Last Saturday was “my” day, and it was quite mellow, with a long run in the morning and then my taking a nap while Mer got groceries. We puttered around home until evening, when we headed to Cleveland; I’m glad we left early, because Cleveland has the main highway we usually take closed for construction, and the detour signs were unhelpfully spaced far apart. We did eventually get to Playhouse Square, but it was about 25 minutes later than we normally would have gotten there.

Playhouse Square is a complex of theaters, and the place was packed. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat was playing in another theater, and it must have been quite the draw. We were there to see C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce as a play, and our theater was about 90% sold out. The play was being done by The Fellowship for the Performing Arts, the same group who did a great job of staging The Screwtape Letters. The Great Divorce, which is a fictional account of a bus ride from Hell to the gates of Heaven, seemed to me like a difficult book to stage, so I was looking forward to it.

The production was fantastic. Three actors played nineteen different roles, including all three at various times playing the narrator , who was portrayed as C.S. Lewis himself. Each actor made each character different with different styles of speaking, body language, and such. It was very well done. Many of the most difficult transitions in the play (like the bus ride) were done abstractly with projections and lighting. It worked well and did not seem showy to me.

The play ran about ninety minutes with no intermission, and I never got restless. Mer and I lucked into front row seats through a quirk of Ticketmaster – the service would not let people break up a grouping of three seats in the front row for some reason, but a service representative at Playhouse Square was quite happy to do so when I called in my order. Hooray for older technology! Anyway, the play paced itself well, and we had great seats. We both came away form the play quite impressed.

There was a short talk-back after the show from Max Maclean, the producer of the play. I also had a very brief chat with the guy who ran lights and projections for the show, so we got to find out a little bit about the behind the scenes. Max’s talk conveyed how difficult the process of staging was, as it sounds as if it took about two years and several test productions to get the play cut down to where it played well to audiences. Good stuff.

Last Friday was an entertainment double-header at CVCA – I had a Royal Fools improv show at 6:30, which was followed by the CVCA Talent Show at 8:00. This is the second year in a row we have teamed up with the Talent Show, and while it forces our improv show to be shorter (about an hour instead of about an hour and twenty minutes), I think it is worth it in getting to perform for the bigger crowd that comes early for the talent show; we usually play for 100-150 people, and we played to well over 200 last Friday.

I never remember shows very well afterwards – I am thinking a lot during shows about what needs to happen. I do know we did not “tank” any games we did, and the audience reaction was excellent. Allie Kirk, a CVCA alum, came back from Chicago just for the show, and she added much fun in that she can play improvisational piano, which opened up several musical games for us.

The talent show is a fundraiser for the CVCA service club, Diakonos. Every year, Diakonos students stay at CVCA during spring break, and they go out into the local community to serve at several locations around NE Ohio. The spring break crew is usually 30 or more students, so it costs some money to feed the group and for gas for transportation, and the talent show tends to be an excellent way to raise funds.

The talent was quite good this year. I believe this is the first year that the group held auditions, and it showed. While there was some variation in the quality of acts, there were no bad acts, and the competition in the top half of the field was quite tight. There were singing acts and guitar players, a couple of dance numbers, some piano players, a “Who’s on First?” reenactment, a very talented beat-boxer, a jump rope dancer, and more. Meredith was one of three judges, and she said it was quite difficult to sort out the winners.

After the talent show, which was over a little after 10:00, we headed over to Friday’s with our friend Dubbs for a light supper and dessert. It was a pretty nice way to end an evening of entertainment.

Last Thursday, Mer and I had our friend and colleague Brandon over for supper, which was a quick bite of homemade pizza. We then jumped in the car and headed up to the Hanna Theater in the Cleveland Playhouse complex in Cleveland. We were there to see the comedy/thriller Deathtrap, but we had the added bonus of being there on an evening where there was a pre-show talk with one of the five actors. Brandon is heavily involved in the (CVCA) Royal Theater, so he was eager to hear from a cast member, and both Mer and I enjoy that sort of thing, so we made a point to get there as close to 6:30 as we could to hear the talk (the show itself was at 7:30).

The talk was excellent. The actress was open and friendly, and we got front-row seats (we have never quite figured out why people avoid front seats). Mostly, the questions were asked by a member of the Hanna Theater staff, but some audience questions were asked as well. I remember we found out the Hanna teams with theaters in a couple different states, so this woman’s home theater is in Idaho, and Deathtrap will be playing there this summer. She had to try to learn a Dutch accent for her role, and she said it was quite difficult. She also said the rehearsal time was relatively short, so she tried to have her lines memorized by the time rehearsals started.

After the talk, we found our seats, and the play started at 7:30. The set was extensive and detailed. The entire play takes place in one large lodge-style room, so the set did not have to be mobile at all. The set was one large room, but had a hallway at the back, a staircase, a sliding glass door, giant barn-style doors, and lots of old weapons mounted on the walls as decor. The room serves as the writing room of a murder-thriller playwright, and he has had a multi-year drought from being able to write anything. He married rich, but still they are almost out of money when he gets a manuscript from a young playwright, and the play is excellent. The older playwright invites the younger one to come up to his house for the evening so they can edit the script, and he contemplates murdering the young man and stealing the script. What unfolds after that is an amazing series of twists and turns, with some humor sprinkled in along the way. I won’t ruin the ending, or even the middle of the first act. As I said, there were a ton of twists.

The acting was excellent, as I have come to expect from Great Lakes Theater. Our seats were quite good, although there really are no bad seats in the Hanna theater. We did not get home and to bed until about 11:00, but it was a fun evening out with a good friend, and so was quite worth getting a tad short-changed on sleep.

Saturday was Mer’s day, and she had a mellow and puttering day planned. That worked well, as I was able to go running 13 miles in the morning with one of my new running partners, LT Newland, who teaches Bible at CVCA. I am helping him to train for the Cleveland Marathon, along with another colleague, Jordan Samsonas, who teaches social studies. It has been very good to have running partners, as this winter has been snowy and very cold, which usually means I would have a hard time getting out to run; with partners, there is someone counting on you running, so I have gotten out pretty regularly this winter.

Happy, Mer slept until I was done running, around 10:00. It had been weeks since she had had a chance to sleep in, so that was a good thing. Mer went to get groceries while I took a nap, and we had a mellow day. Mer did have evening plans, though, and around 7:15 we headed down to Akron to Actors’ Summit Theater, to see their production of Bus Stop.

On the whole, I liked Bus Stop. It was really well acted, with eight actors, all of whom did a great job. My only reservation about the evening was Bus Stop was billed as a comedy, and it struck me more as a drama with some comic moments. It may just be a time issue – the play was written in 1955, and it may have aged a bit. The play explored various forms of loneliness, and that was compelling. The characters had well-defined personalities and had strong relationships on stage. I had not seen any of the actors in the play before at Actors’ Summit, but I had seen one of them at another venue. If anything had aged, it was some of the end results of the interactions, two especially. The main plot line is a cowboy wants to marry a dancing girl he loves, but she does not want to marry him. It is awfully close to a kidnapping, and she comes around in the end, but that felt a bit hollow to me. The other plot line that I felt had aged a bit was one where an older professor clearly wanted to sleep with a high school girl who was not aware of his intentions. He does not carry through with his plan after he feels some remorse, and that is well. The part that felt odd to me was that after the professor left and things were explained to the girl, she felt a little scared, but mostly seemed flattered that a man would want to sleep with her. It had been established that she was ignored by boys at school, but it still felt more than a little creepy.

Happily, those two issues aside, the fine acting carried the day and I had a good time.

Sunday was Aunt Mary’s 75th birthday, and Mer’s dad, Dale, thought we should celebrate with some style. I suggested taking Aunt Mary out to the fanciest Italian restaurant I know in the area, Gervasi’s Bistro in North Canton. It is a beautiful old barn that has been converted into a winery and restaurant, and the food is excellent. Mer, Dale, Carlene and I picked Aunt Mary up and made the short trip to the Bistro. As expected, the food was excellent and the meal was leisurely. We had a good time, and headed home for a food-induced nap (at least for me).