Last Thursday after school, Mer and I headed over to Dubbs’ place for supper. I had made some bread, and Dubbs made some lasagna, and so we happily dove in pretty much right when we got there. Nate, Dubbs’ husband, was working, so he could not join us, but Dubbs’ two kitties kept us entertained, in addition to the eating and chat.

After supper, we heeded down to Akron’s public library. Dubbs is working on a major paper for a graduate class, and Mer needed to check out a copy of a movie of Death of a Salesman for her AP English classes. Since the library was only a block away from our ultimate destination, the music club Musica, we figured we could stop at the library. We spent almost an hour there (Dubbs checked out about 10 books), and then walked over to the club.

Bethesda, the band our friends Eric and Shanna are in, was playing that night. They were supposed to open the evening as the first of four bands. Sadly, when we got there (having tromped though a wet snow), they had been moved to third of four bands, which meant there were not going on at 8:00 as we had thought; they were now going on at 9:30. Mer and I had to be home to make an important phone call to our realtor, so we talked with Dubbs and we decided to leave and come back.

So, we headed back home and made our phone call, which turned out not to be needed yet (there was no new information). These things do happen from time to time. To make the best of it, we headed over to Handel’s Ice Cream (in a snowstorm), and got ice cream. Then we headed back to Musica to hear Bethesda.

We go there to hear the last song of the one-man-band that was on before Eric’s group, so our timing was good. Bethesda took only a little time to get set, and then they played for about 40 minutes or so. This was my second time hearing them, and this time the competing crowd noise was less than what was going on at their CD release party two months ago. The music was still turned up too loudly for an old fogey like me to get right down at the stage, but the quality of the music was very good, and they have an excellent stage presence – lots and lots and lots of energy with lots of movement from the band members while they sing and play.

We did get home after the concert around 10:50, and had a call from our realtor to call him if we could before 11:00. So, even that worked out.

Last Saturday, I started the day out with my friends Nate and Jason, and we headed down to the Valley to run on the Towpath at 6:45 am. I think marathon running shrivels the brain or something. Nate was on a short week, so he ran 13 miles with me and Jason, and we finished up with 5 more for a total of 18 miles. It was a good, strong run (with a very pretty sunrise).

After I got home and showered up, I decided I was hungry after burning 2500 calories, so I got Mer into the car to head to Akron. Jason had recommended Wally Waffle as a great breakfast place, and I wanted to try it. It was a very sunny and pretty day, and we had nothing on the agenda for the afternoon, so neither of us minded the 10-minute wait. After much agonizing, I decided I needed to try a chili omelet if only for the novelty. As it turns out, the chili was more like salsa, and so the omelet was okay instead of the exciting taste sensation I had hoped for. The home fries were great. Next time, I am certainly getting the chocolate chip waffle with whipped cream!

After our brunch, we wandered outside into the bright Ohio sunshine, and lo! there was the Goodyear blimp. Even after nine years of seeing it fairly regularly, I still love seeing it. Mer and I also stopped and enjoyed the newly-blooming flowers in the small park outside of Akron’s Children’s Hospital. We then headed on home for a mellow afternoon.

The evening was a good time. One of our colleagues, Brittian, goes to a church where they have a fundraiser for a school in the Dominican Republic. The fundraiser proceeds go to feeding the children for one year. It was a pizza and dessert dinner, with a small silent auction, and…get this…competitive team trivia. Talk about a great combination – food and fierce displays of why I never had dates in high school.

Brittian told me that last year a guy at the church put together a team of pre-meds, and they cleaned up. So, Brittian put together his own team this year – Brittian and his wife, Dubbs (who knows a stupid amount of trivia), Meredith, me, Nancy (who was on Jeopardy!), and Brittian’s in-laws. It was a formidable team. We figured we would be competitive at the very least, and we were.

The trivia was harder than we had thought it would be, and that made for a challenging night. The church wisely sold “mulligans” that would allow you to pass on one question per round. There were 10 rounds of 10 questions. They had some bonus questions as well, so a perfect score would have been 120 points. They posted scores after every two rounds, and after round one, we were tied for second, behind by one point. After round four, we took over the lead and never gave it up. We ended the evening with 99 points (out of 120), which beat the second-place team by only three points. Much fun.

Meredith rocked the Arts category, knowing 9 out of 10 of the questions, and we used our mulligan on a question from Tom Sawyer (“What does Huck Finn say a dead cat is good for?” – curing warts). I actually contributed to the team, knowing:
– How Clementine (from the song) died – she drowned
– The first NBA player to score 100 points in a game – Wilt Chamberlain
– What URL stands for (which I got slightly wrong, saying Universal Resource Locator, but they gave it to me)
– I was able to identify Argentina’s flag, because it was “my” flag when we did luge in Maine
– I had correctly identified Gone With the Wind as the first $100 million film, but was overruled for Jaws (a very good guess)
Anyway, we did win, which meant we each won $40. Since it cost $20 to get in, we made $20 on the evening. The church raised $17,000 for the school in the Dominican Republic, and we had lots of good food. It is hard to do much better than that!

Last Thursday, Mer and I headed up to Hudson to see I Love a Piano, a musical review of the songs of Irving Berlin. This was another play in the season-ticket series that we were given as a gift. It was much fun.

Usually, we are pretty cool on musical reviews – they often do not have enough plot or story interest to be a “real play,” and they often fall short of being a “real concert” because the music is edited down to fit the review. In the case of I Love a Piano, the story arc, such as it was, mostly added either context or humor to the songs. Basically, several songs were sung as part of an era – a 1911 song shop, a 1920s speakeasy, 1940s wartime America, and a post-war period. Each period had very brief skits that allowed the actors to sing, and each skit was tied together by the character of an aging piano (with one bad key, as a running joke). The skits worked pretty well as an excuse to sing.

And, ahhhh, what songs. The play did part or all of 50 songs or so. What amazing talent Irving Berlin had. What a great set of music – fun and catchy. I especially liked the music from the 30s – I knew many of the songs from the Fred Astaire movies, and it made me smile to hear them again. Now I need a CD of the music!

The costumes were great – they kept changing with each era. The flappers of the 20s had especially fun costumes. The men were usually in a suit, a tux, or a uniform.

The show lasted about 90 minutes (plus an intermission). I certainly loved this piano!

Last Saturday was Mer’s day, and pretty mellow. I did start the day with a 16-mile run with my running partners Nate and Jason, but I was home and showered by 10:00, so it did not mess with Mer’s day too much. In fact, she got groceries, and I tried to nap, but was kept up by vocal kitties. That happens sometimes.

Mer did have plans for the evening, though. After supper, we headed down into the Valley, to Weathervane Community Theater, where we met up with our friends Dubbs and Nate (who ended up leaving at intermission because Dubbs was sick). The theater was putting on a youth production of Pride and Prejudice. The director introduced the play by indicating that the idea of youth theater was to give “actors under the age of 40 the chance to have a good role.” Most of the actors were college-aged. There were three adults – Mr. and Mrs. Bennet (the parents of the main character), and Lady Catherine, an older woman who holds her importance way too highly. Otherwise, all of the other roles were played by teenagers and actors in their early 20s.

The set was static (no rotating houses this time), but effective. The back of the stage was done up as the front of a nice two-story house, with an upper balcony. Characters could come out of the house onto the front of the stage, or could come out on the balcony. It worked just fine.

Pride and Prejudice was originally a novel, not a play, so this was an adaptation. In the book, one of the more interesting characters is the voice of the narrator, who is witty and even at times snide. This does not translate well to the stage (or the screen) without having a dedicated narrator, which is a bit odd to do on stage. To get around this, the playwright had the main characters give the narration during scene changes, and while still in character. It was not so good as the narrator in the book, but it worked pretty well.

A former CVCA student was on stage as Jane, the family beauty. It is much fun to see people you know on stage, and she did a very admirable job in playing Jane. The main character, Lizzy (or Elizabeth), is a long part, and the young actress did pretty well at it. It is a huge role, and she nailed all the lines (as far as I could tell), although I would have liked to see a broader range of emotions from her, especially when confronted by the love of Darcy, whom she abhors. My favorite character in this production was the selfish, dizzy, and man-crazy daughter, Lydia. The actress playing her was consistently vain and selfish, even while giving narration. I also liked the young man playing the dull preacher, Mr. Collins. He played Mr. Collins as very stiff and formal, with his voice cracking on stressed parts of the sentences. It worked well.

I was less happy with the portrayal of Mr. Bennet. In the book, it is key that he is a disappointed man in his marriage. He married young and for beauty, only to discover that he had married a woman for whom he had no respect. He badly wants to make sure his two oldest daughters (Jane and Lizzy) do not make the same mistake. I’m not sure if it was a director’s choice or not, but the Mr. Bennet of this play was played as an amused, almost happy-go-lucky man who seemed to genuinely like, if not love, his wife. It made the character of Mr. Bennet to be much more one-dimensional than he is portrayed in the book.

On the whole, though, I thought the play went very well. I only wish I had not been so sleepy – the 16-mile run on five-and-a-half hours of sleep made me a little less attentive than I normally am at plays.

Last Friday, Mer took me to Grove City College in Pennsylvania. Two of our former students were acting in An Enemy of the People at the school, and we were eager to see the play. I knew almost nothing about the play, although I had seen another play, The Doll’s House, by the same playwright. I had liked Doll’s House, but had not liked any of the characters, and since the play was translated from the original Norwegian, it had felt a little stiff to me. Anyway, I was looking forward to what Meredith calls “a pure viewing,” where I knew almost nothing of the play.

A quick storyline for those not familiar with it – it concerns a town that has invested heavily in medical baths/spas in the 19th century. The local doctor finds out the baths are contaminated with bacteria, and are therefore lethal to use. Closing the baths would ruin the local economy, but leaving them open would kill people. The play deals with the issues raised by this problem. (As an aside, it struck me as a small-scale version of the global warming debate, with many of the same tactics being used. I felt a lot less smug when I realized that.)

We ate in town at the Main Street Diner, where the food was good, but the service was a bit slow. We grabbed some Dairy Queen on the way to the theater for dessert, and we got to the theater about 15 minutes before the play started. We headed to the front row, which seems not to be taken at Grove City – we have sat in the front row for three productions there. As we sat down, we admired the set – a large wooden structure that was the inside of a house and, as we later found out, could be turned around to be the outside of buildings near a wharf. It was a great set. Meredith commented, “Isn’t it good – Norwegian wood?” I glared at her….

The play was excellent and thought-provoking. My friend Kevin played a don’t-rock-the-boat middle-of-the-road businessman, and he played him with a worried and comic edge that worked very well. Mer’s student Austin played a young radical newspaper reporter who becomes less radical when the town is threatened. Kevin and Austin both did excellent jobs.

Kevin’s former roommate played the lead – the doctor (he had also played Higgins in My Fair Lady). He should have a fine acting career ahead – he was tremendous in the role, which is not an easy one. The doctor is a complex man and a complex role, and the audience ends up loving him and hating him.

After the play, Mer and I stuck around for a “talk-back,” where you can ask questions of the cast and crew. The director had a few remarks to get started, and she mentioned how hard it was to direct Act 5, the last act. So, when the question-time started, I asked her why Act 5 was so hard to direct, when I thought Act 4 was a more problematic act (where the doctor denounces the entire town). She answered that the last line can be seen as triumphant, but she could not go with that. She had tried many different ways to end the play, and she said she still was not convinced how to end it. It was interesting and informative. (Based on thinking about this, I thought the play should end with the doctor desperately clinging to the idea that he alone was right.)

A note to directors: be careful about talk-backs at colleges. I asked a question, and a good one, I thought. After that question, for 25-30 more minutes, the audience (made up of professors and other students) became a series of short lectures on drama and other English works. To the best of our recollections, Mer and I could not remember a single question being asked. It was both amusing and frustrating – I would have liked to have heard from the cast more, and the audience less.

I chatted with the director for a few minutes after the talk-back, and Mer chatted with Austin and Kevin. I did get to congratulate Kevin and Austin, and then we had to head out. We had a sleepy drive home (it was a late Friday, after all), and got home about 1:00. It was worth it – it was a chance to see a great, rarely-done play.

Mer has volunteered her services to help out with her 20th high school reunion. She needed to help check out a country club to see if it would work for the party, so she was to meet several people from her class at a county club in Canton. Since I had a gift certificate for a restaurant in Canton, and I needed to finish mounting Aunt Mary’s light, I went along with Mer down to Taggart’s – a restaurant in her old neighborhood that is known for ice cream and it is an institution, having opened in the 1920s. We met Aunt Mary there, and had a fine meal, where I ate too much, as I usually do when I go out to eat.

Mer went on her way to the country club, and Aunt Mary and I went to the Home Depot, to try to find the correct all-thread screws to mount her light. A man at the store was very helpful and insisted that we did not need a metric screw, so we went home with the same threaded screw as we already had, on the off chance that the all-thread I had tried before was cross-threaded (and messed up).

I tried the new all-thread, and it did not go in any more easily than the last ones. Aunt Mary ran back to her old place to get her all-in-one oil to see if lubricating the screw would work. While she was gone, I decided that maybe all I needed was a better grip, so I tried on Aunt Mary’s pink rubber gloves, and managed to get the older screws in place. After several attempts to get the length correct, I managed to get the new lamp fixture hung and it even worked. Score one for the good guys.

To celebrate, Aunt Mary and I watched Jeopardy! and I iced my knee (that has tendinitis). Mer came along just in time for Final Jeopardy, and then we headed home. Good food, a successful manly-outing, and Jeopardy! made for a good evening.

Thursday, Mer and I headed down to Clarice’s place for a game night. Clarice is one of the founding members of my improv group, in the first group back in 2005. She now helps me coach the current group, and she seems to like hanging out with me and Mer, which is gratifying. Clarice was hosting the game night, which included us, Clarice’s boyfriend, Matt, and two other Founding Fools – Josh and Kristen. Another student from the Class of 1996 made a cameo appearance, and it was good to see Rose again.

Anyway, we had much fun playing games. I was on the winning team (with Kristen) in Cranium. We beat the teams of Meredith/Matt and Josh/Clarice. We then randomly choose teams to play a game called 25 Words or Less, where you try to get your team to say five words on a card in as few words as possible. The random teams turned out to be males against females, and shockingly we won, 6-4. Go figure. I very much enjoyed the company of the evening – it was good to see everyone again.

Last Saturday I took Meredith to downtown Akron, to go to the wonderful Civic Theater. The Civic opened in 1929, and has been fully restored – the interior has elaborate statues and carvings and bright colors, and the ceiling is even painted to be like the evening sky in the Mediterranean, with lights as stars and with clouds that actually move across the sky. I am very fond of this theater, and I am glad it was rescued  in the 1960s.

On this particular night, the Civic was hosting its first “Festival of Nations” to showcase the cultures that have gone into making up Akron over the last 150 years or so. For a wonderfully affordable $10 ticket, eight different groups performed for 15 minutes each. The seating for the event was general admission, so Mer and I chose seats in the front row of the balcony (in spite of my fear of heights). Since so many of the groups were dancing groups, we decided we wanted to see a wide sweep of the stage. We ended up sitting next to a group of about 8 black girls who made up a praise dance team for their church. They had come out to see other forms of dance, and were very enthusiastic all thought the evening. It was very encouraging that young people would take a Saturday evening to come and watch different cultural dances.

The theater lobby was packed – some groups had brought food to sell, and many groups were offering demonstrations. It was pretty zooey. According to the MC of the evening, the Civic had thought they might get 200-300 people, and they ended up with 2000. It was a good crowd (but still did not fill the theater).

So, the evening consisted of:

The Cleveland Chinese Music Ensemble – Not surprisingly, this group played Chinese music, and played it really well. That was to be a joy all evening long – all of the groups that performed were all local talent, and they all did really well. The fun of this group was the unusual instruments they played. My favorite (and the one I spent most of the time watching) was a Chinese lute called a pipa. The woman playing it was amazing, and although it turns out that the instrument only has four strings, it sure seemed as if there were a lot more – she was getting a lot of sound out of it. The group also had a Chinese flute, a mouth organ (that was fun), a “moon” (moon-shaped) guitar, a zither, and several percussion instruments. They played four different songs in their 15 minutes of Akron fame.

Dance Israeli! Dance Company – This group was a lot of fun. The group focuses on traditional Israeli dance steps, but has updated the dances to more contemporary Israeli music. They did six dances in all, and my favorite was the Yakalelo, which was an Israeli hip-hop dance. That was great to see.

El Corazon de Mexico – The group biography indicates that El Corazon dances over 100 dances, but on this evening they were limited to 5. They opened with a marvelous dance that still retained much of the Spanish flavor – the women had large flowing dresses where they moved the hem constantly with their hands, and the men were dressed in formal black suits. Mer and I both agreed that the constant motion of the dresses was mesmerizing. The last four dances were more distinctly Mexican, with the dance members dressed in cowboy outfits. They did a nice job, and ended with the national dance of Mexico, Jarabe Tapatio, for which I knew the music from Bugs Bunny cartoons (think of Bugs fighting the bull in the bull-fighting cartoon). The music made me smile, and the dance was great.

Shri Kalaa Mandir – This group specializes in Indian (from India) dance, and was made up of four women. It was fascinating. The dance is very precise, with feet usually at 45 degrees away from the front, and with a lot of bending from the knees. I have no idea how their knees held up to that stress. They did three dances, including a lovely dance that started with the dancers in the dark, but carrying small lights; the dance began and ended with the audience only able to see the lights moving on stage, and hearing the bells the women wore around their ankles.

Michael Searching Bear – Michael’s music is heavily influenced by Native American rhythms, and the program stressed his flute-playing skills. He brought a band with him, and, in a funny twist (given the program), Michael pretty much stayed playing a drum kit, which included a huge drum with the drum surface facing up. Michael played the drums magnificently, and he did come out to play two short flute pieces to start songs.

Serpente Negra Capoeira – This group performed an art I had never heard of before. It is based on dances that African slaves in Brazil did, and it is a dance mixed with martial arts. It is kind of like a faster version of tai chi, set to chanting and drumming, and with two people dancing/fighting. It was interesting. My only complaint is that the group did just one 15-minute-long session, and after about 10 minutes the moves started to get repetitive. The group was very fluid – it seemed as if any member could jump in at any time and “tag” someone out, and then pick up the dance/fight.

Csardas Dance Company – A Hungarian dance troupe, this group was made up of a lot of very young people. They had traditional Hungarian costumes, which were very colorful (especially the women’s dresses). They did four dances, and the one that stood out to me was a bottle dance performed by four young women. It was nerve- wracking! They really did dance with bottles on their heads, and the dance was not short – it was probably five minutes long. There were some times during the dance where they took the bottles off from their heads (and carried them or put them on the floor to dance around them), but half or more of the time was spent with the bottles on their heads. It was great.

O’Hare School of Irish Dance – It seemed appropriate to end the evening with an Irish dance group, since it is March. The O’Hare school is well known in Northeast Ohio, and its students have done well in dance competitions nationally and in Ireland. On this evening, the group was made up of over 40 girls, ages 6 to 20. The more advanced dancers (about 20 or 25 of them) were wearing the colorful formal Irish dance dresses, and the beginner dancers wore t-shirts with shamrocks on them. They danced 5 dances in all, 2 of which were hard-shoe dances (the ones that Riverdance made famous).

So, for $10 each, Mer and I got to see 8 nations over 2 hours’ time. Not a bad return. The Civic did say they were planning on doing the Festival again next year, and I hope we can be there.

Last Thursday evening, Mer and I headed back to CVCA to go to a string orchestra concert. We both like music, but this was special – CVCA’s orchestra is really amazing, with a full sound and great arrangements of music. Also, Mer and I also each have 7-8 students in the group (out of about 40), and finally, this night, they were doing all movie music.

I like movie music for “classical” concerts for several reasons. I usually know the piece of work already, and they tend to be catchy, and they tend to be short (only a few minutes long). My mind can seriously wander during music that does not have lyrics, especially if it goes more than about 5 minutes. So, I was very excited about this concert.

The kids were all in costume to represent the various movie music they were playing, so we had lots of pirates, a Princess Leia, an Indiana Jones, a Darth Vader, a dinosaur, and so on. It was a lot of fun to see the students (and the teacher!) get into their costumes.

They played well-known movie music, and the composer John Williams was featured heavily (not surprising given his body of work). We heard well-done arrangements of music from Star Wars, Indiana Jones movies, Jurassic Park, The Incredibles, and from all three Pirates of the Carribean movies. The concert was an almost ideal length for a school night – just over an hour. Probably my favorite moment of the evening was when Erik, the orchestra teacher, came out dressed as Darth Vader to conduct the Star Wars theme music, which he did. With a light saber. I found it very amusing. It was a fun night.

Last Tuesday was Aunt Mary’s birthday, so Mer and I headed down to North Canton to celebrate with her in her new digs. We swung by Fisher’s (a grocery store) to pick up a cake, and then went to Aunt Mary’s. The moving-in transformation had continued even since just the previous Saturday. The house was more or less together – the only obvious thing left waiting was that the pictures needed to be hung.

Aunt Mary was in the mood for Chinese, so we headed over to a local Chinese restaurant and got take-out so we could eat at the new place. The food was excellent, cheap, and copious. I could not finish mine, and Mer had half of hers left as well, so we kept the leftovers for Wednesday’s supper. Yum. We finished the meal off with the quite delicious chocolate cake we had bought. A good meal indeed.

I then tried to be manly again, and tried to put up the new light fixture again. Aunt Mary had gone out and bought several longer all-thread screws, and so I gave it another go. Sadly, even though the all-thread looked the same, it would not screw in to the fixture – it seems the fixture uses metric screws and we had American screws. Light fixture – 2, Matt – 0. I’ll try again next time I am down that way.

Last Saturday was Mer’s day to plan, and it was very mellow. I got to run, watch a little of the Olympics, and then nap. In the early afternoon, we headed down to Aunt Mary’s new place to see the place and see if we could help a little.

Aunt Mary was about 75% moved in – it was amazing. She has some cool new furniture, and all of her older furniture was more or less in place. The smaller things, like dishes and pictures and such, were not yet in their places, but it was an impressive move-in for someone who had talked about eating in her new home on her birthday (the next Tuesday) with just a table and a few chairs.

Mer and I toured around and were very impressed. I hooked up Aunt Mary’s TV and video player in anticipation of her cable being hooked up in the following few days. Aunt Mary then mentioned she was going to replace the light in her bathrooms, and I figured I could help. It’s just three wires and a couple of screws – even I could do that!

I got the old light off the wall with no issues, and got the new light wired up and put the mounting posts in the wall socket. Up went the new light – just two screw heads to screw on and all would be well. Except for the tiny detail that the posts were not coming through the mounting holes. Down comes the light. The wires get undone. Screws get remounted. Wires get rewired. Up goes the light again. Still too short. After 20 minutes of futzing with a 10-minute job, I came to the conclusion that the mounting posts were too short. The electrical box was recessed in the wall, flush with the back of the drywall. The posts were the right length if the box had been mounted flush with the front of the drywall. Aunt Mary said she would try to get a longer all-thread screw for later in the week when Mer and I were coming back.

We left Aunt Mary’s new place, and Meredith started giving me directions. At first, we were headed in familiar directions – headed toward Hartville, then on to Alliance. But we kept going east through Alliance into territory I had not been in before. Then we started on short legs of road – three miles and then left, and then eight miles and then right. The roads started to look like good Maine roads – narrow, winding, hilly, and very scenic. This went on and on, and after about an hour and a half total, I found myself pulling into Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, home of Geneva College.

One of Mer’s former students now goes to Geneva College, and was in a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Mer had decided we should see it, and I am glad that we did – I have never read the play, and only seen it once a few years ago in Cleveland.

But first things first. Mer had assumed that a college town like Beaver Falls would have good places to eat kicking around. She was wrong. After cruising around town for about 15 minutes and finding 4 pizza places and a closed Dairy Queen, we settled on a pizza joint right across from the college. It turned out to be very good pizza, but we were still amazed that a town with a college in it was lacking in even one obvious sit-down restaurant (other than the Korean place we saw, but I was more hungry than adventurous that night).

We drove the short way to the theater, which was a small space made out of a converted bank building. The theater was still closed for another 15 minutes or so. The theater is next to a Sheetz gas station, so we popped over and got a donut and a candy bar. We ate them in the car while listening to The Best of Bert and I, a CD of Maine humor. It was a great way to spend the time.

Once the theater opened, we went in and were seated. The theater really was small, seating no more than 70. The stage was simple, made up of the stage and two elevated platforms. During the play, minimal props were moved on and off the stage (chairs, a desk, and so on). It kept the focus on the players.

The director’s notes were very useful. The director decided to stress the Christian aspects of Measure for Measure (Geneva is a Christian college). That works well – the title of the play itself is taken from a saying of Jesus. The director was looking at the extreme of justice without mercy (in the form of the harsh Angelo) and the extreme of withdrawal from society (in the form of the convent novice Isabella, and to a lesser extent the Duke himself). To stress the universality of the nature of sin and the need for both justice and mercy, the director chose to clothe the actors in costumes from many periods. An especially good choice was in the difficulty of clothing the actors playing two prostitutes in the play. Being at a Christian college, and directing a play focusing on lust, the director could not have the girls in scanty costumes. Instead, he had them in layers of tights and leather and gauze and even ballet skirts. They were heavily made up, and even though they were fully clothed, there was no doubt about how they made their living. It was well done.

A quick summary of the play – the Duke decides to leave town, leaving an adviser (Angelo) in charge with the expectation that he will clean up the city, which is very wild. Angelo is a just man, and decides to enforce a law on the books that makes it a death penalty crime to have sex outside of marriage. The example is to be made of Claudio, who got his lover pregnant. Claudio appeals to his sister, an acolyte nun, to appeal to the just but merciless Angelo. When Angelo sees her, he immediatly falls in lust with her, and tells her he will release her brother if she sleeps with him. Meanwhile, the Duke comes back disguised as a priest, who manipulates and advises the various people in the play. Many other things happen, but it all works out, and Angelo is brought to understand weakness and the need for justice and mercy and even forgiveness.

The play was well acted, especially in the leads of Isabella and the Duke. The actor put on one accent for the Duke, and another for when he was the priest, and he did it consistently, which made it work. The other actors did very well, although some of them needed to be a tad louder and a few of them needed to slow down when speaking their lines. Mer’s student had a minor role (the pregnant lover of Claudio), but there is a thrill to seeing someone on stage whom you actually know. It was much fun.

We got to catch up with Mer’s student and the student’s boyfriend (who played the Duke), and it was good to talk with them. They are good people. We then had to leave, to take the hour-and-a-half drive back home. Happily, the way home was all highway, so the directions were pretty easy.