Yesterday was my (38th) birthday, and it was also a Mer-in-charge date day, so she planned a nice day for me. We slept in (or at least as much as we could given having cats that want attention and walk on you to get it), and so we got up around 8:00. Mer announced we were going out to breakfast, and so we went out into a fairly solid (but fairly short-lived) snowstorm to go a few miles to the Hamburger Junction.
The Hamburger Junction is a mom-and-pop restaurant that is in a small mall plaza that we go by when we go get groceries or go to the bank (or go to get ice cream!). On their sign they offer “Vegas-style breakfast” and I had been mentioning how I wanted to try it “someday.” Well, Mer made sure someday was yesterday. For those who have been, the Hamburger Junction is fairly reminiscent of Sammy’s Restaurant in Michigan – it had a small counter area and some tables and booths and looked as if it could seat about 60 if packed out. They had a quite large breakfast menu, and offered many things in combination. As such, Mer was able to get a granola French toast, strawberry crepe, and silver-dollar pancake sampler, while I was able to get French toast, scrambled eggs, home fries, and bacon and sausage for mine (along with a pretty decent cup of hot chocolate). It is a good find.
We ran a few errands after breakfast and then spent a mellow late morning/early afternoon (I puttered and napped while Meredith exercised on the treadmill). Mer then told me we were going to a fancy restaurant and so I should get ready to go out, including wearing my spiffy double-breasted suit.
Once again, Mer has been an attentive listener. There is a nearby restaurant that I have been wanting to try but have not made it to because it is expensive. Only about two miles from our house in an oddly un-swank area is Russo’s Restaurant, a (naturally) Cajun/Italian place that is fairly upscale (at least for the Riordan household). I was able to get a very good gumbo and homemade pasta in the same meal, and you don’t get that everywhere! The service was quite good, but we felt very unhurried (the meal took almost two hours). The food was very fresh tasting, and my dessert (peanut butter pie) was drool-worthy. Mer took her chance on a not unpleasant but not really authentic gelato.
After we left the restaurant we went to Hudson. We had tickets to go to Actors’ Summit theater to see four short Chekhov plays, but we got there about an hour early. Since we had some time, I parked the car at the theater and announced we could window shop in the shopping district about a half mile away. Did I mention the temperature was in the low teens with a breeze? I have a very patient (and cold) wife.
We stopped by a high-end grocery store first, and while this may not seem like an exciting choice, the bakery was excellent and has made my list of special-treat locations. All of the cookies, cakes, breads, and pastries looked quite wonderful. We spent a good 15 minutes ooohing and ahhhing in the store. We then made brief excursions into a couple of clothing stores before heading (quite briskly in all senses of the word) back to the theater.
As I mentioned, we saw four short plays about love by Chekhov, as follows:
“The Cat” – a play about a Russian tomcat telling how hard he had to work for his brief encounters with female felines. This was a world premier for an English-language version of this play, so that was fun. This was probably the most natural sounding (least sounding like a translation) of the plays.
“The Retired Officer, or the Dimwit”: – a play about a retired officer who was looking for a wife who was plain in looks, not rich, and not too smart. One of our favorite actresses played a wonderfully grotesque matchmaker who described a dimwitted woman in great detail only to have her rejected. It was probably the funniest of the four plays. This was also an English-language premier.
“The Proposal” – a play about a man calling on his neighbor to ask for the neighbor’s daughter in marriage. The father agrees and the daughter comes down and the protagonist and his possible wife get into a long argument about a disputed piece of land. After a tremendous blow-up, the matter is cleared up when the daughter finds out a proposal of marriage may be at stake, and she calls the young man back to try again, only to get into an argument about who has the better hunting dog. This one had some brilliant physical comedy as the young man complained about more and more stress-related physical ailments, but was the play that sounded most as if in translation (the father of the woman kept using terms of endearment for the young man, such as “beloved” and “darling” and others that may have made sense in Russia in 1900 but sounded odd to us).
“The Bear” – a play about a woman who had been mourning for her dead husband for seven months when a rude man calls on her to collect some money that her late husband owed. The two fight verbally and then the man challenges the woman to a duel. When she accepts and she revels in the idea of shooting him, he falls madly in love with her, and he convinces her to love him back. This play had some wonderful lines and lots of elevated feeling, but still had odd moments of dialogue that may have been the result of translation.
Mer and I discussed the plays afterward, and we decided the plays could have used some tightening up. For example, after the long argument scene in “The Proposal,” where the couple argues for probably ten minutes about the piece of land, the young man is encouraged to come back and try again to woo the girl. They sit side by side and have a pleasant conversation that turns to hunting and to hunting dogs. The young woman comments that her dog is much better than the young man’s dog. If this had been an improv show, I would have yelled “Scene!” At this point the audience knows what is going to happen, and the implied forthcoming argument is wonderfully funny. In the play, however, Chekhov decides to show us the argument about the dogs in full, and it is almost identical to the argument about the land. It has the same gags, the same pacing, and even the father shows up to join in as he did in the first dispute. Even if you did decide to show both arguments, they both felt longer than they needed to be. The same reasons for both positions were repeated several times, and it made the scenes drag a bit. It is probably how real life arguments work (lots of repetition), but felt odd on stage.
The language sometimes felt very odd, and it was not clear if it was Chekhov himself or the effect of translation. A good example occurred several times in “The Bear.” The rude man who wants his money tells the audience several times, “I am so angry!” It felt a little odd, but talking directly to an audience can feel that way. What really stuck out was when he was in the middle of a sentence to the widow, and he suddenly proclaimed (as an aside), “I am so angry!” and then picked right back up where his sentence left off. We could see the man was angry – it was odd for him to stop his thought to tell us he was angry. Also, the porter for the widow exclaimed at one point as he ran off stage, “What has brought this disaster upon us?” That just felt artificial to both me and to Mer, and we have seen and studied a fair amount of theater. Again, it may have sounded fine in Russian, or it may have been normal 120 years ago. I’m just not sure.
Happily, the plays were still very entertaining. There was also a girl scout troop at the theater (to earn theater badges), so the actors answered questions after the play. I love talk-backs because I get to see how theater works and how individual shows and characters are moulded. One thing that was pointed out was something we had noticed and thought was very funny – a picture of the dead husband from “The Bear” was a photograph of the theater’s artistic director, Neil. That was a nice touch.
Food, sleep, theater – a good birthday for me.