chang's, we get the full story. He wasn't just a Benedictine monk, he was a hermit. As in, living away from society. Whoa. And he was part of a hermitage that was silent. As in, zero talking.
And even that's not the reason I'm not hermit material.
It was when he explained about the one meal, two snacks a day rule that I knew with the utmost certainty that I was not cut out for the hermetic life.
Go without three square meals a day plus snacks in service of religious beliefs? Don't make me laugh.
Why, just last week I said something to Mac about our healthy appetites and she was quick with the facts. "You can eat more than I can," she reminded me. She wasn't wrong.
Just yesterday, Mr. Wright and I drove out to the Kilmarnock Inn to have brunch with my favorite sister, her family and my parents, a meal planned to celebrate my Mom's birthday the day before. Now, mind you, we were meeting at 10:30 for brunch, but we had to be up at an ungodly 8 a.m. to make the drive.
So naturally, we had breakfast before we left. As I'm diving into my Stack the Votes (a plate of four enormous pancakes with bacon), I casually mention having had breakfast earlier and Mom laughs in surprise. "Karen!" she says, like I need a good scolding.
I remind her, not for the first time given the length of our relationship, that I can't function for three hours from waking up to having my pancakes placed in front of me, so I did the logical thing and ate first.
What's the fuss about?
I might also point out that after Beau's buddy explained hermit life, he also reminded us that he'd abandoned it. The fascinating part was that apparently being a hermit, even for only a while, gives you a lifetime pass to stay at a monastery should you ever want to.
That's because being a monk, even short-term, makes you a monk forever.
When presented with such unlikely information, all I can say is, pass the scallion bubble pancake.
Unfortunately, the ex-hermit couldn't accompany us to see "In My Chair" at Cadence Theater because the show was sold out, so after a stop at Bar Solita for dessert - in my case, double chocolate cake and Tawny Port - he thanked us for a delightful evening and vanished back to California and the IT security world.
The play we'd come to see had grown out of a TED talk actress and make-up artist Eva deVirgilis had created. Seems every time she has a woman in her makeup chair, the first thing the woman does is apologize.
For her bad hair, for the bags under her eyes, for her thin lips, for everything she can think of that's not perfect about her. Eva calls this "sorryosis" and set out around the globe to talk to women about changing beauty standards, self-esteem and body image.
And, just for the record, I hadn't even realized we were into fourth wave feminism.
Then she came back to take to the stage and make women aware of what she'd been told. She did it through vignettes using the accents and comments of women in her chair. She did it through the arguments she has with her un-confident inner self, who she nicknamed Norma after normative discontent. She did it through interactions with the audience.
Along the way, she shared her life story, including the part where she had to put up with a controlling boyfriend before meeting the love of the life, who also happened to be sitting in the front row that night, cheering her on.
Once during a Patriots' game, she'd asked him if he'd ever been body shamed, but he said no, other than being called short (which he is), he never had. I can't imagine there's a woman who hasn't been body shamed at least once in her life and probably more often than that.
Eva touched on many related issues, probably none so important as when she talked about accepting compliments, something many women, myself included, do poorly. "A compliment is a tiny gift someone brought to you," she explained. "Why would you drop kick it?"
Why, indeed? I had to admit, there's no good answer for that and I left hoping that's one bad habit I can unlearn.
Last night, Mr. Wright and I closed out the James River Film Festival by strolling over to Gallery 5 for the Silent Music Revival, but only after chowing down on fish tacos at Tarrant's Back Door. Don't tell my Mom, but it was technically my fourth meal of the day.
The thing is, when your first is at 8:15 and your second at 11 a.m., you've got to have something in the afternoon to tide you over until tacos show up at 7:30, am I right?
Life in the hermitage, clearly not for me.
Showing tonight was Jean Vigo's "Zero for Conduct," a 1933 French short film that was immediately banned for its content, with live music provided by the Wimps, whose lounge-like '60s vibe somehow made for the ideal accompaniment to French boys tying up their teacher, trashing their dormitory and marching through the streets victoriously.
Vigo was moved to make the film because of the repressive days he'd spent in a boarding school where he suffered with mean teachers. frequent punishments and, wait for it, insufficient food.
There you have it. Deny a person food and they might make a subversive film or they could return to the dark underbelly of IT security. Either way, they're hungry.
I'm better off just eating as frequently as possible. As for apologizing for my appetite, no sorryosis here.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Between Jefferson and First
Today's lesson? Don't try to hide happiness.
When a favorite Gemini and I finally managed to meet for lunch - mind you, we've been trying to plan this since our birthdays in May - at Lucy's, the conversation necessarily started with her curious about my love life. Although she'd briefly met Mr. Wright back in May when we all wound up at the same restaurant, she needed details.
Trying to keep my giddiness under control, I started rambling calmly about him, about us, about things we'd done and places we'd gone, stopping only when she grabbed my arm. "Is there something bad about him or the relationship?" she asked, sounding concerned. "Why are you telling me this so matter-of-factly?"
Needless to say, gushing has become my usual M.O. when talking about this wonderful new phase of my life to anyone foolish enough to ask. But ever since Mac chided me about whining about the cold weather on the way to Folk Fest ("You have a man who loves you, so you don't get to complain about Fall!"), I've been trying to temper my over-the-top happiness.
I should have known a Gemini wouldn't let me get away with that crap.
As she devoured her salmon salad and I my shrimp po'boy salad, I proceeded to let loose with everything that's been happening in my life and how well it suits me. That, she told me, was what she wanted to hear.
Around the time the chocolate mousse pie with graham cracker crust showed up, we felt a presence behind us and looked up to find a familiar goateed face (writer/one of my former editors/radio host) standing behind our bar stools. "I'm here with P," he said. "Weren't you two here talking and eating last time we came here?" Not long after, when we went to leave, the duo were still standing at the door awaiting a free table. "Hey, weren't you two here last time we came here for lunch?" P inquired.
Geminis may be overly observant, but even we can't recall everyone who eats at the restaurants we do. We are, after all, concentrating on each other.
The subject of so much of my conversation showed up hours later for a J-Ward date that began by walking to Rogue for dinner. There, we took the only two available stools, only to hear the man to my left say, "Boy, they let anyone in here, don't they?"
There sat a local chef and now sommelier who's been off the radar for a hot minute, so, after introductions, I naturally asked what he had cooking. Giving me a pained look, he assured me he has something big in the works but legally can't say what it is yet. It was obvious the restraint he was displaying was wearing on him, so I assumed it was a matter of city incompetence or money shortages.
In any case, he assured me I'd know something soon.
Sipping Terre di San Venanzio Fortunato Prosecco while noshing on charred carrots jazzed up with harissa, yogurt, a generous amount of crumbled peanuts and capers followed by to-die-for sweet potato-filled cappalletti surrounded by broccoli rabe and caramelized pearl onions with dollops of ricotta, we left the chef to his ruminations. Meanwhile, Rogue's chef proffered a wave and smile from the far end of the bar.
When my chocolate cremeux with meringue stars, vanilla sponge cake and caramelized cinnamon ice cream with graham cracker crumbles arrived, I'd barely made a dent when the man to Mr. Wright's left elbowed him aside to ask of me, "What's that?"
I can't be the only woman impressed by a guy curious about a fabulous looking dessert, can I?
After selling the dessert hard, I polished mine off, suggested he order his own and we left to walk over to the November Theater for Cadence Theatre Company's production of "Between Riverside and Crazy." When the usher pointed out our seats, she said they were right in front of "this couple." Glancing at the couple, major figures in the local theater scene, I shouldn't have been surprised when they began cracking wise about the kind of people in the row in front of them.
Clearly everyone I know is a comedian.
The incredibly well-acted play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2015, took us into the rent-controlled apartment of an older black retired cop on disability. His son, just released from jail and his girlfriend, live there too, along with a recovering addict. Everyone refers to him as "Pops" and appreciates his hard-won wisdom, even if he has been cranky since his wife died. He's also got a lawsuit pending against the department since it was a white cop who mistakenly shot him.
The dialog crackled with authenticity and not a few completely politically incorrect statements, but the play was most appealing because I had no idea where it was going. And I certainly didn't see Pops' sex scene coming,
No surprise for a recent Pulitzer winner, the play offered no answers about the state of modern life, but rather showed the good, the bad and the ugly and left the future in limbo, providing plenty to discuss with my willing partner, who saw shades of Redd Foxx's Sanford character in Pops.
This morning, at my yearly girl parts check-up, the nurse-practitioner's first question was whether anything was new. I assumed she meant health wise. Mid-exam, she asked the all-important question - "Are you involved in any domestic violence?" and I laughed out loud.
From there, I was off and blathering about this fascinating new person in my life. She stopped me only to complete the exam before asking what had happened next. She wanted all the intel and who was I to deny her a chirpy version? With a Q & A period (her idea).
I won't necessarily volunteer (although it's likely) to share my happiness, but if you ask, I will answer with many words, chirpy words.
Which I seem to have in spades these days. Not necessarily a bad thing, either.
When a favorite Gemini and I finally managed to meet for lunch - mind you, we've been trying to plan this since our birthdays in May - at Lucy's, the conversation necessarily started with her curious about my love life. Although she'd briefly met Mr. Wright back in May when we all wound up at the same restaurant, she needed details.
Trying to keep my giddiness under control, I started rambling calmly about him, about us, about things we'd done and places we'd gone, stopping only when she grabbed my arm. "Is there something bad about him or the relationship?" she asked, sounding concerned. "Why are you telling me this so matter-of-factly?"
Needless to say, gushing has become my usual M.O. when talking about this wonderful new phase of my life to anyone foolish enough to ask. But ever since Mac chided me about whining about the cold weather on the way to Folk Fest ("You have a man who loves you, so you don't get to complain about Fall!"), I've been trying to temper my over-the-top happiness.
I should have known a Gemini wouldn't let me get away with that crap.
As she devoured her salmon salad and I my shrimp po'boy salad, I proceeded to let loose with everything that's been happening in my life and how well it suits me. That, she told me, was what she wanted to hear.
Around the time the chocolate mousse pie with graham cracker crust showed up, we felt a presence behind us and looked up to find a familiar goateed face (writer/one of my former editors/radio host) standing behind our bar stools. "I'm here with P," he said. "Weren't you two here talking and eating last time we came here?" Not long after, when we went to leave, the duo were still standing at the door awaiting a free table. "Hey, weren't you two here last time we came here for lunch?" P inquired.
Geminis may be overly observant, but even we can't recall everyone who eats at the restaurants we do. We are, after all, concentrating on each other.
The subject of so much of my conversation showed up hours later for a J-Ward date that began by walking to Rogue for dinner. There, we took the only two available stools, only to hear the man to my left say, "Boy, they let anyone in here, don't they?"
There sat a local chef and now sommelier who's been off the radar for a hot minute, so, after introductions, I naturally asked what he had cooking. Giving me a pained look, he assured me he has something big in the works but legally can't say what it is yet. It was obvious the restraint he was displaying was wearing on him, so I assumed it was a matter of city incompetence or money shortages.
In any case, he assured me I'd know something soon.
Sipping Terre di San Venanzio Fortunato Prosecco while noshing on charred carrots jazzed up with harissa, yogurt, a generous amount of crumbled peanuts and capers followed by to-die-for sweet potato-filled cappalletti surrounded by broccoli rabe and caramelized pearl onions with dollops of ricotta, we left the chef to his ruminations. Meanwhile, Rogue's chef proffered a wave and smile from the far end of the bar.
When my chocolate cremeux with meringue stars, vanilla sponge cake and caramelized cinnamon ice cream with graham cracker crumbles arrived, I'd barely made a dent when the man to Mr. Wright's left elbowed him aside to ask of me, "What's that?"
I can't be the only woman impressed by a guy curious about a fabulous looking dessert, can I?
After selling the dessert hard, I polished mine off, suggested he order his own and we left to walk over to the November Theater for Cadence Theatre Company's production of "Between Riverside and Crazy." When the usher pointed out our seats, she said they were right in front of "this couple." Glancing at the couple, major figures in the local theater scene, I shouldn't have been surprised when they began cracking wise about the kind of people in the row in front of them.
Clearly everyone I know is a comedian.
The incredibly well-acted play, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2015, took us into the rent-controlled apartment of an older black retired cop on disability. His son, just released from jail and his girlfriend, live there too, along with a recovering addict. Everyone refers to him as "Pops" and appreciates his hard-won wisdom, even if he has been cranky since his wife died. He's also got a lawsuit pending against the department since it was a white cop who mistakenly shot him.
The dialog crackled with authenticity and not a few completely politically incorrect statements, but the play was most appealing because I had no idea where it was going. And I certainly didn't see Pops' sex scene coming,
No surprise for a recent Pulitzer winner, the play offered no answers about the state of modern life, but rather showed the good, the bad and the ugly and left the future in limbo, providing plenty to discuss with my willing partner, who saw shades of Redd Foxx's Sanford character in Pops.
This morning, at my yearly girl parts check-up, the nurse-practitioner's first question was whether anything was new. I assumed she meant health wise. Mid-exam, she asked the all-important question - "Are you involved in any domestic violence?" and I laughed out loud.
From there, I was off and blathering about this fascinating new person in my life. She stopped me only to complete the exam before asking what had happened next. She wanted all the intel and who was I to deny her a chirpy version? With a Q & A period (her idea).
I won't necessarily volunteer (although it's likely) to share my happiness, but if you ask, I will answer with many words, chirpy words.
Which I seem to have in spades these days. Not necessarily a bad thing, either.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
RC Cola and a Pink Moon
Unofficially, Summer has been kicked off.
Friday night's dinner at Flora was winding down when one of the managers overheard me telling Pru and Beau a story involving Jello shooters at the Free Love Nursing Home, spurring her to tell me about the latest thing on their late-night drink menu: Jello shooters. And not your average vodka and fruit variety, but a Pimm's Cup Jello shooter, complete with tiny bits of cucumber on top. A grown-up shooter.
We'll take three, please.
The ample shooters were every bit as refreshing as you'd expect, but given that a Pimm's Cup is Pru's official Summer drink, it seemed only right to toast to my upcoming favorite season as part of the shooting.
Mind you, this was exactly what we womenfolk needed after a lengthy explanation to Beau about why the phrase "the rabbit died" is synonymous with getting pregnant. Pru, incredulous that he'd never made the connection between the two phrases, was gobsmacked when he said it seemed illogical to think that rabbits had ever been sacrificed for the sake of a pregnancy test. What else, she queried, could the phrase have meant?
I've since asked three other men if they understood the phrase's meaning, only to discover they were as unaware as Beau. Mars and Venus, I tell you what.
Pru put it most hilariously by asking Beau, "Oh, you think the doctor's office should have a rabbit hutch out back?" when he mused about the inconvenience of nabbing rabbits for testing.
After seeing Cadence Theatre's production of "Appropriate" about a family so dysfunctional it made all of us feel better, Pru was moved to observe, "Not the play I want to die in." One can only hope to have that choice.
Back at Pru's manse, we met up with Hotdog, an old family friend who'd flown in from Arizona while we were at the play and had been awaiting our arrival. The goal was to add him into our wide-ranging porch conversation - which only concluded shortly before 2 a.m. - while listening to music from 1969, the year he'd graduated high school.
That meant everything from the Beatles to Norman Greenbaum. "I wonder if he'd have had more hits if he'd changed his name?" Pru mused.
That kind of late night meant the morning came quickly, all the more so because I'd promised Hot Dog that he could walk with me after he'd emailed asking if I'd take him on a fun walk. The "fun" part was undoubtedly meant to convey that he wasn't up to another serious walk like the one I'd taken him on during a previous visit when I'd led him all over Manchester and back, to the tune of 6+ miles and a man who needed a nap afterward.
Today's was far more circumspect in length, less because of his request than that I needed to get back to pack my car and head out to the Outer Banks. That's right, it was another chance to set Summer in motion by returning to the little cottage I rent every year.
Hot Dog was good enough to help me load my car up after the walk and then Uber whisked him away and I headed to the ocean, stopping only at Adam's Country Store for an RC Cola (which the owner was kind enough to open for me) and a bag of local peanuts.
I enjoyed both as a I drove, following an older Jeep with faded OBX license plates, a bumper sticker that read, "Local as it gets" and another sticker that said "Tunnel Pass."
When I got to the bridge in Currituck, it turned out to be a throwback crossing because the old span is being renovated, meaning both directions are traveling on the same bridge, which is how I remember getting to the Outer Banks as a kid, but not in recent decades.
Then I got to the cottage, the same one I've been staying at since the early '90s and, yet again, time has marched on. Every year, the real world (the 21st century one) encroaches a little more on my favorite cottage, this year evidenced by a keyless entry (no more going to the realty office to pick up keys) and a new window a/c unit in the living room (bedroom units were put in 4 years ago, much to my dismay).
Clearly I'm the last person on earth who wants a true old school beach experience sans TV, conditioned air and phone.
Today was cool, but the ocean breeze was stellar - briny and brisk - and the sky so dark blue it almost hurt your eyes to stare at it. The cottage next door is occupied, but most of the ones around here are not, making for an especially low-key start to Summer at the beach with my usual crew.
After a late dinner, everyone headed outside to admire the full moon aka the pink moon that signals the start of a new season, one I've been eagerly awaiting. Some might say that the only thing missing was Pimm's Cup Jello shooters with which to toast such a gorgeous night sky.
Personally, I'm not wishing for a single thing with my best Summer ever beginning. My invisible bumper sticker reads, "Happy as it gets."
Friday night's dinner at Flora was winding down when one of the managers overheard me telling Pru and Beau a story involving Jello shooters at the Free Love Nursing Home, spurring her to tell me about the latest thing on their late-night drink menu: Jello shooters. And not your average vodka and fruit variety, but a Pimm's Cup Jello shooter, complete with tiny bits of cucumber on top. A grown-up shooter.
We'll take three, please.
The ample shooters were every bit as refreshing as you'd expect, but given that a Pimm's Cup is Pru's official Summer drink, it seemed only right to toast to my upcoming favorite season as part of the shooting.
Mind you, this was exactly what we womenfolk needed after a lengthy explanation to Beau about why the phrase "the rabbit died" is synonymous with getting pregnant. Pru, incredulous that he'd never made the connection between the two phrases, was gobsmacked when he said it seemed illogical to think that rabbits had ever been sacrificed for the sake of a pregnancy test. What else, she queried, could the phrase have meant?
I've since asked three other men if they understood the phrase's meaning, only to discover they were as unaware as Beau. Mars and Venus, I tell you what.
Pru put it most hilariously by asking Beau, "Oh, you think the doctor's office should have a rabbit hutch out back?" when he mused about the inconvenience of nabbing rabbits for testing.
After seeing Cadence Theatre's production of "Appropriate" about a family so dysfunctional it made all of us feel better, Pru was moved to observe, "Not the play I want to die in." One can only hope to have that choice.
Back at Pru's manse, we met up with Hotdog, an old family friend who'd flown in from Arizona while we were at the play and had been awaiting our arrival. The goal was to add him into our wide-ranging porch conversation - which only concluded shortly before 2 a.m. - while listening to music from 1969, the year he'd graduated high school.
That meant everything from the Beatles to Norman Greenbaum. "I wonder if he'd have had more hits if he'd changed his name?" Pru mused.
That kind of late night meant the morning came quickly, all the more so because I'd promised Hot Dog that he could walk with me after he'd emailed asking if I'd take him on a fun walk. The "fun" part was undoubtedly meant to convey that he wasn't up to another serious walk like the one I'd taken him on during a previous visit when I'd led him all over Manchester and back, to the tune of 6+ miles and a man who needed a nap afterward.
Today's was far more circumspect in length, less because of his request than that I needed to get back to pack my car and head out to the Outer Banks. That's right, it was another chance to set Summer in motion by returning to the little cottage I rent every year.
Hot Dog was good enough to help me load my car up after the walk and then Uber whisked him away and I headed to the ocean, stopping only at Adam's Country Store for an RC Cola (which the owner was kind enough to open for me) and a bag of local peanuts.
I enjoyed both as a I drove, following an older Jeep with faded OBX license plates, a bumper sticker that read, "Local as it gets" and another sticker that said "Tunnel Pass."
When I got to the bridge in Currituck, it turned out to be a throwback crossing because the old span is being renovated, meaning both directions are traveling on the same bridge, which is how I remember getting to the Outer Banks as a kid, but not in recent decades.
Then I got to the cottage, the same one I've been staying at since the early '90s and, yet again, time has marched on. Every year, the real world (the 21st century one) encroaches a little more on my favorite cottage, this year evidenced by a keyless entry (no more going to the realty office to pick up keys) and a new window a/c unit in the living room (bedroom units were put in 4 years ago, much to my dismay).
Clearly I'm the last person on earth who wants a true old school beach experience sans TV, conditioned air and phone.
Today was cool, but the ocean breeze was stellar - briny and brisk - and the sky so dark blue it almost hurt your eyes to stare at it. The cottage next door is occupied, but most of the ones around here are not, making for an especially low-key start to Summer at the beach with my usual crew.
After a late dinner, everyone headed outside to admire the full moon aka the pink moon that signals the start of a new season, one I've been eagerly awaiting. Some might say that the only thing missing was Pimm's Cup Jello shooters with which to toast such a gorgeous night sky.
Personally, I'm not wishing for a single thing with my best Summer ever beginning. My invisible bumper sticker reads, "Happy as it gets."
Friday, September 22, 2017
No Sin, No Trespass
Fall arrives and the play's the thing again.
I've been back from the beach for exactly 29 hours and in that time, I've eaten at 2 restaurants, been accompanied by two men, seen two plays, walked 5 miles with a friend I haven't walked with since we had a non-dotard president and interviewed a southern soul legend.
All I can say is, that's a lot to jump back into after being oceanfront for days.
For plot novelty and the elusive lesbian central character, there was Cadence Theatre's production of "Fun Home," spun from the graphic novel of the same name about a young woman growing up in Pennsylvania, discovering who she was and finally learning that her father was a closeted gay man, too.
Now there's a switch from walking on the beach.
Barely a day later, I got Virginia Repertory's production of "Shakespeare in Love," which means Tom Stoppard-written words (Is she obedient? As any mule in Christiandom!), fabulous period costumes and a plot designed for Shakespeare fans and students of love.
I will have poetry in my life!
Upstairs at Max's for dinner, we were part of the sizable pre-theater crowd, though most of them were on their way to see "Shakespeare in Love" and we weren't. But we were greeted by a favorite actor stopping by to say hello and guarantee that we'd be out in time for our curtain.
He wasn't just whistling dixie, either, because he also showed up with trifle at the end of dinner.
On the other hand, it was nothing but crickets chirping at Graffiato's, where we were the lone bar sitters and the crowd didn't even begin arriving until we were well into our roasted cauliflower, pizza and monkfish. Clearly some people didn't have a curtain to make.
The best part of coming back from the beach is all the things the beach doesn't offer, you know, plays and restaurants where people don't all wear flip-flops. Engaging my brain again and restocking on opinions and experiences.
The worst part is all these people complaining today that it's 85 degrees on the first day of fall. We've got plenty of time in the months ahead for cool, dry air and I'm going to enjoy every warm moment until I have to close my windows.
I'm also going to take the advice of the 75-year old southern soul legend, who assured me from Memphis, "Don't give up on love because love won't give up on you."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe entire plays have been written on that subject. Turns out I go to a lot of them.
Because in addition to the beach, I will have poetry in my life.
I've been back from the beach for exactly 29 hours and in that time, I've eaten at 2 restaurants, been accompanied by two men, seen two plays, walked 5 miles with a friend I haven't walked with since we had a non-dotard president and interviewed a southern soul legend.
All I can say is, that's a lot to jump back into after being oceanfront for days.
For plot novelty and the elusive lesbian central character, there was Cadence Theatre's production of "Fun Home," spun from the graphic novel of the same name about a young woman growing up in Pennsylvania, discovering who she was and finally learning that her father was a closeted gay man, too.
Now there's a switch from walking on the beach.
Barely a day later, I got Virginia Repertory's production of "Shakespeare in Love," which means Tom Stoppard-written words (Is she obedient? As any mule in Christiandom!), fabulous period costumes and a plot designed for Shakespeare fans and students of love.
I will have poetry in my life!
Upstairs at Max's for dinner, we were part of the sizable pre-theater crowd, though most of them were on their way to see "Shakespeare in Love" and we weren't. But we were greeted by a favorite actor stopping by to say hello and guarantee that we'd be out in time for our curtain.
He wasn't just whistling dixie, either, because he also showed up with trifle at the end of dinner.
On the other hand, it was nothing but crickets chirping at Graffiato's, where we were the lone bar sitters and the crowd didn't even begin arriving until we were well into our roasted cauliflower, pizza and monkfish. Clearly some people didn't have a curtain to make.
The best part of coming back from the beach is all the things the beach doesn't offer, you know, plays and restaurants where people don't all wear flip-flops. Engaging my brain again and restocking on opinions and experiences.
The worst part is all these people complaining today that it's 85 degrees on the first day of fall. We've got plenty of time in the months ahead for cool, dry air and I'm going to enjoy every warm moment until I have to close my windows.
I'm also going to take the advice of the 75-year old southern soul legend, who assured me from Memphis, "Don't give up on love because love won't give up on you."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe entire plays have been written on that subject. Turns out I go to a lot of them.
Because in addition to the beach, I will have poetry in my life.
Friday, February 24, 2017
Living for Right Now
We're having a heatwave, despite the calendar still reading February.
I'm not saying that because the mercury hit 74 degrees, but because today was the first day that my lipsticks should have spent the day in the refrigerator like it was June, a fact a girl only discovers once she's getting ready to go out and finds them softer than ideal.
Now that I think about it, they may have warmed up driving back from the Northern Neck - where I'd gone today to visit my parents - with the windows mostly down.
I'd gotten a late start coming back because Mom and I decided to walk down to the dock, past the two weeping willow trees she tells me have just burst into leaf the past two days and wound up sprawled in an Adirondack loveseat discussing life.
And death, as it turns out. An article in today's Washington Post "Heart to Heart: The Conversation You Least Want to Have with your Aging Parents May Be the Most Important" was the starting point, but like so many conversations with my folks, there was a fair amount of laughter, too.
When I mention how hard it would be for Dad if she should die first, she waves off the problem, saying with a smile, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. He won't last long once I go!"
I'm not sure if she means this because he's never had to fix his own food (at 8, I once found him crawling around the kitchen floor looking for where she kept the cold cereal and had to show him which cabinet) or because he'll wither away from a broken heart.
Telling her I'd just seen "In the Heat of the Night" at the Byrd for the first time last night, we dished about her memories of the award-winning film's impact at the time and about what a handsome man Sidney Poitier had been.
A tangent from there about how I've never seen "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" had her telling me about Spencer Tracy's speech in that film about how, despite his age, he remembers with absolute clarity his feelings for his wife when they first met and fell in love and how true love endures through the years.
"He was really talking about the love of his life, Katherine Hepburn," Mom tells me with absolute certainty, although certainly with the wisdom of her own experience as well. How she recalls this particular scene after not seeing the movie in decades is beyond me, but now I'm determined to see it myself, knowing that Hepburn and Tracy were long-time lovers.
The levity returns later on the walk back to the house. Surveying the two sheds full of Dad's crap and the crumbling grape arbor, she says, "I already told him when he looks down from heaven, none of this mess will be here!"
How often do you get to have an end of life discussion and get film recommendations in the same afternoon, much less riverside with waves lapping at the sand?
Once back in the city with my half-melted lipsticks, I managed to apply them before strolling over to Graffiato to meet a friend pre-theater.
Arriving first, the bartender welcomed me back and re-introduced himself, amazing me since we'd met the first week of January when he'd obligingly served a brown liquor-drinking friend while discussing distillation methods and then completely forgotten to take my drink order. For 15 minutes.
The good news is, being ignored guarantees you'll be remembered on your next visit.
With a nod to my birthplace and an appreciation for housemade ginger beer, I was drinking a variation on the DC Mule out of a copper cup when my friend came rushing in, Christmas present in hand. Once she got a pretty, pink Paloma, it was a race to catch up with each other's lives in 35 minutes so we could make a curtain.
What always happens when we try this is that I'll ask her what's been going on in her life and she'll rush through a few highlights and then insist on hearing my goings-on. Tonight, she was particularly fond of the symmetry of the trip to Cuba story, but saved plenty of enthusiasm for the good stuff and an Italian sausage pizzeta.
We didn't shut up until we headed across the street to the November Theater for Cadence Theatre's production of "Violet," another in the Acts of Faith series.
Although I was already happy being with a long-time friend I don't get to see nearly enough of, I got more fortunate still right off the bat by winning two tickets to Cadence's next production by having my seat number drawn from a bucket.
I'm lucky
I can walk under ladders
Yes, I'm so lucky
That I'm as lucky as me
I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a Cadence production and tonight kept that streak alive with a play that managed to marry high spirited musical numbers channeling gospel and country overtones (and the crack five piece band right onstage with the actors) with a poignant story about a disfigured girl looking for more conventional beauty and a big dose of self acceptance.
That it was set in the deep south in the 1964 during the Civil Rights movement only continued the thread of so many of my outings lately. That I'd gone from watching handsome Sidney Poitier last night to almost-as-handsome Josh Marin tonight was no sacrifice at all
First you choose your road and then you take it.
As an entry in the Acts of Faith Festival, Violet's story about who chooses to love her and whether they do it for who she really is or not provided the real meat of the play and enough to justify a post-theater discussion at Quirk afterward.
The bar at Maple + Pine was full, more than a few tables held diners and staff whisked new guests and luggage to the elevator as we grabbed a bar table and settled in to dissect what we'd seen over Prosecco and chocolate pecan pie.
"Please indulge!" said the server who dropped off the goodies.
In the dessert? In a soundtrack that included Tame Impala and The XX? In the bustling scene as the bar emptied and filled back up again?
All of that and more. Mostly, we indulged in conversation about the challenges of choosing your road and allowing yourself to take the right detour if it presents itself.
Hint: it doesn't always go through Cuba.
I'm not saying that because the mercury hit 74 degrees, but because today was the first day that my lipsticks should have spent the day in the refrigerator like it was June, a fact a girl only discovers once she's getting ready to go out and finds them softer than ideal.
Now that I think about it, they may have warmed up driving back from the Northern Neck - where I'd gone today to visit my parents - with the windows mostly down.
I'd gotten a late start coming back because Mom and I decided to walk down to the dock, past the two weeping willow trees she tells me have just burst into leaf the past two days and wound up sprawled in an Adirondack loveseat discussing life.
And death, as it turns out. An article in today's Washington Post "Heart to Heart: The Conversation You Least Want to Have with your Aging Parents May Be the Most Important" was the starting point, but like so many conversations with my folks, there was a fair amount of laughter, too.
When I mention how hard it would be for Dad if she should die first, she waves off the problem, saying with a smile, "Oh, you don't have to worry about that. He won't last long once I go!"
I'm not sure if she means this because he's never had to fix his own food (at 8, I once found him crawling around the kitchen floor looking for where she kept the cold cereal and had to show him which cabinet) or because he'll wither away from a broken heart.
Telling her I'd just seen "In the Heat of the Night" at the Byrd for the first time last night, we dished about her memories of the award-winning film's impact at the time and about what a handsome man Sidney Poitier had been.
A tangent from there about how I've never seen "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" had her telling me about Spencer Tracy's speech in that film about how, despite his age, he remembers with absolute clarity his feelings for his wife when they first met and fell in love and how true love endures through the years.
"He was really talking about the love of his life, Katherine Hepburn," Mom tells me with absolute certainty, although certainly with the wisdom of her own experience as well. How she recalls this particular scene after not seeing the movie in decades is beyond me, but now I'm determined to see it myself, knowing that Hepburn and Tracy were long-time lovers.
The levity returns later on the walk back to the house. Surveying the two sheds full of Dad's crap and the crumbling grape arbor, she says, "I already told him when he looks down from heaven, none of this mess will be here!"
How often do you get to have an end of life discussion and get film recommendations in the same afternoon, much less riverside with waves lapping at the sand?
Once back in the city with my half-melted lipsticks, I managed to apply them before strolling over to Graffiato to meet a friend pre-theater.
Arriving first, the bartender welcomed me back and re-introduced himself, amazing me since we'd met the first week of January when he'd obligingly served a brown liquor-drinking friend while discussing distillation methods and then completely forgotten to take my drink order. For 15 minutes.
The good news is, being ignored guarantees you'll be remembered on your next visit.
With a nod to my birthplace and an appreciation for housemade ginger beer, I was drinking a variation on the DC Mule out of a copper cup when my friend came rushing in, Christmas present in hand. Once she got a pretty, pink Paloma, it was a race to catch up with each other's lives in 35 minutes so we could make a curtain.
What always happens when we try this is that I'll ask her what's been going on in her life and she'll rush through a few highlights and then insist on hearing my goings-on. Tonight, she was particularly fond of the symmetry of the trip to Cuba story, but saved plenty of enthusiasm for the good stuff and an Italian sausage pizzeta.
We didn't shut up until we headed across the street to the November Theater for Cadence Theatre's production of "Violet," another in the Acts of Faith series.
Although I was already happy being with a long-time friend I don't get to see nearly enough of, I got more fortunate still right off the bat by winning two tickets to Cadence's next production by having my seat number drawn from a bucket.
I'm lucky
I can walk under ladders
Yes, I'm so lucky
That I'm as lucky as me
I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a Cadence production and tonight kept that streak alive with a play that managed to marry high spirited musical numbers channeling gospel and country overtones (and the crack five piece band right onstage with the actors) with a poignant story about a disfigured girl looking for more conventional beauty and a big dose of self acceptance.
That it was set in the deep south in the 1964 during the Civil Rights movement only continued the thread of so many of my outings lately. That I'd gone from watching handsome Sidney Poitier last night to almost-as-handsome Josh Marin tonight was no sacrifice at all
First you choose your road and then you take it.
As an entry in the Acts of Faith Festival, Violet's story about who chooses to love her and whether they do it for who she really is or not provided the real meat of the play and enough to justify a post-theater discussion at Quirk afterward.
The bar at Maple + Pine was full, more than a few tables held diners and staff whisked new guests and luggage to the elevator as we grabbed a bar table and settled in to dissect what we'd seen over Prosecco and chocolate pecan pie.
"Please indulge!" said the server who dropped off the goodies.
In the dessert? In a soundtrack that included Tame Impala and The XX? In the bustling scene as the bar emptied and filled back up again?
All of that and more. Mostly, we indulged in conversation about the challenges of choosing your road and allowing yourself to take the right detour if it presents itself.
Hint: it doesn't always go through Cuba.
Friday, November 4, 2016
Deep Calling Unto Deep
We must allow time tonight to revisit our discussion of the mayoral race given the withdrawal of the preferred candidate.
It's certainly been a heated topic of conversation all day long - at least for the scores of creative types and artists I know - after having our mellows harshed last night when our best chance at a truly good mayor evaporated when Jon Baliles fell on his sword to help prevent the election going to the pedophile.
Great, just great, now we're left with the slimy corporate sell-out complete with facial hair affectation or the pre-fab (just add water and watch him grow) come-here unable to speak beyond spouting the party line.
Sigh.
But since we already had plans to see a play, there was no reason not to spend some quality conversational time on the state of the mayor's race, among other things, when we met for dinner at Saison Market.
I'd been given my instructions to order for both of us if I arrived first - "based on our previous dining experiences, I know you have good taste" - but I didn't, so ordering temporarily fell by the wayside once I did walk in, self-identifying hibiscus blossom in hand.
The problem is that once you start examining a topographic map with a geologist is that before you know what hit you, you'll be knee-deep in igneous and metamorphic rock formations, so busy talking that by the time you order, there's about 20 minutes remaining to inhale a whole lot of food.
I'm talking pork pozole, warm and spicy; spirited seafood escabeshe of shrimp, fluke, mussels, carrots, radishes and jalapenos with hushpuppies; addictive fried brussels sprouts; and cast iron cornbread for good measure.
Someone's eyes were bigger than our minimal dinner time slot, that's all I'm saying.
In reality, the problem was not so much the short window to eat as it was all the topics that kept burbling up to the surface as we kept focusing on conversation rather than chewing.
All I can say is, good thing the theater was barely a block away. Even so, we were those people picking up tickets at 7:58 and sliding into our seats moments before Cadence Theatre's production of "John" began.
The elaborate set of the downstairs of a fussy and fusty Victorian-looking B & B set the scene for a play about how difficult it is to communicate effectively, much less ever really know someone.
But, as one character put it looking around at the object-filled cutesy rooms, it was also the "tragedy of the bed and breakfast."
Along the way, a blind woman explained why she'd committed herself to an institution ("The thing about being crazy is, it can also all be true"), another raved about "the great Ferlin Husky" as if everyone recognized the name (I did, but that's not the point) and a whiny millennial couple dealt with the unraveling of their relationship.
Where the play shone was in the completely believable language between the characters, which sounded natural and unsure like actual conversation, rather than measured and assured like play-writing too often does.
One of the most beautiful moments came when the innkeeper explained that for amusement, she'd memorized the terms for collections of birds, the phrases rolling off her tongue like poetry.
A congress of crows
A troubling of hummingbirds
A colony of gulls
A siege of herons
A mustering of storks
A tiding of magpies
A wisdom of owls
A charm of finches
A cast of falcons
A raft of loons
An exaltation of larks...
Understandably, that last one had been her favorite for the sheer joy it conveyed.
That this Obie Award and Drama Desk Award play ended with anything but a neat, happy ending only solidified its place as a story that hews closer to real life than a convenient tying up of loose ends into a pretty bow ever could.
Because whose life ever really works out that way?
Returning to Saison Market afterward for sherry, Rose and a final dissection of "John" also provided an opportunity to dig deeper on personal histories, Hull Street taquerias and life lessons learned while a warm rain fell steadily outside.
Although "John" had already taught us that you can't ever really know someone, to be human is to try, right?
All in all, an adventure full of exaltation...minus the larks and as charming as the finches.
It's certainly been a heated topic of conversation all day long - at least for the scores of creative types and artists I know - after having our mellows harshed last night when our best chance at a truly good mayor evaporated when Jon Baliles fell on his sword to help prevent the election going to the pedophile.
Great, just great, now we're left with the slimy corporate sell-out complete with facial hair affectation or the pre-fab (just add water and watch him grow) come-here unable to speak beyond spouting the party line.
Sigh.
But since we already had plans to see a play, there was no reason not to spend some quality conversational time on the state of the mayor's race, among other things, when we met for dinner at Saison Market.
I'd been given my instructions to order for both of us if I arrived first - "based on our previous dining experiences, I know you have good taste" - but I didn't, so ordering temporarily fell by the wayside once I did walk in, self-identifying hibiscus blossom in hand.
The problem is that once you start examining a topographic map with a geologist is that before you know what hit you, you'll be knee-deep in igneous and metamorphic rock formations, so busy talking that by the time you order, there's about 20 minutes remaining to inhale a whole lot of food.
I'm talking pork pozole, warm and spicy; spirited seafood escabeshe of shrimp, fluke, mussels, carrots, radishes and jalapenos with hushpuppies; addictive fried brussels sprouts; and cast iron cornbread for good measure.
Someone's eyes were bigger than our minimal dinner time slot, that's all I'm saying.
In reality, the problem was not so much the short window to eat as it was all the topics that kept burbling up to the surface as we kept focusing on conversation rather than chewing.
All I can say is, good thing the theater was barely a block away. Even so, we were those people picking up tickets at 7:58 and sliding into our seats moments before Cadence Theatre's production of "John" began.
The elaborate set of the downstairs of a fussy and fusty Victorian-looking B & B set the scene for a play about how difficult it is to communicate effectively, much less ever really know someone.
But, as one character put it looking around at the object-filled cutesy rooms, it was also the "tragedy of the bed and breakfast."
Along the way, a blind woman explained why she'd committed herself to an institution ("The thing about being crazy is, it can also all be true"), another raved about "the great Ferlin Husky" as if everyone recognized the name (I did, but that's not the point) and a whiny millennial couple dealt with the unraveling of their relationship.
Where the play shone was in the completely believable language between the characters, which sounded natural and unsure like actual conversation, rather than measured and assured like play-writing too often does.
One of the most beautiful moments came when the innkeeper explained that for amusement, she'd memorized the terms for collections of birds, the phrases rolling off her tongue like poetry.
A congress of crows
A troubling of hummingbirds
A colony of gulls
A siege of herons
A mustering of storks
A tiding of magpies
A wisdom of owls
A charm of finches
A cast of falcons
A raft of loons
An exaltation of larks...
Understandably, that last one had been her favorite for the sheer joy it conveyed.
That this Obie Award and Drama Desk Award play ended with anything but a neat, happy ending only solidified its place as a story that hews closer to real life than a convenient tying up of loose ends into a pretty bow ever could.
Because whose life ever really works out that way?
Returning to Saison Market afterward for sherry, Rose and a final dissection of "John" also provided an opportunity to dig deeper on personal histories, Hull Street taquerias and life lessons learned while a warm rain fell steadily outside.
Although "John" had already taught us that you can't ever really know someone, to be human is to try, right?
All in all, an adventure full of exaltation...minus the larks and as charming as the finches.
Saturday, May 14, 2016
It's Only New Until It's Post
One of the more unlikely perks of being the upstairs tenant is being a fly on the wall to youth.
My living room windows are directly over the downstairs porch, so when the windows are wide open - as they've been for over a month and will be until practically Halloween - snippets of conversation from the guys downstairs waft up for my amusement.
Often it's music geek talk because they're all VCU students, musicians and spirited enough to want to discuss things passionately while dragging on cigarettes. A couple of days ago, I overheard bits of a conversation about post punk, but not enough to establish the direction of the conversation.
Naturally, the next time I walked by the porch to find them strumming and earnestly discussing, I stopped to clarify what they'd been talking about, namely whether they'd been discussing actual post-punk or the more recent post-punk revival.
When I asked, they got the same confused look they had when I'd asked how they felt about Prince dying: vagueness, a little confusion, curiosity at my interest.
Explaining the difference to them seemed to be as appallingly illuminating as when I'd ranted about why three guitarists should know Prince's place in the guitar pantheon. They knew nothing of the original post-punk movement. Nothing.
The lively conversation I'd overheard bits of centered entirely on the post-punk revival, that is, Interpol, Editors, Franz Ferdinand, all very much 21st century stuff. I'm shaking my head in disgust that that's as far back as their musical memory goes before realizing that they'd been about six or seven years old when those bands had hit.
To them, the revival is ancient history and the original post-punk era lumped in with that period when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
So I lectured the boys (yes, I'm calling them that) about Joy Division, Husker Du and the Waterboys, hoping to impress upon them how completely differently that music registered after short, fast and hard ruled. They nodded, but the names meant nothing to them. Hell, they didn't even know all the post-punk revival bands I threw out.
This is when I go on with life and give up trying to expand their horizons.
My date tonight was Pru, who arrived in time for a glass of Rose and a recap of recent events before we set out for dinner and a show. On the way out, we found a package cleverly hidden under the open-weave doormat downstairs (this is the UPS driver's pointless attempt at camouflage) and I delighted her by opening it on the spot.
It may be a while before I live that down.
At Saison Market, we took seats by the window with a view of street theater to eat Spring salads - proprly May-like with fresh peas, asparagus, charred Chevre, coriander vinaigrette, pea shoots - and a cheese plate with Meadow Creek Dairy "Grayson," sweet pecan crumbles, pickled ramps and whey on it. It was way good (lame, I know).
Tonight's theatrical entertainment was Cadence Theatre's "4,000 Miles," a play about generational adjustments when a 21-year old shows up in Greenwich Village to visit his fiercely independent 91-year old grandmother after riding his bike all the way from the West Coast.
He's every millennial cliche: bearded, unwilling to eat food that isn't locally sourced, eager to follow his unstructured path in life and it's only when he skims his dead grandfather's book on fighting the good fight for Communism that he gets a glimpse of what he's not.
"I thought I was non-cynical, but Grandpa took non-cynicism to another level," he says before offering his grandmother "a hug from a hippie," which, by the way, he was not. The concept of a hippie culture revival is laughable because of the movement's inability to exist outside of a specific time in cultural history, a fact that seems to have escaped playwright Amy Herzog.
There's no denying the satisfaction of seeing two generations separated by 70 years hit it off in small ways, whether it's smoking a joint together or discussing a shared admiration of Marx, but I have to question a 21-year old male character who tells his grandmother, "Stop, it's making me sick for you to talk about her body that way," when she suggests the woman could stand to lose a few pounds.
I have no reason to believe that those words ever came out of a 21-year old man's mouth, except when written by a woman.
Look, I've got years of experience with things men of all ages say and that one just doesn't sound likely to me. In fact, it sounds stilted and totally implausible.
Sorry, boys, I pre-date the original post-punk movement. Shoot, I pre-date punk. I should know.
My living room windows are directly over the downstairs porch, so when the windows are wide open - as they've been for over a month and will be until practically Halloween - snippets of conversation from the guys downstairs waft up for my amusement.
Often it's music geek talk because they're all VCU students, musicians and spirited enough to want to discuss things passionately while dragging on cigarettes. A couple of days ago, I overheard bits of a conversation about post punk, but not enough to establish the direction of the conversation.
Naturally, the next time I walked by the porch to find them strumming and earnestly discussing, I stopped to clarify what they'd been talking about, namely whether they'd been discussing actual post-punk or the more recent post-punk revival.
When I asked, they got the same confused look they had when I'd asked how they felt about Prince dying: vagueness, a little confusion, curiosity at my interest.
Explaining the difference to them seemed to be as appallingly illuminating as when I'd ranted about why three guitarists should know Prince's place in the guitar pantheon. They knew nothing of the original post-punk movement. Nothing.
The lively conversation I'd overheard bits of centered entirely on the post-punk revival, that is, Interpol, Editors, Franz Ferdinand, all very much 21st century stuff. I'm shaking my head in disgust that that's as far back as their musical memory goes before realizing that they'd been about six or seven years old when those bands had hit.
To them, the revival is ancient history and the original post-punk era lumped in with that period when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
So I lectured the boys (yes, I'm calling them that) about Joy Division, Husker Du and the Waterboys, hoping to impress upon them how completely differently that music registered after short, fast and hard ruled. They nodded, but the names meant nothing to them. Hell, they didn't even know all the post-punk revival bands I threw out.
This is when I go on with life and give up trying to expand their horizons.
My date tonight was Pru, who arrived in time for a glass of Rose and a recap of recent events before we set out for dinner and a show. On the way out, we found a package cleverly hidden under the open-weave doormat downstairs (this is the UPS driver's pointless attempt at camouflage) and I delighted her by opening it on the spot.
It may be a while before I live that down.
At Saison Market, we took seats by the window with a view of street theater to eat Spring salads - proprly May-like with fresh peas, asparagus, charred Chevre, coriander vinaigrette, pea shoots - and a cheese plate with Meadow Creek Dairy "Grayson," sweet pecan crumbles, pickled ramps and whey on it. It was way good (lame, I know).
Tonight's theatrical entertainment was Cadence Theatre's "4,000 Miles," a play about generational adjustments when a 21-year old shows up in Greenwich Village to visit his fiercely independent 91-year old grandmother after riding his bike all the way from the West Coast.
He's every millennial cliche: bearded, unwilling to eat food that isn't locally sourced, eager to follow his unstructured path in life and it's only when he skims his dead grandfather's book on fighting the good fight for Communism that he gets a glimpse of what he's not.
"I thought I was non-cynical, but Grandpa took non-cynicism to another level," he says before offering his grandmother "a hug from a hippie," which, by the way, he was not. The concept of a hippie culture revival is laughable because of the movement's inability to exist outside of a specific time in cultural history, a fact that seems to have escaped playwright Amy Herzog.
There's no denying the satisfaction of seeing two generations separated by 70 years hit it off in small ways, whether it's smoking a joint together or discussing a shared admiration of Marx, but I have to question a 21-year old male character who tells his grandmother, "Stop, it's making me sick for you to talk about her body that way," when she suggests the woman could stand to lose a few pounds.
I have no reason to believe that those words ever came out of a 21-year old man's mouth, except when written by a woman.
Look, I've got years of experience with things men of all ages say and that one just doesn't sound likely to me. In fact, it sounds stilted and totally implausible.
Sorry, boys, I pre-date the original post-punk movement. Shoot, I pre-date punk. I should know.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
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.
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.
Friday, November 13, 2015
Passion Cannot Be Created
You never know what attracts people to you.
Take tonight's companion, for instance, whom I met through my blog after several comments on it about being impressed with my frequent solo excursions. Eventually we began taking occasional long walks together, but tonight was our first evening date.
I'd originally asked another friend, but after three nearly sleepless nights, he was too beat to accompany me, although not too worn out to call, curious about his replacement. Explaining who it was and how we'd met, he brightened up immediately.
"Oh, good!" he enthused. "You doing stuff by yourself was one of the first things that attracted me to you, too. That's perfect." So I had his blessing for the evening.
On a related note, my date had sent me a link just this morning, saying, "I saw this article and thought of you." Of course I would appreciate "Why Eating Out Alone Doesn't Have to Be Lonely," detailing how one woman ate thousands of room service meals while traveling before finally getting up the nerve to dine alone.
And while I don't even recall a time when I lacked that nerve, I could wholly relate to what she enjoyed about solo meals once she got on board, included striking up conversations with strangers around her, which resulted in her feeling more connected to the places she was visiting.
Works at home, too, my friend.
My only complaint with the piece was that it advocated resorting to technology ("Skim social media") as a means of easing the discomfort of eating alone in public. Perhaps the reason I need no cell phone is because I have none of said discomfort.
So while our common bond was my frequent time alone, tonight we were a twosome.
A working dinner (for me, anyway) kicked off the evening and provided a leisurely chance for us to do something besides walk next to each other and sweat for an hour and a half, our usual M.O. For that matter, it was the first time we'd seen each other in anything but walking clothes. I gotta say we look way better not sweating.
Although we both came with stories, hers were more fun, first because she shared an unlikely story of how she'd recently broken a dry spell in her love life and then because she told me about going to Kinston, N.C. to eat at Vivian Howard's Chef and the Farmer restaurant (but not alone), drink at Mother Earth Brewing and sleep at the O'Neill, once a bank (she showed me snaps of the massive vault) and now a very cool boutique hotel.
Where things got juicy was when we discovered we both have younger sisters with similar traits, you know, one-upmanship, competitiveness, just general pain-in-the-ass type siblings. Coming so soon after my sistertrip, it was cathartic to commiserate over how difficult they can be to deal with.
But the evening's true entertainment came courtesy of Cadence Theater Company's production of "Equus," a play neither of us knew anything about (other than Daniel Ratcliffe having played the lead in a recent Broadway revival), at the November Theater, a place my date had never been.
Wow, just wow.
While it may have been just a tad longer than it needed to be, it was powerful stuff well executed, which was no surprise given Cadence's record of thoughtfully chosen and creatively staged productions.
The story of a nearly burnt out doctor, disillusioned by where his life has ended up, treating a seriously disturbed 17-year old who has blinded six horses was mesmerizing, complex and provocative. I was immediately suspicious of the parents, an overly strict father and a crazy religious nut mother.
Because the boy deifies a particular horse, galloping wildly on him every three weeks, the doctor - who acknowledges he leads a passionless life - is hesitant to rob him of that passion. "My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost!" he bemoans of "curing" the boy.
To add to the enticing visuals, both acts began with a dance sequence suggesting the abandon of horses let loose, performed by actors playing horses in wire horse head masks crafted by local sculptor Paul diPasquale.
By the end of the play, the actors looked as drained as the audience felt, a fatigue well-earned by the challenging theatrical journey we'd all been on. I have a feeling this is a play that will linger in my mind, so I'm hoping other friends see it so we can discuss it further.
But no discussion is required to establish my favorite line. We keep saying old people are square. Then when they suddenly aren't, we don't like it.
Amen. I kept writing how much I enjoyed doing things by myself. Then when people suddenly wanted to do things with me, I liked it, too.
Is it square to hope that they were attracted to my passion?
Take tonight's companion, for instance, whom I met through my blog after several comments on it about being impressed with my frequent solo excursions. Eventually we began taking occasional long walks together, but tonight was our first evening date.
I'd originally asked another friend, but after three nearly sleepless nights, he was too beat to accompany me, although not too worn out to call, curious about his replacement. Explaining who it was and how we'd met, he brightened up immediately.
"Oh, good!" he enthused. "You doing stuff by yourself was one of the first things that attracted me to you, too. That's perfect." So I had his blessing for the evening.
On a related note, my date had sent me a link just this morning, saying, "I saw this article and thought of you." Of course I would appreciate "Why Eating Out Alone Doesn't Have to Be Lonely," detailing how one woman ate thousands of room service meals while traveling before finally getting up the nerve to dine alone.
And while I don't even recall a time when I lacked that nerve, I could wholly relate to what she enjoyed about solo meals once she got on board, included striking up conversations with strangers around her, which resulted in her feeling more connected to the places she was visiting.
Works at home, too, my friend.
My only complaint with the piece was that it advocated resorting to technology ("Skim social media") as a means of easing the discomfort of eating alone in public. Perhaps the reason I need no cell phone is because I have none of said discomfort.
So while our common bond was my frequent time alone, tonight we were a twosome.
A working dinner (for me, anyway) kicked off the evening and provided a leisurely chance for us to do something besides walk next to each other and sweat for an hour and a half, our usual M.O. For that matter, it was the first time we'd seen each other in anything but walking clothes. I gotta say we look way better not sweating.
Although we both came with stories, hers were more fun, first because she shared an unlikely story of how she'd recently broken a dry spell in her love life and then because she told me about going to Kinston, N.C. to eat at Vivian Howard's Chef and the Farmer restaurant (but not alone), drink at Mother Earth Brewing and sleep at the O'Neill, once a bank (she showed me snaps of the massive vault) and now a very cool boutique hotel.
Where things got juicy was when we discovered we both have younger sisters with similar traits, you know, one-upmanship, competitiveness, just general pain-in-the-ass type siblings. Coming so soon after my sistertrip, it was cathartic to commiserate over how difficult they can be to deal with.
But the evening's true entertainment came courtesy of Cadence Theater Company's production of "Equus," a play neither of us knew anything about (other than Daniel Ratcliffe having played the lead in a recent Broadway revival), at the November Theater, a place my date had never been.
Wow, just wow.
While it may have been just a tad longer than it needed to be, it was powerful stuff well executed, which was no surprise given Cadence's record of thoughtfully chosen and creatively staged productions.
The story of a nearly burnt out doctor, disillusioned by where his life has ended up, treating a seriously disturbed 17-year old who has blinded six horses was mesmerizing, complex and provocative. I was immediately suspicious of the parents, an overly strict father and a crazy religious nut mother.
Because the boy deifies a particular horse, galloping wildly on him every three weeks, the doctor - who acknowledges he leads a passionless life - is hesitant to rob him of that passion. "My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost!" he bemoans of "curing" the boy.
To add to the enticing visuals, both acts began with a dance sequence suggesting the abandon of horses let loose, performed by actors playing horses in wire horse head masks crafted by local sculptor Paul diPasquale.
By the end of the play, the actors looked as drained as the audience felt, a fatigue well-earned by the challenging theatrical journey we'd all been on. I have a feeling this is a play that will linger in my mind, so I'm hoping other friends see it so we can discuss it further.
But no discussion is required to establish my favorite line. We keep saying old people are square. Then when they suddenly aren't, we don't like it.
Amen. I kept writing how much I enjoyed doing things by myself. Then when people suddenly wanted to do things with me, I liked it, too.
Is it square to hope that they were attracted to my passion?
Sunday, May 3, 2015
All Kinds of Crazy
If you're going to spend an evening experiencing family dysfunction, best to eat first.
But, honestly, nothing could have prepared me for such a visceral experience.
My date and I met at Bistro 27, not at the appointed time (I'd already e-mailed him to move it back 15 minutes) and not at the rescheduled time (I was running late after a last minute errand) but a mere 75 minutes before curtain time.
Luckily, with the November Theater a half block away, the Bistro 27 staff are pros at ensuring customers make their play on time and we sailed through duck confit barbecue sliders (on housemade biscuits, yum) with beets and Brie, a shrimp, avocado and red pepper salad over greens, the bistro steak and a chocolate torte and were picking up our tickets at will call by 7:55.
I think that's what the theatrical community calls good timing.
Cadence Theater Company is producing Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind," a play neither of us knew a thing about. While I usually prefer it that way, my date is known to research and tell all at dinner. Today he'd been subsumed with yard work and brought no factoids to the table.
Just as well. Turns out it was the sort of play you need to experience not bone up on.
The simple wooden set was topped by a platform on which three musicians - keyboards, guitar, fiddle - performed to begin and then sometimes during scenes. It lent a strong sense of location to the story.
At the center of the play were Jake and Beth, both played to dysfunctional perfection by Landon Nagel and McLean Jesse, a married couple in a bad place. Jake has beaten up Beth so badly he assumes he's killed her.
From there, they spiral in different and yet the same directions, each back to their respective crazy (because aren't they all?) families. Home is good because everybody loves you there, or at least accepts you.
But home is also where everyone reverts to long-circumscribed roles, meaning adult children often act and are treated more like their youthful selves. Mothers fret over grown children's problems and siblings maintain long-held secrets.
Of course, in Sam Shepard's world, this happens in the heartland (Idaho, Montana and, most surprisingly, southern California) and the dialog reflects that with phrases such as "you bet your bippy," "darn tootin" and other colloquialisms. "You change streams faster than a trout in heat," Beth's Dad, Baylor, says.
Besides terrific source material, the play boasts a strong and vibrant cast, a necessity of sorts because there is no one main character. Everyone has a story line, everyone is seriously messed up in one way or another, everyone hurts.
When Baylor mistakes Jake's brother for a deer and shots him through the leg, he becomes a virtual prisoner in their house after a blizzard begins. With a bloody hole in his leg and in intense pain, Alexander Sapp as Frankie becomes immobilized on their couch, a witness to another family's major dysfunction.
If you think it's hard to deal with your own family's issues, try having a front row seat for someone else's. No thank you.
His reaction mirrored the audiences' because as the lengthy play - three hours - unfolded, the absurdity of all these relationships and reactions became obvious.
Who acts like that? Oh, that's right, my family. Your family. Everyone's family.
The two mothers couldn't have been more different and yet were just as damaged, just in different ways. Jake's mother Lorraine was bitter after her alcoholic husband (after all, it is a Sam Shepard play) abandons the family. Beth's mother is the obsequious wife, obeying her bully of a husband out of habit rather than love and reminding everyone to stop screaming.
This wasn't a play with a slow build to a big finish, rather it exploded every step of the way as damaged people tried to go about their daily lives.
We've all known mothers who dote on problem sons or blustery old-school fathers who expect the entire household to do their bidding. And sadly, we all know of battered women willing to return to their abuser.
Once again, Cadence has hit it out of the park with a play that will leave its audiences bowled over with the talent onstage and thinking long and hard about the issues raised. The play may have been written in 1986, but the struggles of dealing with family and developing a sense of self outside it are timeless.
I'm guessing that's why I saw so many theater people at the show tonight.
During a scene where Beth's brother Mike has just shot a deer, he comes onstage with a half a dead deer. He's taken the antlers for himself and brought the rest of the animal for his father to clean and dress for meat.
When the lights came up at intermission, the woman near me, herself the artistic director at another theater company, turned to her date and observed dryly, "At least now I know where I can find half a dead deer if I need one."
Darn tootin'. We all take something different from a Sam Shepard play.
But, honestly, nothing could have prepared me for such a visceral experience.
My date and I met at Bistro 27, not at the appointed time (I'd already e-mailed him to move it back 15 minutes) and not at the rescheduled time (I was running late after a last minute errand) but a mere 75 minutes before curtain time.
Luckily, with the November Theater a half block away, the Bistro 27 staff are pros at ensuring customers make their play on time and we sailed through duck confit barbecue sliders (on housemade biscuits, yum) with beets and Brie, a shrimp, avocado and red pepper salad over greens, the bistro steak and a chocolate torte and were picking up our tickets at will call by 7:55.
I think that's what the theatrical community calls good timing.
Cadence Theater Company is producing Sam Shepard's "A Lie of the Mind," a play neither of us knew a thing about. While I usually prefer it that way, my date is known to research and tell all at dinner. Today he'd been subsumed with yard work and brought no factoids to the table.
Just as well. Turns out it was the sort of play you need to experience not bone up on.
The simple wooden set was topped by a platform on which three musicians - keyboards, guitar, fiddle - performed to begin and then sometimes during scenes. It lent a strong sense of location to the story.
At the center of the play were Jake and Beth, both played to dysfunctional perfection by Landon Nagel and McLean Jesse, a married couple in a bad place. Jake has beaten up Beth so badly he assumes he's killed her.
From there, they spiral in different and yet the same directions, each back to their respective crazy (because aren't they all?) families. Home is good because everybody loves you there, or at least accepts you.
But home is also where everyone reverts to long-circumscribed roles, meaning adult children often act and are treated more like their youthful selves. Mothers fret over grown children's problems and siblings maintain long-held secrets.
Of course, in Sam Shepard's world, this happens in the heartland (Idaho, Montana and, most surprisingly, southern California) and the dialog reflects that with phrases such as "you bet your bippy," "darn tootin" and other colloquialisms. "You change streams faster than a trout in heat," Beth's Dad, Baylor, says.
Besides terrific source material, the play boasts a strong and vibrant cast, a necessity of sorts because there is no one main character. Everyone has a story line, everyone is seriously messed up in one way or another, everyone hurts.
When Baylor mistakes Jake's brother for a deer and shots him through the leg, he becomes a virtual prisoner in their house after a blizzard begins. With a bloody hole in his leg and in intense pain, Alexander Sapp as Frankie becomes immobilized on their couch, a witness to another family's major dysfunction.
If you think it's hard to deal with your own family's issues, try having a front row seat for someone else's. No thank you.
His reaction mirrored the audiences' because as the lengthy play - three hours - unfolded, the absurdity of all these relationships and reactions became obvious.
Who acts like that? Oh, that's right, my family. Your family. Everyone's family.
The two mothers couldn't have been more different and yet were just as damaged, just in different ways. Jake's mother Lorraine was bitter after her alcoholic husband (after all, it is a Sam Shepard play) abandons the family. Beth's mother is the obsequious wife, obeying her bully of a husband out of habit rather than love and reminding everyone to stop screaming.
This wasn't a play with a slow build to a big finish, rather it exploded every step of the way as damaged people tried to go about their daily lives.
We've all known mothers who dote on problem sons or blustery old-school fathers who expect the entire household to do their bidding. And sadly, we all know of battered women willing to return to their abuser.
Once again, Cadence has hit it out of the park with a play that will leave its audiences bowled over with the talent onstage and thinking long and hard about the issues raised. The play may have been written in 1986, but the struggles of dealing with family and developing a sense of self outside it are timeless.
I'm guessing that's why I saw so many theater people at the show tonight.
During a scene where Beth's brother Mike has just shot a deer, he comes onstage with a half a dead deer. He's taken the antlers for himself and brought the rest of the animal for his father to clean and dress for meat.
When the lights came up at intermission, the woman near me, herself the artistic director at another theater company, turned to her date and observed dryly, "At least now I know where I can find half a dead deer if I need one."
Darn tootin'. We all take something different from a Sam Shepard play.
Sunday, February 22, 2015
We're Halfway There
Flashback to the '60s, flashback to the '80s.
With the water in my apartment finally restored by 5:00 today and rain falling steadily outside (hopefully to melt the snow), I set out to meet a friend for dinner - a terrific crabcake special, Bistro salad and grilled shrimp - at Bistro 27, apparently the place to be tonight with a full house by 7:00 despite the rain.
We didn't linger too long over our chocolate torte because people were still arriving, opting instead to head across the street to find our seats at the November Theater for Cadence Theater Company's new production of "Caroline, or Change."
I've seen plenty of Cadence's well-executed productions, but this was the first musical I'd seen them do and on that tiny TheaterGym stage, too. The set was brilliant with two levels, one for the band (which included clarinet and cello) and steps leading down from there to the main stage.
Set in 1963 and referencing JFK's death and civil rights activism, the play told the story of Caroline, a black maid for a Jewish family in Louisiana in 1963. The cast was full of black actresses with stellar voices, a lovely thing given that almost none of the dialog was spoken, just sung.
Appliances such as the washing machine were also played by actresses (although the dryer was a man), including the radio which was played by a trio who dressed like the Supremes and sang Caroline's thoughts. Even better, they had the synchronized choreography to go with those dresses.
In many ways, it was a play about nothing more than a black woman's struggle to get by at a time when very little value was placed on their happiness. But in terms of singing, it was a rousing sampler of the some of the very best female voices in town.
Rather than stay for the reception afterwards, I invited my theater-loving companion to join me for the first-ever Late Night Lip Sync Battle at The Basement, TheaterLab's subterranean space in Jackson Ward a few blocks away.
Another friend had already agreed to meet me there after checking in earlier.
Short notice, but are you free tonight?
Unfortunately, no, but I'm going to watch a lip-syncing battle at 10:30 if you'd like to meet me.
Wow, that sounds fun. I'm in!
Walking into the Basement, we heard a woman call out, "Jello shots, two for a dollar," from behind a table covered in brightly colored plastic containers. All of a sudden, it was the '80s again.
When my companion asked if I wanted a glass of wine, I declined and instead decided to revisit my youth. One red, one blue Jello shot, please.
I couldn't have been more surprised when he followed my lead and got Jello shots, too, albeit both red. When he wasn't sure how to shoot them, I demonstrated ringing the glass with my finger and pouring the contents down my throat. Clearly someone had not been paying attention in the '80s (that or being far more responsible than I had).
Josh Small was playing when we arrived, warming up the crowd with his earnest songs, and my short notice friend spotted me and called my name. He'd brought his new squeeze whom I'd heard so much about and we joined them in the second row.
After my second set of Jello shooters, my friend marveled, "I can't believe you had four Jello shots." That didn't stop him (or me) from having one when they began passing them out for free just before the show started, I might add.
Honestly, they were the ideal accompaniment to the tremendously fun and raucous evening that followed.
Two teams, the TheaterLab team (also known as the Labradors) and the Street team, faced off lip syncing and it was up to the audience to vote the winners. One million points per round.
The first song was Louie Vega's "Mambo #5" followed by the Ting Ting's "That's Not My Name," two songs that allowed the Labs to show some attitude and work the microphone.
So, of course, Matt of the Street team began his team's challenge by saying, "The first thing you need to know is that we'll be foregoing the microphone because we can project." Drama kid pride.
It was so much fun watching the teams face off with songs such as En Vogue's "Never Gonna Get It," complete with dance moves. When the emcee asked, "How you gonna follow that?" the Street Team said, "Easily."
Watching Paul emote to Whitney's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" may have been one of the all-time most fabulous things I've ever witnessed. Just a guess, but I think he's sung a whole lot of Whitney in front of the mirror before.
There was always a challenge to decide which team led off a round. One time it was a beer chugging contest (Maggie beat Paul) and another time a quiz. "Who in the 3rd century invented lip syncing?" Mat won with, "Jesus!"
By that point it was obvious to me at least that by the end of the night, the two teams would be fine and everyone in the audience would be hoarse from screaming...and singing along when we couldn't help it (see: "Livin' On a Prayer").
Midway through, my friend leaned over his date and said, "I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard." Clearly I need to take him out more.
My favorite round was the Improv challenge where eight 30-second clips were played. One person on the team at bat had to decide in the moment who would step forward after the song began and lip sync it. This was the round where we saw the most panic on the faces of the team members.
Yet they all came through, each member nailing one song: "I Will Always Love You " with body fondling and song lyrics sung directly to audience members, the aforementioned Bon Jovi which got so loud with the singalong that the walls seemed to shake, "Bootylicious" with killer dance posturing.
For the final round, each team had prepared a full-ensemble set piece. Street team did "Uptown Funk" with Alexander on the lead going full over the top in his white coat, suspenders and pelvic thrusting. The Labradors did the Moulin Rouge version of "Lady Marmalade," all of them wearing white buttons on their shirts to indicate nipples. They were declared the winners.
Jello shots history, mad screaming and applause ensued as the room became a dance party with everyone joining the lip syncing teams on the floor.
Cause uptown funk gonna give it to you
Saturday night and we in the spot
Don't believe me? Just watch
I guarantee you'll laugh a lot.
With the water in my apartment finally restored by 5:00 today and rain falling steadily outside (hopefully to melt the snow), I set out to meet a friend for dinner - a terrific crabcake special, Bistro salad and grilled shrimp - at Bistro 27, apparently the place to be tonight with a full house by 7:00 despite the rain.
We didn't linger too long over our chocolate torte because people were still arriving, opting instead to head across the street to find our seats at the November Theater for Cadence Theater Company's new production of "Caroline, or Change."
I've seen plenty of Cadence's well-executed productions, but this was the first musical I'd seen them do and on that tiny TheaterGym stage, too. The set was brilliant with two levels, one for the band (which included clarinet and cello) and steps leading down from there to the main stage.
Set in 1963 and referencing JFK's death and civil rights activism, the play told the story of Caroline, a black maid for a Jewish family in Louisiana in 1963. The cast was full of black actresses with stellar voices, a lovely thing given that almost none of the dialog was spoken, just sung.
Appliances such as the washing machine were also played by actresses (although the dryer was a man), including the radio which was played by a trio who dressed like the Supremes and sang Caroline's thoughts. Even better, they had the synchronized choreography to go with those dresses.
In many ways, it was a play about nothing more than a black woman's struggle to get by at a time when very little value was placed on their happiness. But in terms of singing, it was a rousing sampler of the some of the very best female voices in town.
Rather than stay for the reception afterwards, I invited my theater-loving companion to join me for the first-ever Late Night Lip Sync Battle at The Basement, TheaterLab's subterranean space in Jackson Ward a few blocks away.
Another friend had already agreed to meet me there after checking in earlier.
Short notice, but are you free tonight?
Unfortunately, no, but I'm going to watch a lip-syncing battle at 10:30 if you'd like to meet me.
Wow, that sounds fun. I'm in!
Walking into the Basement, we heard a woman call out, "Jello shots, two for a dollar," from behind a table covered in brightly colored plastic containers. All of a sudden, it was the '80s again.
When my companion asked if I wanted a glass of wine, I declined and instead decided to revisit my youth. One red, one blue Jello shot, please.
I couldn't have been more surprised when he followed my lead and got Jello shots, too, albeit both red. When he wasn't sure how to shoot them, I demonstrated ringing the glass with my finger and pouring the contents down my throat. Clearly someone had not been paying attention in the '80s (that or being far more responsible than I had).
Josh Small was playing when we arrived, warming up the crowd with his earnest songs, and my short notice friend spotted me and called my name. He'd brought his new squeeze whom I'd heard so much about and we joined them in the second row.
After my second set of Jello shooters, my friend marveled, "I can't believe you had four Jello shots." That didn't stop him (or me) from having one when they began passing them out for free just before the show started, I might add.
Honestly, they were the ideal accompaniment to the tremendously fun and raucous evening that followed.
Two teams, the TheaterLab team (also known as the Labradors) and the Street team, faced off lip syncing and it was up to the audience to vote the winners. One million points per round.
The first song was Louie Vega's "Mambo #5" followed by the Ting Ting's "That's Not My Name," two songs that allowed the Labs to show some attitude and work the microphone.
So, of course, Matt of the Street team began his team's challenge by saying, "The first thing you need to know is that we'll be foregoing the microphone because we can project." Drama kid pride.
It was so much fun watching the teams face off with songs such as En Vogue's "Never Gonna Get It," complete with dance moves. When the emcee asked, "How you gonna follow that?" the Street Team said, "Easily."
Watching Paul emote to Whitney's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" may have been one of the all-time most fabulous things I've ever witnessed. Just a guess, but I think he's sung a whole lot of Whitney in front of the mirror before.
There was always a challenge to decide which team led off a round. One time it was a beer chugging contest (Maggie beat Paul) and another time a quiz. "Who in the 3rd century invented lip syncing?" Mat won with, "Jesus!"
By that point it was obvious to me at least that by the end of the night, the two teams would be fine and everyone in the audience would be hoarse from screaming...and singing along when we couldn't help it (see: "Livin' On a Prayer").
Midway through, my friend leaned over his date and said, "I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard." Clearly I need to take him out more.
My favorite round was the Improv challenge where eight 30-second clips were played. One person on the team at bat had to decide in the moment who would step forward after the song began and lip sync it. This was the round where we saw the most panic on the faces of the team members.
Yet they all came through, each member nailing one song: "I Will Always Love You " with body fondling and song lyrics sung directly to audience members, the aforementioned Bon Jovi which got so loud with the singalong that the walls seemed to shake, "Bootylicious" with killer dance posturing.
For the final round, each team had prepared a full-ensemble set piece. Street team did "Uptown Funk" with Alexander on the lead going full over the top in his white coat, suspenders and pelvic thrusting. The Labradors did the Moulin Rouge version of "Lady Marmalade," all of them wearing white buttons on their shirts to indicate nipples. They were declared the winners.
Jello shots history, mad screaming and applause ensued as the room became a dance party with everyone joining the lip syncing teams on the floor.
Cause uptown funk gonna give it to you
Saturday night and we in the spot
Don't believe me? Just watch
I guarantee you'll laugh a lot.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Autumn, Comes She Will
I hope I'm wrong, but I fear today was it.
With a cold front approaching, it could be the last day I get to wear shorts on my walk and the last night I get to see moonflowers open. As if they knew, I watched three open tonight through the screen in my bedroom window as I was dressing to go out.
Ah, summer, I miss you already.
My date for the evening was Pru and we headed to Bistro 27 for dinner, just across the street from the November theater where we planned to see a play afterwards.
Looking at my legs as we walked to the restaurant, she demanded to know how they looked so tanned in October. Simple, I told her, I'm still wearing shorts on my walk every day.
Inside, we sidled up to the bar and ordered glasses of Bricco-dei-Tati Rose, the color of cherry Kool-aid, coincidentally also the color of Barbera Rose, a far tastier pink quaff. Alas, I fear I will soon be missing my Roses, too.
Momentarily distracted by a dessert going by on its way to a nearby couple, we then debated what to order since it had been a while since we'd been in and so much of the menu is new, eventually settling on crabcakes (her) and Tuscan chicken flatbread (me).
The flatbread loomed large over the entire plate and then some, covered in a savory/sweet combination of grilled chicken, balsamic, plum tomatoes, basil and goat cheese. Her crabcake appetizer was mostly crab and sauteed golden brown, in other words, practically perfect to a crabhead like me.
Over dinner, we compared our thrifting adventures today (I won with a haul of 17 tops, 2 skirts, 1 shorts, 1 pants and 3 shrugs for a total of $5) at the Robinson Street Festival. I heard about her outing to the Roosevelt with old college chums last night, an evening that involved absinthe and a 2 a.m. bedtime, neither unusual for me and both highly irregular for her.
Today, she had the headache and lethargy that follows infrequent debauchery.
Dessert was a given (hello, Saturday night with a girlfriend) and the triple chocolate confection we'd seen go by earlier seemed like the obvious choice. Made by one of the prep cooks, it's the newest dessert item, all but begging us to check it out.
When Pru decided she needed coffee with hers, our bartender offered her espresso and then a single or double.
"Double, please," she said demurely. "I want it dark and growling." I assumed we were no longer talking about coffee, but I didn't pry.
The triple chocolate cake got my thumbs up for both its lightness and its variety of chocolate textures: mousse, cake and ganache.
As we were devouring it, four young men arrived to serenade the Irish couple sitting at the front table celebrating an occasion. Their lilting harmonies were beautiful to behold, made even better by having chocolate in our mouth as we listened.
What a delightful addition to the evening.
A satisfying meal over, we strolled across the street to see Cadence Theater's production of "Sight Unseen" by Donald Margulies.
Waiting in line to pick up tickets, I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in years whose first words were, "You don't age! You look exactly the same." While I know this is a compliment, what I wanted to say is, sure, it's fine now, but who wanted to look like this at 25 or 35? Instead, I say thanks.
Tickets in hand, we find our seats in the second row minutes before the lights go down.
My preference is always to go into a production knowing as little as possible so that the action can unfold for me with no hints of what's to come. It's like how I don't like to see previews for movies before I see them. Just give me what you got and let me see what I think.
"Sight Unseen" begins in a chilly farmhouse ("Here we hold on to our overcoats") in England ("No one is a good cook over here") with a visit from a now-famous American painter named Jonathan to Patricia, the woman who'd been his muse in college, and her adoring husband, Nick ("I take what I can get. I'm English").
His father has died last week yet he's crossed the pond for his first career retrospective where he's finding the press combative and trying to focus solely on his Jewishness. A flashback shows us how cruelly he dumped Patricia fifteen years earlier.
All of a sudden, it's intermission and I have absolutely no idea where this play is going, a truly delicious feeling as a member of the audience.
As the second act unfolds, we hear some excellent debate on what art is and what an artist's responsibility is as Nick looks at the catalog from Jonathan's show and finds his paintings lacking. As far as Nick's concerned, art ended with the Renaissance and he's dismissive of all modern art.
Jonathan insists that the job of the artist is not to participate because his intention in painting is irrelevant. Art is what the viewer brings to his work and what they choose to take away. Defending himself and his work he says, "It's the layers people go to in order to feel something today."
The layers in this play are many: about how relationships change, about settling when we can't get what we really want, about how success and money changes people, about losing our way in life and love and never really recovering. Why do people feel obligated to attend blockbuster art shows and then spend more time in the gift shop than with the art?
Andrew Firda is a standout as the husband in a mostly sexless marriage and his dry, British wit provides much of the play's humor while his sweet attempts to challenge the man who's been haunting his wife's heart for 15 years hint at the passion beneath his archeologist's heart.
Smart and thought-provoking, yet again Cadence Theater had provided plenty for Pru and I to discuss once the play ended and we were walking down Broad Street.
Where, I might add, the temperature was noticeably cooler than when we'd gone in and the breeze hinted at a night that will require closing my windows.
Except the bedroom windows, which will remain open so I can luxuriate in the scent of the moonflowers for the last time this year.
I take what I can get when summer is on her way out.
With a cold front approaching, it could be the last day I get to wear shorts on my walk and the last night I get to see moonflowers open. As if they knew, I watched three open tonight through the screen in my bedroom window as I was dressing to go out.
Ah, summer, I miss you already.
My date for the evening was Pru and we headed to Bistro 27 for dinner, just across the street from the November theater where we planned to see a play afterwards.
Looking at my legs as we walked to the restaurant, she demanded to know how they looked so tanned in October. Simple, I told her, I'm still wearing shorts on my walk every day.
Inside, we sidled up to the bar and ordered glasses of Bricco-dei-Tati Rose, the color of cherry Kool-aid, coincidentally also the color of Barbera Rose, a far tastier pink quaff. Alas, I fear I will soon be missing my Roses, too.
Momentarily distracted by a dessert going by on its way to a nearby couple, we then debated what to order since it had been a while since we'd been in and so much of the menu is new, eventually settling on crabcakes (her) and Tuscan chicken flatbread (me).
The flatbread loomed large over the entire plate and then some, covered in a savory/sweet combination of grilled chicken, balsamic, plum tomatoes, basil and goat cheese. Her crabcake appetizer was mostly crab and sauteed golden brown, in other words, practically perfect to a crabhead like me.
Over dinner, we compared our thrifting adventures today (I won with a haul of 17 tops, 2 skirts, 1 shorts, 1 pants and 3 shrugs for a total of $5) at the Robinson Street Festival. I heard about her outing to the Roosevelt with old college chums last night, an evening that involved absinthe and a 2 a.m. bedtime, neither unusual for me and both highly irregular for her.
Today, she had the headache and lethargy that follows infrequent debauchery.
Dessert was a given (hello, Saturday night with a girlfriend) and the triple chocolate confection we'd seen go by earlier seemed like the obvious choice. Made by one of the prep cooks, it's the newest dessert item, all but begging us to check it out.
When Pru decided she needed coffee with hers, our bartender offered her espresso and then a single or double.
"Double, please," she said demurely. "I want it dark and growling." I assumed we were no longer talking about coffee, but I didn't pry.
The triple chocolate cake got my thumbs up for both its lightness and its variety of chocolate textures: mousse, cake and ganache.
As we were devouring it, four young men arrived to serenade the Irish couple sitting at the front table celebrating an occasion. Their lilting harmonies were beautiful to behold, made even better by having chocolate in our mouth as we listened.
What a delightful addition to the evening.
A satisfying meal over, we strolled across the street to see Cadence Theater's production of "Sight Unseen" by Donald Margulies.
Waiting in line to pick up tickets, I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in years whose first words were, "You don't age! You look exactly the same." While I know this is a compliment, what I wanted to say is, sure, it's fine now, but who wanted to look like this at 25 or 35? Instead, I say thanks.
Tickets in hand, we find our seats in the second row minutes before the lights go down.
My preference is always to go into a production knowing as little as possible so that the action can unfold for me with no hints of what's to come. It's like how I don't like to see previews for movies before I see them. Just give me what you got and let me see what I think.
"Sight Unseen" begins in a chilly farmhouse ("Here we hold on to our overcoats") in England ("No one is a good cook over here") with a visit from a now-famous American painter named Jonathan to Patricia, the woman who'd been his muse in college, and her adoring husband, Nick ("I take what I can get. I'm English").
His father has died last week yet he's crossed the pond for his first career retrospective where he's finding the press combative and trying to focus solely on his Jewishness. A flashback shows us how cruelly he dumped Patricia fifteen years earlier.
All of a sudden, it's intermission and I have absolutely no idea where this play is going, a truly delicious feeling as a member of the audience.
As the second act unfolds, we hear some excellent debate on what art is and what an artist's responsibility is as Nick looks at the catalog from Jonathan's show and finds his paintings lacking. As far as Nick's concerned, art ended with the Renaissance and he's dismissive of all modern art.
Jonathan insists that the job of the artist is not to participate because his intention in painting is irrelevant. Art is what the viewer brings to his work and what they choose to take away. Defending himself and his work he says, "It's the layers people go to in order to feel something today."
The layers in this play are many: about how relationships change, about settling when we can't get what we really want, about how success and money changes people, about losing our way in life and love and never really recovering. Why do people feel obligated to attend blockbuster art shows and then spend more time in the gift shop than with the art?
Andrew Firda is a standout as the husband in a mostly sexless marriage and his dry, British wit provides much of the play's humor while his sweet attempts to challenge the man who's been haunting his wife's heart for 15 years hint at the passion beneath his archeologist's heart.
Smart and thought-provoking, yet again Cadence Theater had provided plenty for Pru and I to discuss once the play ended and we were walking down Broad Street.
Where, I might add, the temperature was noticeably cooler than when we'd gone in and the breeze hinted at a night that will require closing my windows.
Except the bedroom windows, which will remain open so I can luxuriate in the scent of the moonflowers for the last time this year.
I take what I can get when summer is on her way out.
Saturday, May 3, 2014
Keeping It Real
It's common knowledge I brag about many things about my neighborhood - the central location, historic architecture, walkability, proximity to so many art galleries.
And right up there is how I can walk out my door and go to dinner and the theater without ever going near my car.
So with a light breeze blowing and the sun still requiring sunglasses, I sashayed over to Bistro 27 to meet a fellow theater lover for some pre-dramatic dining.
We knew we wouldn't be the only ones with theater programs in our evening's future so the surprise was all the gowned teenagers with wrist corsages. Prom season is clearly upon us.
After regaling my friend with tales of the gothic furniture maker and nimble tapestry artist I'd met, we thought it best to get started on ordering so we could get back to talking.
New on the menu was a crab salad which spoke to both of us, so we ordered two, a wise choice given how light and summery it tasted.
Lump crabmeat sailed atop arugula, corn and pickled red onion in an avocado buttermilk dressing for a dish I can say with 100% certainty I will go back and order again. Soon. Very soon.
It was a hoot watching all the prom couples and crowds walking by the big picture window, the girls so dressed up and obviously enjoying themselves and the boys looking a full five years younger and hugely uncertain of themselves and the evening.
When my veal sweetbreads arrived, our server also brought salmon for my date, the only problem being he'd ordered one of tonight's specials, spicy crabcakes over potato hash.
Oops. Our mortified server went back in search of the correct plate but my friend insisted I eat while mine was hot, so I went ahead and enjoyed the sweet/salty contrast of creamy polenta and amaretto demi-glace with the crispy sweetbreads.
One thing I like about my friend is that he can always see a way to fit in dessert, even when he doesn't finish his tardy course until half an hour before curtain, so dessert menus were procured and we each agreed to try something new off the dessert menu.
His choice was bananas foster, hot off the stove and sticky sweet while I chose a napoleon of white and dark chocolate which I could only half finish.
Proud of our dessert expedience, we made it to the box office to collect our tickets and pat ourselves on the back with seven minutes to spare.
Tonight was opening night for Cadence Theater Company's production of "Detroit," a play both of us had purposefully not researched so as to be surprised.
I did know it was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer in Drama and won the Obie for best new play in 2013. That's what's great about Cadence; you can always count on them to bring the latest award-winning theater to Richmond.
This time it was a story about the current state of our middle class, where people get laid off from jobs (don't I know it? hello, 2008) and have to concoct a Plan B.
Where suburban neighbors are no longer Ozzie and Harriet, but maybe just out of rehab and trying to live for the moment.
The November Theater's theater gym is a tiny stage but managed to hold two contrasting houses, one with a backyard full of leisure furniture and the other barren, a metaphor for how different the two couples' lives are.
Except that over the course of the play, we learn that there's not all that much difference because no one really has a lock on stability anymore and few people are who they seem.
By the time the play ends and all kinds of unexpected things have happened, our suburbanites should be upset and angry and instead they're realizing that perhaps a new frontier has opened up for them. It's really all in how you look at it.
"You've got to live this moment, Mary. That's all you can do," the crazy character Sharon insists, played to perfection by Chris Lindsay-Abaire.
Do you worry because your future is unknown or do you embrace it? I know where I went with that one.
Cadence's strong production reminded me that things can be different, but only if you want them to be.
And right up there is how I can walk out my door and go to dinner and the theater without ever going near my car.
So with a light breeze blowing and the sun still requiring sunglasses, I sashayed over to Bistro 27 to meet a fellow theater lover for some pre-dramatic dining.
We knew we wouldn't be the only ones with theater programs in our evening's future so the surprise was all the gowned teenagers with wrist corsages. Prom season is clearly upon us.
After regaling my friend with tales of the gothic furniture maker and nimble tapestry artist I'd met, we thought it best to get started on ordering so we could get back to talking.
New on the menu was a crab salad which spoke to both of us, so we ordered two, a wise choice given how light and summery it tasted.
Lump crabmeat sailed atop arugula, corn and pickled red onion in an avocado buttermilk dressing for a dish I can say with 100% certainty I will go back and order again. Soon. Very soon.
It was a hoot watching all the prom couples and crowds walking by the big picture window, the girls so dressed up and obviously enjoying themselves and the boys looking a full five years younger and hugely uncertain of themselves and the evening.
When my veal sweetbreads arrived, our server also brought salmon for my date, the only problem being he'd ordered one of tonight's specials, spicy crabcakes over potato hash.
Oops. Our mortified server went back in search of the correct plate but my friend insisted I eat while mine was hot, so I went ahead and enjoyed the sweet/salty contrast of creamy polenta and amaretto demi-glace with the crispy sweetbreads.
One thing I like about my friend is that he can always see a way to fit in dessert, even when he doesn't finish his tardy course until half an hour before curtain, so dessert menus were procured and we each agreed to try something new off the dessert menu.
His choice was bananas foster, hot off the stove and sticky sweet while I chose a napoleon of white and dark chocolate which I could only half finish.
Proud of our dessert expedience, we made it to the box office to collect our tickets and pat ourselves on the back with seven minutes to spare.
Tonight was opening night for Cadence Theater Company's production of "Detroit," a play both of us had purposefully not researched so as to be surprised.
I did know it was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer in Drama and won the Obie for best new play in 2013. That's what's great about Cadence; you can always count on them to bring the latest award-winning theater to Richmond.
This time it was a story about the current state of our middle class, where people get laid off from jobs (don't I know it? hello, 2008) and have to concoct a Plan B.
Where suburban neighbors are no longer Ozzie and Harriet, but maybe just out of rehab and trying to live for the moment.
The November Theater's theater gym is a tiny stage but managed to hold two contrasting houses, one with a backyard full of leisure furniture and the other barren, a metaphor for how different the two couples' lives are.
Except that over the course of the play, we learn that there's not all that much difference because no one really has a lock on stability anymore and few people are who they seem.
By the time the play ends and all kinds of unexpected things have happened, our suburbanites should be upset and angry and instead they're realizing that perhaps a new frontier has opened up for them. It's really all in how you look at it.
"You've got to live this moment, Mary. That's all you can do," the crazy character Sharon insists, played to perfection by Chris Lindsay-Abaire.
Do you worry because your future is unknown or do you embrace it? I know where I went with that one.
Cadence's strong production reminded me that things can be different, but only if you want them to be.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Champagne, Figs and Spock
Of course I had to find out.
So with a new chef and a new play, my evening was off to a fine start right in the neighborhood.
I met the charming man who'd invited me to dinner at Bistro 27 so we could check out the new guy slinging food at my neighborhood joint.
Chef Cory trained under Kevin at Pomegranate and I'd heard he was a big fan of organ meats, which made him sound like my kind of chef.
We started with bubbles at the bar before moving to a table amongst what was undoubtedly a room full of playgoers.
With two productions currently at the November Theater, everyone was in place by 6 to ensure being finished by 7:45.
My date told me about a recent trip to D.C. and I told him about my excursion to the Blue Ridge and we agreed that our meal goal was choosing dishes Cory had put on the menu.
So we started with his housemade sausage plate of pork and duck foie gras sausage and red wine and Parmesan sausage with mustard two ways and red pepper jelly. Outstanding, both of them.
If a man can make sausage, it's a good indicator he's my kind ofman chef.
We moved on to seeing what he could do with entrees. For my friend, that meant salmon topped with scallops and a red pepper and caviar compound butter over cauliflower and anchovy puree he raved about.
For me, it was perfectly pan-seared scallops with a to die for champagne and fig demi-glace.
There were so many people in the room that hearing the music was a challenge, but every now and then something good - the XX or a samba - would come through loud and clear and we'd nod our heads in approval.
I had no intention of getting dessert but the housemade tiramisu turned out to be a weak spot for my date, so I obliged.
By the time we finished and scuttled across the street to the theater, it was almost curtain time for the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Clybourne Park" produced by Cadence Theater Company.
It's another play that's part of the Acts of Faith Festival and like Henley/Shakes' "Death and the Maiden," which I'd already seen, its inclusion was intended to be thought-provoking.
A play that takes up where "A Raisin in the Sun" left off, it tells the story of a neighborhood with race issues, which, of course, is every neighborhood in this country.
The first act was set in Chicago in 1959 when the first black family has bought a home in an all-white neighborhood ("After a reference to colored people, "Don't we say Negro now?") and the second in the same house but 50 years later ("My current commute is slowly eroding my soul") when a white couple has bought in what is now an all-black neighborhood.
Racial jokes come out but so do slurs against women, gays and even the privileged position of white men.
Everyone is uncomfortable dancing around the topic of race yet everyone manages to say something inappropriate. It's a lot like real life.
Watching the talented cast spar verbally was yet another reminder that the race card is one that still gets played far too often, even in 2014. Will we never be able to move beyond this delicate subject?
Choosing this award-winning play for the Acts of Faith festival was yet another reminder of Cadence's strength as an upstart theater company.
An uneasy topic in a well-written play, superbly acted and touching on the kind of sensitive issue that, like a scab, needs to be picked at again and again until we finally see it healed.
We can't fix what we don't acknowledge and a play like this reminds us we need to talk about the very things that make us the most uncomfortable.
After a satisfying night of theater, I said farewell to my date and went to a neighbor's Olympic party.
Despite it being in Jackson Ward, I was quite certain I wouldn't know anyone except the hosts, yet I walked in to prove that there are never more than two degrees of separation in Richmond.
Here was a favorite bartender decked out in Olympic colored balloons. There was a FOH manager looking like a silver medal. Oh, and there was a bartender of several decades with his homemade egg rolls. And the goat-loving cheese whiz who left us for Charlottesville had returned for this party. Hail, hail, the gang's all here.
I admired all the local art on my neighbors' walls, including the massive wall of albums coming down the staircase.
Everything from "Grand Funk Live" to David Bowie's "Changes" to REM's "Murmur" to Madonna's eponymous first album. Best of all, the records were still in there to be removed and played.
Only in Jackson Ward can you see "Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space" hanging on a 19th century wall.
Or swing from a new chef to challenging theater to celebratory Olympian vodka shots without ever straying more than five blocks from home.
Color me devoted to my 'hood.
So with a new chef and a new play, my evening was off to a fine start right in the neighborhood.
I met the charming man who'd invited me to dinner at Bistro 27 so we could check out the new guy slinging food at my neighborhood joint.
Chef Cory trained under Kevin at Pomegranate and I'd heard he was a big fan of organ meats, which made him sound like my kind of chef.
We started with bubbles at the bar before moving to a table amongst what was undoubtedly a room full of playgoers.
With two productions currently at the November Theater, everyone was in place by 6 to ensure being finished by 7:45.
My date told me about a recent trip to D.C. and I told him about my excursion to the Blue Ridge and we agreed that our meal goal was choosing dishes Cory had put on the menu.
So we started with his housemade sausage plate of pork and duck foie gras sausage and red wine and Parmesan sausage with mustard two ways and red pepper jelly. Outstanding, both of them.
If a man can make sausage, it's a good indicator he's my kind of
We moved on to seeing what he could do with entrees. For my friend, that meant salmon topped with scallops and a red pepper and caviar compound butter over cauliflower and anchovy puree he raved about.
For me, it was perfectly pan-seared scallops with a to die for champagne and fig demi-glace.
There were so many people in the room that hearing the music was a challenge, but every now and then something good - the XX or a samba - would come through loud and clear and we'd nod our heads in approval.
I had no intention of getting dessert but the housemade tiramisu turned out to be a weak spot for my date, so I obliged.
By the time we finished and scuttled across the street to the theater, it was almost curtain time for the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Clybourne Park" produced by Cadence Theater Company.
It's another play that's part of the Acts of Faith Festival and like Henley/Shakes' "Death and the Maiden," which I'd already seen, its inclusion was intended to be thought-provoking.
A play that takes up where "A Raisin in the Sun" left off, it tells the story of a neighborhood with race issues, which, of course, is every neighborhood in this country.
The first act was set in Chicago in 1959 when the first black family has bought a home in an all-white neighborhood ("After a reference to colored people, "Don't we say Negro now?") and the second in the same house but 50 years later ("My current commute is slowly eroding my soul") when a white couple has bought in what is now an all-black neighborhood.
Racial jokes come out but so do slurs against women, gays and even the privileged position of white men.
Everyone is uncomfortable dancing around the topic of race yet everyone manages to say something inappropriate. It's a lot like real life.
Watching the talented cast spar verbally was yet another reminder that the race card is one that still gets played far too often, even in 2014. Will we never be able to move beyond this delicate subject?
Choosing this award-winning play for the Acts of Faith festival was yet another reminder of Cadence's strength as an upstart theater company.
An uneasy topic in a well-written play, superbly acted and touching on the kind of sensitive issue that, like a scab, needs to be picked at again and again until we finally see it healed.
We can't fix what we don't acknowledge and a play like this reminds us we need to talk about the very things that make us the most uncomfortable.
After a satisfying night of theater, I said farewell to my date and went to a neighbor's Olympic party.
Despite it being in Jackson Ward, I was quite certain I wouldn't know anyone except the hosts, yet I walked in to prove that there are never more than two degrees of separation in Richmond.
Here was a favorite bartender decked out in Olympic colored balloons. There was a FOH manager looking like a silver medal. Oh, and there was a bartender of several decades with his homemade egg rolls. And the goat-loving cheese whiz who left us for Charlottesville had returned for this party. Hail, hail, the gang's all here.
I admired all the local art on my neighbors' walls, including the massive wall of albums coming down the staircase.
Everything from "Grand Funk Live" to David Bowie's "Changes" to REM's "Murmur" to Madonna's eponymous first album. Best of all, the records were still in there to be removed and played.
Only in Jackson Ward can you see "Mr. Spock's Music from Outer Space" hanging on a 19th century wall.
Or swing from a new chef to challenging theater to celebratory Olympian vodka shots without ever straying more than five blocks from home.
Color me devoted to my 'hood.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, April 28, 2013
Not Normal, but Better
I wasn't prepared to have my emotional socks knocked off at a matinee.
Despite the fact that Cadence Theater Company has been blowing my mind with their play choices and quality productions for over a year now, I had no idea what I was in for.
What I knew was that I was going to see a Pulitzer Prize-winning and multiple Tony Award-winning play produced by Cadence in partnership with Virginia Repertory.
Again.
Cadence seems to thrive on choosing important works never before produced in Richmond and bless 'em for it.
This time it was "Next to Normal."
The song list was extensive - 18 in the first act and 19 in the second - making it feel a little like an operetta with most of the action moving forward through song with some dialog interspersed.
They say love is blind but love is insane.
Having a live band is always a treat at a play, although there were times when the music drowned out the voices, a shame when the lyrics explained so much.
But that was my only quibble since the gut-wrenching story of mental illness and how a family deals with it when it happens to a member was absolutely compelling.
The people who think they're happy are just stupid.
With a cast that was strong across the board, it was impossible not to get caught up in the drama unfolding.
Without telling too much about the story, there's an instance of heartbreak that lives on for eighteen years, coloring everyone's lives.
I know from similar personal experience that unless you've experienced such trauma, you can not imagine the toll it takes on the people involved or their worldview forever after.
Let go of the past and maybe I'll see you at last.
That's not to say that a lot of the lyrics weren't funny, lines like, "I'm a sociopath, I love Sylvia Plath."
But despite upbeat, rocking songs and moments of mirth, it was at heart a play about grieving, mental illness, drug abuse, suicide and life in suburbia.
It's a world where the doctor medicates a person until she says she feels nothing and then he declares her stable.
It had me in tears by the middle of the second act.
This isn't your parents' feel-good musical, but a musical look at some heavy topics that may not be everyone's cup of tea.
That said, the three blue hairs sitting behind me raved at intermission about the acting, the voices, the set and the score, so it maybe it's all in how open-minded you are about new theater works.
What doctors call dysfunction, we call romance.
What Cadence calls their season closer, I call a must-see.
Because life goes on and even when it's difficult, it's always easier set to music.
Despite the fact that Cadence Theater Company has been blowing my mind with their play choices and quality productions for over a year now, I had no idea what I was in for.
What I knew was that I was going to see a Pulitzer Prize-winning and multiple Tony Award-winning play produced by Cadence in partnership with Virginia Repertory.
Again.
Cadence seems to thrive on choosing important works never before produced in Richmond and bless 'em for it.
This time it was "Next to Normal."
The song list was extensive - 18 in the first act and 19 in the second - making it feel a little like an operetta with most of the action moving forward through song with some dialog interspersed.
They say love is blind but love is insane.
Having a live band is always a treat at a play, although there were times when the music drowned out the voices, a shame when the lyrics explained so much.
But that was my only quibble since the gut-wrenching story of mental illness and how a family deals with it when it happens to a member was absolutely compelling.
The people who think they're happy are just stupid.
With a cast that was strong across the board, it was impossible not to get caught up in the drama unfolding.
Without telling too much about the story, there's an instance of heartbreak that lives on for eighteen years, coloring everyone's lives.
I know from similar personal experience that unless you've experienced such trauma, you can not imagine the toll it takes on the people involved or their worldview forever after.
Let go of the past and maybe I'll see you at last.
That's not to say that a lot of the lyrics weren't funny, lines like, "I'm a sociopath, I love Sylvia Plath."
But despite upbeat, rocking songs and moments of mirth, it was at heart a play about grieving, mental illness, drug abuse, suicide and life in suburbia.
It's a world where the doctor medicates a person until she says she feels nothing and then he declares her stable.
It had me in tears by the middle of the second act.
This isn't your parents' feel-good musical, but a musical look at some heavy topics that may not be everyone's cup of tea.
That said, the three blue hairs sitting behind me raved at intermission about the acting, the voices, the set and the score, so it maybe it's all in how open-minded you are about new theater works.
What doctors call dysfunction, we call romance.
What Cadence calls their season closer, I call a must-see.
Because life goes on and even when it's difficult, it's always easier set to music.
Monday, February 18, 2013
On Passion and Reason
Ho hum. Just another matinee of a Pulitzer Prize finalist at my local theater.
I'm kidding, of course.
I was thrilled to be at Virginia Repertory to see Cadence Theater's production of "Sons of the Prophet, part of the Acts of Faith Festival.
The story, a black comedy (or maybe just a drama-comedy) centers around two brothers whose father is killed at the beginning of the movie.
The best memories are all fictional.
Their aging and opinionated Uncle Bill moves in with them.
Joseph has un-diagnosed, crippling pain in his legs.
He and his brother Charles are both gay (what are the chances, everyone wonders).
His female boss is an addictive personality obsessed with writing a book about his family because they are supposedly descended from poet Kahlil Gibran.
What's Lifetime movies?
Television for women.
And it all makes for a glorious play where people talk over each other (like in real life) and bad things happen to good people (also known as life).
Anytime you try to put truth on paper, you get fiction.
Segments mirroring chapters in Gibran's "The Prophet" - "On Pain," "On Home, "On Friendship"- tell the story as the family copes.
Where you're dropped off in the world is everything.
The cast was stellar, with some of Richmond's best and some of its best up and coming actors coming alive on the tiny TheatreGym stage.
It seemed like Ryan Bechard as Joseph was on the stage practically every minute, playing a frustrated 28-year old trying to figure out what life had handed him. He did lust as well as he did pain.
The always-stellar Alan Sader was just the right mix of old-world and old man adjusting to the loss of his brother and having to go to the bathroom in a converted closet.
DJ Cummings as the younger brother Charles got my vote for best offhand delivery of his lines, making observations to the faces of other characters with no apparent filter. Hysterical.
The versatile Jacqueline Jones played a host of roles, funny, empathetic, gossipy and disdainful. And her black curly wig was magnificent.
Evan Nasteff played the TV reporter who comes to get a story with a mix of resolve and humor and some excellent butt-grabbing when it was called for.
No one's life should be about finding stability.
The play was short and because it was a story with no resolution, it wound up before I was ready for it to end.
I've little doubt that the Pulitzer Prize jury felt the same.
And considering that it just played off-Broadway last year, this theatergoer feels incredibly fortunate to have a top-notch production of it here so quickly after it closed in the Big Apple.
And I just may have to adopt the play's last line as my motto.
If you do it in time to the music, it goes faster.
What part of life couldn't that be applied to?
I have to give Cadence credit; yet again, they've produced a play I will be recommending my friends go see as soon as possible.
And I'll warn them not to come looking for a neat little play tied in a bow and handed to the audience because "Sons of the Prophet" is so much more interesting than that.
Afterwards, there was a break before tonight's music, so that got solved neatly by parking once and partying twice.
Upstairs at Pie, we found Evan, the actor who'd played Timothy, tending bar with his music blaring.
Given the afternoon, I found his choice of Franz Ferdinand's "Matinee" particularly appropriate.
I chose a Pacino pie (covered in onions, spinach, bacon and Parmesan) just about the time that the actor who'd played Joseph walked in, sitting down at the bar with a drink and his cigarettes and answering questions from strangers about what roles he'd played for Richmond Shakespeare.
Asking for behind-the-scenes dirt, about the best we got from Evan was about pre-show dance parties in his dressing room.
I correctly guessed that Justin Timberlake was part of that mix.
Well, that and Jacqueline knits a lot backstage and DJ is an old soul in a young man's body.
Limited dirt, in other words, but fine pizza-eating conversation.
From there it was a short walk across the street to Balliceaux for Classical Incarnations, with musicians playing in small groups the classical music of their choice.
It's a chance for longhairs to let down their hair, sort of.
Until they began, the speakers blared the Ramones and the Clash, perfect pre-classical music my companion, a friend and I agreed.
We got there in time to score chairs, a good thing, since many people ended up standing or sitting on the cold floor for the entire show given that it was the biggest crowd I've ever seen for one of these nights.
Things got off on a high note with Richmond Symphony pianist Russell Wilson and trumpeter Victor playing the evocative "Night Songs."
I've known Russell since I took a series of jazz classes from him years ago at the VMFA and he's one of my very favorite musicians for his sweet nature, ever-present camera and amazing skills on the ivories.
A trio of guitar, cello and soprano had to wait for the sound of the deep fryer to stop before they could start.
Band photographer PJ was there at the musicians' request, shooting their sets the same as he does punk and indie shows.
There was a good-sized contingent present from Fredericksburg beginning with a violinist who played a Bach piece and got a loud, "Yes, John!" when he finished.
Russell came back with a vocalist for "Je te Veux," chosen, the singer said, because of Valentine's Day.
Tom came out with his bassoon to play two movements of a Bach flute piece.
"Not that much good music is written for bassoon, so we have to steal it," he said with a grin. "I hope by the second part you'll be tapping your feet."
It was a worthwhile theft and by the second part, I saw three sets of feet tapping besides my own, and at the end, a guy yelled, "Get it!" in support.
Oh, he got it alright.
There was a break for everyone to refresh their drinks and mingle, during which a sax-playing friend walked up and said, "Glad you're sitting down."
It was a reference to my fainting spell the other night, but it was also pretty funny.
Like me, he was bummed to have missed hearing Snowy Owls cover My Bloody Valentine.
During the intermission, I heard a guy say, "If I have a friend come into town this is where I take him."
High praise indeed for Balliceaux.
The Richmond Guitar Quartet was made up of three guys (and one on a seven-string guitar) and one woman in a sea foam green floor-length dress.
I didn't ask.
First they played English composer Frank Bridge's "An Irish Melody," explaining that it would like a deconstructed version of a song ("Like a puzzle you have to put together") that showed bits and pieces of the melody and only came together near the end.
So you can imagine my surprise, being a musical idiot. when I recognized what it was about 20 seconds in.
Maybe it was my Irish heritage, but picking out "Danny Boy" was as easy as drinking.
They did a couple pieces from Bizet's "Carmen," noting an empathy with the bassoon player's dilemma - not a lot of classical music was written for guitar.
Next up was a cellist I recognized not just from another Classical Incarnations, but from indie band Ocean vs. Daughter. The moving piece was a tribute to a loss and to friends.
The night ended on a lovely note with a string quartet doing the third movement of a Mendelssohn work and one written on his honeymoon.
It was every bit as beautiful as you'd hope music written at that point in a talented man's life would be and a fitting finish to a standout day.
I heard today that where you're dropped off in the world is everything.
Get it, Richmond.
I'm kidding, of course.
I was thrilled to be at Virginia Repertory to see Cadence Theater's production of "Sons of the Prophet, part of the Acts of Faith Festival.
The story, a black comedy (or maybe just a drama-comedy) centers around two brothers whose father is killed at the beginning of the movie.
The best memories are all fictional.
Their aging and opinionated Uncle Bill moves in with them.
Joseph has un-diagnosed, crippling pain in his legs.
He and his brother Charles are both gay (what are the chances, everyone wonders).
His female boss is an addictive personality obsessed with writing a book about his family because they are supposedly descended from poet Kahlil Gibran.
What's Lifetime movies?
Television for women.
And it all makes for a glorious play where people talk over each other (like in real life) and bad things happen to good people (also known as life).
Anytime you try to put truth on paper, you get fiction.
Segments mirroring chapters in Gibran's "The Prophet" - "On Pain," "On Home, "On Friendship"- tell the story as the family copes.
Where you're dropped off in the world is everything.
The cast was stellar, with some of Richmond's best and some of its best up and coming actors coming alive on the tiny TheatreGym stage.
It seemed like Ryan Bechard as Joseph was on the stage practically every minute, playing a frustrated 28-year old trying to figure out what life had handed him. He did lust as well as he did pain.
The always-stellar Alan Sader was just the right mix of old-world and old man adjusting to the loss of his brother and having to go to the bathroom in a converted closet.
DJ Cummings as the younger brother Charles got my vote for best offhand delivery of his lines, making observations to the faces of other characters with no apparent filter. Hysterical.
The versatile Jacqueline Jones played a host of roles, funny, empathetic, gossipy and disdainful. And her black curly wig was magnificent.
Evan Nasteff played the TV reporter who comes to get a story with a mix of resolve and humor and some excellent butt-grabbing when it was called for.
No one's life should be about finding stability.
The play was short and because it was a story with no resolution, it wound up before I was ready for it to end.
I've little doubt that the Pulitzer Prize jury felt the same.
And considering that it just played off-Broadway last year, this theatergoer feels incredibly fortunate to have a top-notch production of it here so quickly after it closed in the Big Apple.
And I just may have to adopt the play's last line as my motto.
If you do it in time to the music, it goes faster.
What part of life couldn't that be applied to?
I have to give Cadence credit; yet again, they've produced a play I will be recommending my friends go see as soon as possible.
And I'll warn them not to come looking for a neat little play tied in a bow and handed to the audience because "Sons of the Prophet" is so much more interesting than that.
Afterwards, there was a break before tonight's music, so that got solved neatly by parking once and partying twice.
Upstairs at Pie, we found Evan, the actor who'd played Timothy, tending bar with his music blaring.
Given the afternoon, I found his choice of Franz Ferdinand's "Matinee" particularly appropriate.
I chose a Pacino pie (covered in onions, spinach, bacon and Parmesan) just about the time that the actor who'd played Joseph walked in, sitting down at the bar with a drink and his cigarettes and answering questions from strangers about what roles he'd played for Richmond Shakespeare.
Asking for behind-the-scenes dirt, about the best we got from Evan was about pre-show dance parties in his dressing room.
I correctly guessed that Justin Timberlake was part of that mix.
Well, that and Jacqueline knits a lot backstage and DJ is an old soul in a young man's body.
Limited dirt, in other words, but fine pizza-eating conversation.
From there it was a short walk across the street to Balliceaux for Classical Incarnations, with musicians playing in small groups the classical music of their choice.
It's a chance for longhairs to let down their hair, sort of.
Until they began, the speakers blared the Ramones and the Clash, perfect pre-classical music my companion, a friend and I agreed.
We got there in time to score chairs, a good thing, since many people ended up standing or sitting on the cold floor for the entire show given that it was the biggest crowd I've ever seen for one of these nights.
Things got off on a high note with Richmond Symphony pianist Russell Wilson and trumpeter Victor playing the evocative "Night Songs."
I've known Russell since I took a series of jazz classes from him years ago at the VMFA and he's one of my very favorite musicians for his sweet nature, ever-present camera and amazing skills on the ivories.
A trio of guitar, cello and soprano had to wait for the sound of the deep fryer to stop before they could start.
Band photographer PJ was there at the musicians' request, shooting their sets the same as he does punk and indie shows.
There was a good-sized contingent present from Fredericksburg beginning with a violinist who played a Bach piece and got a loud, "Yes, John!" when he finished.
Russell came back with a vocalist for "Je te Veux," chosen, the singer said, because of Valentine's Day.
Tom came out with his bassoon to play two movements of a Bach flute piece.
"Not that much good music is written for bassoon, so we have to steal it," he said with a grin. "I hope by the second part you'll be tapping your feet."
It was a worthwhile theft and by the second part, I saw three sets of feet tapping besides my own, and at the end, a guy yelled, "Get it!" in support.
Oh, he got it alright.
There was a break for everyone to refresh their drinks and mingle, during which a sax-playing friend walked up and said, "Glad you're sitting down."
It was a reference to my fainting spell the other night, but it was also pretty funny.
Like me, he was bummed to have missed hearing Snowy Owls cover My Bloody Valentine.
During the intermission, I heard a guy say, "If I have a friend come into town this is where I take him."
High praise indeed for Balliceaux.
The Richmond Guitar Quartet was made up of three guys (and one on a seven-string guitar) and one woman in a sea foam green floor-length dress.
I didn't ask.
First they played English composer Frank Bridge's "An Irish Melody," explaining that it would like a deconstructed version of a song ("Like a puzzle you have to put together") that showed bits and pieces of the melody and only came together near the end.
So you can imagine my surprise, being a musical idiot. when I recognized what it was about 20 seconds in.
Maybe it was my Irish heritage, but picking out "Danny Boy" was as easy as drinking.
They did a couple pieces from Bizet's "Carmen," noting an empathy with the bassoon player's dilemma - not a lot of classical music was written for guitar.
Next up was a cellist I recognized not just from another Classical Incarnations, but from indie band Ocean vs. Daughter. The moving piece was a tribute to a loss and to friends.
The night ended on a lovely note with a string quartet doing the third movement of a Mendelssohn work and one written on his honeymoon.
It was every bit as beautiful as you'd hope music written at that point in a talented man's life would be and a fitting finish to a standout day.
I heard today that where you're dropped off in the world is everything.
Get it, Richmond.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Sending a Signal
Once upon a time on a Sunday afternoon...
First off, food is required before tales of torture and murder.
And while some people might consider 2:00 lunch time, I was all about some pancakes and scrapple (still not great, but better than the last time I had it there) at Lunch when our foursome convened for a shared meal.
At one point, When in Rome's "The Promise" came on, causing one in our group to grin widely and observe, "This song sounds like sunny days and happiness I love it. The music is always great here."
Coincidentally, she was born the year the song came out (1988) but she'd nailed one of Lunch's strong points - the music (and pig) always pleases.
The womenfolk were eating breakfast and the men went with massive meat sandwiches, like roast beast and turkey and bacon.
Okay, I had some of that one and it was pretty damn awesome, so I stand corrected at unfairly calling it obscene.
Apparently some times you do need a carnivorous trifecta.
Full of syrup and someone else's sausage, we headed to Virginia Rep to see Cadence Theater Company's "The Pillowman."
I'd seen some VCU students do a staged reading of this black comedy just last December and been wildly impressed with Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's tale of bad parenting, sibling sacrifice and child murders.
If it sounds like a downer of an afternoon, let me assure you it was not. But it was long.
Really, it's a sociological study of a screwed up family living in a totalitarian state and the unfortunate way it all plays out.
The main character is a writer of children's stories (Once upon a time...), most of which wind down in horrific endings.
With a minimal but effective set, the cast of eight gradually settled into their roles as the drama unfolded.
Depending on your own personal landscape, there were any number of hot button issues touched upon- the death of a child, willful child abuse, sadism.
That said, despite the grisly things that happen, it is the story of a man with a compulsion to write and naturally I could appreciate that.
One of the funniest lines was on that subject.
"You execute a writer, it sends a signal. I don't know what kind of signal..."
In this case, death was tolerable only because he know his words would live on.
I have to give Cadence credit; they continue to produce thoughtfully chosen works by top notch casts on the tiniest of stages, succeeding every time.
The evening concluded with a show at the Nile, while, as all Nile shows are wont to do, started far later than it was supposed to.
Paul Ivey and the Rubes were playing without a drummer tonight (he's vacationing in the mountains, no doubt OD'ing on leaf color), but sounded terrific in their reincarnation as a trio.
Part of that is my affection for New Wave, at which Paul is a master, part of that is his incredibly smart lyrics and last night in particular, his guitar was just sounding amazing to me.
But Paul is also funny, like when he announced, "This song is dedicated to yet another person who greatly disappointed me," before launching into yet another catchy tune.
The band covered (with minimal practice, according to them) the Kinks' "Oklahoma, USA" in a nod to the traveling band, Luna Moth from (no surprise) Oklahoma and did a worthy rendition of it.
"If life's worth livin', what's livin' for?"
Well, let's see, livin's for pancakes and Tony award winning plays and New Wave music played in African restaurants.
Only then do people like me live happily ever after.
First off, food is required before tales of torture and murder.
And while some people might consider 2:00 lunch time, I was all about some pancakes and scrapple (still not great, but better than the last time I had it there) at Lunch when our foursome convened for a shared meal.
At one point, When in Rome's "The Promise" came on, causing one in our group to grin widely and observe, "This song sounds like sunny days and happiness I love it. The music is always great here."
Coincidentally, she was born the year the song came out (1988) but she'd nailed one of Lunch's strong points - the music (and pig) always pleases.
The womenfolk were eating breakfast and the men went with massive meat sandwiches, like roast beast and turkey and bacon.
Okay, I had some of that one and it was pretty damn awesome, so I stand corrected at unfairly calling it obscene.
Apparently some times you do need a carnivorous trifecta.
Full of syrup and someone else's sausage, we headed to Virginia Rep to see Cadence Theater Company's "The Pillowman."
I'd seen some VCU students do a staged reading of this black comedy just last December and been wildly impressed with Irish playwright Martin McDonagh's tale of bad parenting, sibling sacrifice and child murders.
If it sounds like a downer of an afternoon, let me assure you it was not. But it was long.
Really, it's a sociological study of a screwed up family living in a totalitarian state and the unfortunate way it all plays out.
The main character is a writer of children's stories (Once upon a time...), most of which wind down in horrific endings.
With a minimal but effective set, the cast of eight gradually settled into their roles as the drama unfolded.
Depending on your own personal landscape, there were any number of hot button issues touched upon- the death of a child, willful child abuse, sadism.
That said, despite the grisly things that happen, it is the story of a man with a compulsion to write and naturally I could appreciate that.
One of the funniest lines was on that subject.
"You execute a writer, it sends a signal. I don't know what kind of signal..."
In this case, death was tolerable only because he know his words would live on.
I have to give Cadence credit; they continue to produce thoughtfully chosen works by top notch casts on the tiniest of stages, succeeding every time.
The evening concluded with a show at the Nile, while, as all Nile shows are wont to do, started far later than it was supposed to.
Paul Ivey and the Rubes were playing without a drummer tonight (he's vacationing in the mountains, no doubt OD'ing on leaf color), but sounded terrific in their reincarnation as a trio.
Part of that is my affection for New Wave, at which Paul is a master, part of that is his incredibly smart lyrics and last night in particular, his guitar was just sounding amazing to me.
But Paul is also funny, like when he announced, "This song is dedicated to yet another person who greatly disappointed me," before launching into yet another catchy tune.
The band covered (with minimal practice, according to them) the Kinks' "Oklahoma, USA" in a nod to the traveling band, Luna Moth from (no surprise) Oklahoma and did a worthy rendition of it.
"If life's worth livin', what's livin' for?"
Well, let's see, livin's for pancakes and Tony award winning plays and New Wave music played in African restaurants.
Only then do people like me live happily ever after.
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