Saturday was a very nice day. I slept in until about 8:00, and then I went down in the Valley to the Towpath Trail. It was early yet, and the trail had only a few wildlife photographers on it. I had a very solid-feeling 33-minute run. Since I had been struggling with running the previous week, this run made me quite happy.

I went home and cleaned myself up. Mer and I had a light breakfast about 9:00 while we watched an episode of the second-Doctor Doctor Who. We then got dressed up and headed up to Cleveland (the Big City) to go to Playhouse Square to see the Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of All’s Well That End’s Well.

I knew nothing about this play. It is one of the “problem comedies” of Shakespeare’s. The main problem is that it has the form of a comedy (marriages at the end), but the leading man is a total jerk. The main lady wins the right to marry the man (by curing the king of a disease), but he despises her (in a mean and cruel fashion) and flees to the wars. There, he falls in lust with an Italian woman. The main lady finds out about this, and arranges to trick the man into thinking he is sleeping with the Italian, but he is really sleeping with his wife. Eventually, she confronts her husband with the proofs that he required, and he decides he loves her, and all’s well.

This play is rarely performed, which is a shame. There are some great lines, and the main plot is arresting, and the comic relief is very good. The main lady, Helena, is one of the great leading lady parts for Shakespeare. The problem is that modern audiences really hate that a smart and capable woman could keep throwing herself at a total loser of a man. Meredith’s father, a retired English professor, used this play to model the love Jesus has for the lost – that he pursues those who hate him and want nothing to do with him. That interpretation usually caught the students off guard, even at the Christian college Dale taught at. I think it works very well. I am very glad to have had the chance to see this play.

On the way home, I took my lovely wife to an upscale Italian restaurant, Vaccaro’s Trattoria. We are both fond of this restaurant, but only go on special occasions since it is easy to run up a $50 bill (even without alcohol). We both got daring and decided to get a spicy pizza. It turned out to be a bad choice for me – it was too hot for my refined Mainer tastes. Mer ended up with a lot of pizza! We both got desserts – mine was a really good triple chocolate torte.

After the leisurely one-and-a-half-hour meal, we headed home, where we watched another 25-minute Doctor Who episode, and then we finished the evening up by listening to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on the computer. What a very nice day!