When One is in Town, One Amuses Oneself

I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.

My dinner date and I were plenty serious about it.

We met at Rowland's and despite them having been open for an hour, he'd taken the first table and already ordered the wine.

Somebody has to.

He was into livestock and I was feeling pescetarian, but that didn't preclude all kinds of food and restaurant talk.

Things like, will we ever have a true Spanish tapas place in Richmond?

After careful consideration, I chose the Sweet Jesus oysters to start, partly because of the name and partly because they come from St. Mary's County, Maryland, site of my last family reunion.

The bivalves were sweet, the mignonette was a hot red pepper and I sucked every bit of juice from the shells while my date ate ravioli.

To each his own.

Next he got the Kick Ass meatloaf (it was an evening of colorfully-named menu items), promising me a slice, and I ordered one of the specials, sauteed soft shelled crab with corn pudding and haricots vert.

The two crispy crabs were smallish, but even sweeter than the oysters and the corn pudding studded with whole kernels underneath every bit as good.

His meatloaf was well-executed and moist, but we weren't fans of the overly sweet tomato sauce topping.

You know what I like cooked into the top of my meatloaf? Onions, that's it.

My date was the curious type, asking my opinion on so many things - patios, New Year's Eve parties, what Richmond needs- and as one who likes to be talked to, I was happy to share my opinions.

I'm a spring inside a clock, wind me up and I'll talk.

When it came time for dessert, we found that we had a shared opinion (dessert = chocolate), but with none on the menu, settled for mixed berry bread pudding with whipped cream and strawberries.

We'd barely finished when it was almost curtain time and we had to jet.

Tonight was preview night for "The Importance of Being Earnest" at Richmond Triangle Players and we didn't want to miss one word of Oscar Wilde's superbly witty dialogue.

Come on, a play with the subtitle, "A trivial comedy for serious people"? Yes, please.

Well, in the first place, girls never marry the men they flirt with.

It turned out to be a unique seating arrangement because I was in the first row and he was in the fourth with the added bonus of my friend Pru in the second.

All very cozy.

The set impressed from the start, moving from Algie's city digs to Jack's bucolic country house, out and in.

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.

In a magnificent bit of casting, Robert Throckmorton played Lady Bracknell, all spitting righteousness in purple taffeta and painted-on eyebrows.

But the entire cast was strong and dressed beautifully in 19th century costumes.

Though I may marry someone else and marry often, nothing can alter my true devotion to you.

Ian Stearns' Algie was impossibly young, dashing and handsome while Thomas Cunningham (a personal favorite from so many Richmond Shakespeare performances and readings) perfectly evoked the more staid and less confident Jack.

Stephen Ryan, another actor who impresses every time I see him, as the butler Merriman almost stole the show with his understated subservience and well-placed eye rolls.

The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Because it was preview night, the actors had no idea what the audience's reactions would be and there were times when our laughter prevented us from hearing the next line.

It's a great problem to have and I've not doubt they'll allow a bit more space in between certain lines going forward.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

It was delightful seeing Audra Honaker play Gwen, a very different role than any I'd ever seen her in.

At turns coquettish, her beautiful hair piled on top of her head, and at times a spitfire, afraid her man has betrayed her, she shone every moment onstage, all eyes on fire, pursed lips and longing glances.

If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.

The play had two brief intermissions and at each one the strangers around me marveled at their delight in the production.

I went to the ladies' room during the second and overheard a woman say to a friend, "Sometimes these previews are a train wreck, but they're doing great!"

That was putting it mildly.

Ripeness can be trusted. Young women are green.

They should have that line put on a t-shirt and sell it during intermission. Looking at tonight's crowd, they'd make a fortune.

Three addresses always inspire confidence, even in tradesmen.

By the end of the play, I think everyone in the room knew that they'd just seen a hit.

With this being the first official production since the merger of Henley Street and Richmond Shakespeare, it's now pretty obvious what a brilliant move that was.

I can't wait for word to get around about what a must-see this production is for Fall.

I'll just sit back nonchalantly and say, yea, I was there preview night, with both a male and female date.

Pretty Oscar Wilde-like, no?

And, just for the record, this ripe woman's favorite line of dialogue?

Oh, I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about.

I mean that earnestly.

I Like My Strumpets

I was told more than once that I'll go see anything, no matter how obscure or obtuse, just to go out.

Tahitian acrobat cymbalists? Sure.  Moroccan throat singing mimes? Okay.

So naturally I perked up when I saw that the next in the Richmond Shakespeare Bawdy Bard staged reading series was just such a hybrid.

Improv comedians and Shakespearean actors doing, what else, Shakesprov.

Shoot, I was at Capital Ale House an hour before doors opened.

Don't tempt my sense of humor and my intellect unless you mean it.

I'd brought along an improv master (or so he claimed) to laugh with me.

When the host said we had to wait until 7:30 to go in, I asked of him the time.

Glancing at his watch, he told me it was 7:11, much to my amazement.

That's so cool that you wear a watch, I told him.

He instinctively went to thank me and instead got a knowing grin on his face and said, "Right?"

Right, indeed. We had a ten-minute conversation about the lost art of watch-wearing and I got a peek into why a 25-year old chooses to daily wear the watch his mother gave him for his eighteenth birthday.

Pulling it off his wrist, he pointed to the back of the face proudly. "No battery!" he boasted. "It's got a spring."

Just like in the olden days.

But food waits for no time talk, so we sent him on his way and began by scoring white chicken chili at the bar while waiting for the doors to open.

On the plus side, the cannelini was toothsome and the bits of fresh jalapeno added a nice heat to each bite. On the minus side, it wasn't nearly hot enough, especially on a frigid night like this.

Once the doors opened, it was an easy walk to a front table in the music hall.

Part of the beauty of comedy and iambic pentameter intersecting tonight was that it was happening in a bar, meaning we were supposed, nay, even encouraged, to eat, drink and chatter during the show.

You don't have to tell me twice (Cobb salad, chocolate cake and any number of asides).

The Shakesproving jumped right in with a game where two people had to argue the pluses and minuses of an issue thrown out by the audience.

You now, stuff like, global warming (yea or nay) or lead paint poisoning (good or bad?).

I see now that was just to warm us up, get our laughing muscles loosened up.

Next came a game called Replay where crowd suggestions formed the device, in this case, cross dressing, murder and love, all then executed Shakespearean-style.

The replay came in when they then had to redo that scene through other lenses.

We saw it done with hate, as a coking show and Al Capone gangster-style.

You might be surprised at how the same scene was funny all four ways.

The next game, Playwright, used technology, so I would have been useless to them.

Each of the four onstage had their phone set on the script of one of three plays (Othello, Taming of the Shrew, Julius Cesar), ready to use whatever lines from it they chose.

With an improv comedian to facilitate the scene between them, each actor had to use only lines from the play he'd been given to further the dialog.

When Adam grabbed himself and uttered, "I fear it is too choleric a meat," the audience about lost it.

There was a game where they had to mime pre-determined components of a murder (dog park, painter, gouging out eyes and then poisoning) and get the contestant to guess the scenario, "Clue"-like.

You can't imagine how amusing miming eye gouging can be until you've seen it.

Buzz/Ding, the next amusement, required the Bawdy Bard's guiding light, Kerry, to come onstage and, much like with Richmond Comedy Coalition's "Richmond Famous" nights, share tidbits about her life, job and friends.

It's overshare and then be skewered for it, pretty much.

From there, four of them improved Kerry's life while she sat there with a human "buzzer" and a human "dinger" and hit the appropriate one depending on how accurately her life was being depicted.

Hysterical as their depictions seemed to the audience, most of the time she was buzzing.

And now all the room knows her boss likes booze humor and bathroom jokes.

So, yes, laughter always comes back to potty humor, even with the Bard.

The longest game was Story, wherein we helped create a many-chaptered book while eliminating people from the stage.

"The Dark Prince Emerges," became the title by default when a man yelled it out first.

He continued to announce the name before each new chapter, varying his voice for dramatic value.

From there we had eight chapters, including a particularly enthusiastic and protracted one on breasts, nipples and milk.

The guys could have run with that all night, but Katie tried to curtail them eventually, suggesting we moved on from mammaries.

Aw, do we have to, their faces seemed to say.

There was a different component added in for each new chapter and whichever person lost the thread (sometimes in mid-syllable or final consonant) was eliminated.

Stacie ended up being last breasts standing, no small accomplishment.

The Dating Game used stock Shakespeare types - Ophelia, a rich father and sad blood (the most melancholy Thomas ever)- as the bachelors while the lusty bachelorette asked animated questions to find her Mr. Right.

Only occasionally did things get a little skeevy.

"We'll edit that out later," host David said to the studio audience more than once.

Soliloquy required any of the four people in the skit to stop and do a monologue when pointed to.

To their credit, each one was fearless about taking center stage with made-up words while all froze around him.

After so much effort on their part (all we'd had to do was cackle), we closed with a fun game, a little number called I Like My Strumpets.

We'd throw out something (clowns, chainsaws, Julius Cesar, ruffled shirts) and they'd take turns making analogies.

"Shakespeare used a lot of puns," host Matt said, "But he also talked about butts a lot."

So you can imagine where that took us.

I like my strumpets like I like my chainsaws...with teeth!

The women in the group quickly tired of strumpets and began using lords instead to convey their points.

I like my lords like I like my ruffled collars...a little rumpled and stiff.

Wah, wah.

So here goes.

I like my evenings like I like my dark princes...funny, smart and good kissers.

And they can mime their choleric meat, but I don't need to see it.

Of course, with Shakesprov, we can always edit that out later.