Last Saturday (the 30th) was Mer’s day, and what a day she had planned!
I went running in the morning, and then showered and got ready. We headed up to Hudson, where we split up. Mer went to Panera for lunch, where by coincidence she met up with Terri, one of CVCA’s front office receptionists. Terri was with a friend and they invited Mer to join them to play Snatch-it, a scrabble-like word game where you can steal other people’s words. So, even though I had left Mer by herself, she had a very entertaining time.
Meanwhile, I went across the street to Chipotle. I was meeting some of the guys from my CVCA Connections group. CVCA started a program this year where all faculty and some staff (those who volunteered to do so) get connected with a group of 8-12 students, and we all meet together for 43 minutes once/week. The idea is to build a relationship with the students so that the students feel they have an adult at CVCA whom they can go to for help. Anyway, I have a group of 10 eleventh-grade guys, and we decided we should get together to eat once in awhile. One of the guys had picked Chipotle, so that is where we went.
It was a good time. Only four of the ten guys showed up, but that is okay – it was always optional. I had a good time talking with the guys, especially finding out more about the Norwegian exchange student in my group. He told us about Norway and the food and where he lived and so on. I knew that Mer wanted us in Cleveland by 3:00 or so, so I had to cut the lunch a little short; we still managed to visit together for a little over an hour. I went back across the street to pick up Mer, and discovered that she was still in the middle of a game of Snatch-it. I saw David, another CVCA teacher, in line for food, so I went over and chatted with him while Mer finished up her game.
We then headed northward to Cleveland. We have taken good advantage of out new location in Cuyahoga Falls, and we have probably been to Cleveland more in the last six months than all the times we went during the six years we lived in New Baltimore. It is one of many reasons we like living where we do.
Mer took us to the Great Lakes Theater Company, in the Playhouse Square complex. We were there to see Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. A group of CVCA students had gone to see the play, and Mer did not want them to have seen a play she had not; more importantly, she had never seen An Ideal Husband performed live before, and this was the closing performance. I was excited to see the play because I am a big fan of Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, so I was looking forward to seeing another play by him.
The set was very simple – some columns and multiple tiers of platforms. It was very elegantly done, since all the major players in the play are rich, but it was very open so that furniture could be moved around to create different spaces. It also allowed for good sight lines since there were very few obstructions.
The actors in the play were the same actors we had seen a few weeks ago in Othello; the two plays were being done in repertory (both at the same time with most of the same actors). It was very interesting to see the actors from a major tragedy play in a major comedy. The villain of Othello, Iago, played the funniest character in An Ideal Husband, and it is to his credit that he was to pull both of them off.
The first act of the play surprised me – it still had funny moments, but was very serious. The main character of the play has one dark secret from his past that would threaten his highly successful political career and his marriage to a morally upright woman whom he adores. Another woman finds out and attempts to bribe the man, and the play unfolds around this plot. It is pretty serious stuff on the whole, with bits of very funny Wilde moments scattered throughout. I had expected a non-stop romp like Earnest. After the intermission, the play gets much much funnier. The first act sets up the dramatic tension, and Wilde gets lots of use and laughs out of the good-for-nothing, but very loyal and intelligent, friend of the man being bribed. It is very funny stuff.
The play ends well (it is a comedy, after all), and the production was excellent. The play was pretty long, and it was after 5:30 when we got out. Mer wanted me to swing by another theater in eastern Cleveland, the Cleveland Playhouse. She wanted to see if they had tickets available for The Kite Runner. She had tried to get tickets online without success, but she wanted to see if they had any available from cancellations or the like. It turns out there were some excellent tickets available, so she got those, and we headed off for dinner in Cleveland’s small but excellent Little Italy.
After having some trouble finding parking, we then had some trouble picking out a restaurant. We wandered up one side of the street and back down the other. Surprisingly, only about half the restaurants had their menus posted where you could see them. We finally found a small restaurant that I liked the look of – it looked like the real thing, and it turns out it was. Our server was pretty clearly a woman from the Old Country, and Mer and I both ordered pizzas that were very good (although in a nod to the American consumer, they were not the typical very-thin Italian pizza).
We then headed up the street for dessert at a place that had advertised good hot chocolate. Sadly, the person who normally runs the dessert bar in what is otherwise a gallery was not there. So, we’ll have to try that place another time, especially where the woman in the store said it would take ten minutes to “melt the chocolate.” That sounds like my kind of place. She also gave us two small pieces of fudge for free for the inconvenience, which was kind of her. We headed down the street and stopped in at a bakery. They had fresh cannoli that they filled right there as you waited. We each got a chocolate-covered shell, which they filled with fresh cream. It was delicious and seemed a fittingly authentic dessert to have in Little Italy.
We then headed back to the theater. Mer attended the pre-show talk, since she is going to teach The Kite Runner to her seniors this year. Mer asked me not to go to the talk since I had not read the book that the play was based on; we both value “pure viewings” of plays or movies if we have not read the book or play, so I agreed to skip the pre-show talk.
For those not familiar with it, The Kite Runner is a book (and now a play and movie) about a boy who grows up in Afghanistan. After the Soviets invade, he gets out with his family and moves to San Fransisco, but the events of his childhood keep haunting him, and he has to go back to Afghanistan for various reasons I won’t give away. The title refers to a popular Afghan sport – kite fighting. People fly kites and try to cut the strings of other kites until there is only one kite left. When a kite string is cut, it drifts to the ground, and becomes a trophy. The other boys who chase these kites down are called kite runners. The main character of the book/play has a servant boy about his age, and they have an interesting and very complex relationship that is the foundation of the play. It was gripping to see all of these things unfold, and I strongly recommend the play (and probably the book, since Mer says it is even better).
The actors of the play did a great job. The boys of the play were played by young men in late high school or early college, but they pulled off playing boys of about twelve very well through their body language. The play was also helped out greatly by the presence of the main character’s adult self being on stage as a narrator and observer. It worked really well and did not seem artificial.
The set was open, except for a large wall at the back of the stage that was used to climb on as trees or walls or whatever was needed. The play had commissioned an Afghan man who played indigenous drums to play the drums as background rhythms at key moments, and like a good movie soundtrack, it was there and added to the tension without my consciously realizing it was there.
The Kite Runner was also a long play, and we did not get home until almost midnight. It had been a long day, but a good one. I think that was the first time we had seen two plays in one day since our honeymoon, when we saw eight plays in five days. It was an extravagant date day that Mer had planned, and I appreciated it.