Last Saturday (the 16th), Mer had us up early, and in the car by a little after 8:00. We headed south to the mysterious and nebulous city of Green (which is basically North Canton, but with no well-defined downtown), and went to Boettler Park. To my delight, we were there to cheer on CVCA’s cross country teams for the PAC (our sports conference) championship race.

I had run cross country in high school, albeit without much acclaim, but I have continued running my whole adult life, so I am fond of the cross country teams. In ten years at CVCA, I had never made it to a race because CVCA does not have a home course. So, I was pretty excited.

We got to cheer on our successful and huge (30-member) girls’ team first. Our girls’ cross country team is often discussed as a potential state-caliber team, having won the state title in the past, and we were pretty well expected to win the PAC. Still, you have to run the race, and the course was such that Mer and I could see the start, somewhere around half-way, and the finish, all with just a short walk. Our girls looked very strong running, and one of our girls won the race in about 20 minutes. We had the top five girls all finish in the top ten slots, so we did win the PAC. As fun as it was to see the girls win convincingly, it was great to see the rest of the team come in. The girls who had already finished cheered for those still finishing, and it was pretty clear that CVCA had the largest fan support for the girls’ race (it evened out some for the boys’ race).

The boys’ race was fun to watch too – it was a more competitive field, but our boys ran hard and won. I know a couple of the guys on the team, so it was good to be able to pull for them. One of the things I love about running is that you can run against yourself. So, even though only the top five finishers count for a team, you can still run a great race if you get a personal best time. Some of the guys did just that, and that was encouraging to see.

After the race, Mer took me to brunch at the Waffle House. We have a song by David Wilcox about the Waffle House that we have had for years, but we had never eaten at the chain. Mer decided to change that. We both got a good breakfast after a short wait, and the bill was really cheap. I recommend it.

Since we were in the Canton area, Mer wanted to go out for dessert at Taggart’s ice cream. We both got ice cream pie with lots of toppings to pour over the pie (the toppings, like hot fudge, come in separate containers for you to put on the ice cream). That really hit the spot.

We had a mellow afternoon, and then Mer took me to Cleveland, to the Cleveland Playhouse. One of the theaters there was hosting a two-night run of a stage adaptation of CS Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. In the book, which the play closely followed, a senior demon, Screwtape, writes letters to his younger nephew, Wormwood, giving him advice on how to tempt Wormwood’s human in order to try to keep him away from “the enemy” (God). It is a very insightful and, at times, blunt book that calls Christians on the carpet to examine how they live and what they believe. I am very fond of the book, and so I was looking forward to the play.

We had trouble getting there at first. We have never had trouble with parking at Playhouse Square before, but there were cars everywhere this night. We finally found parking in back of the theater, in a pay-lot. As best as I could gather, Screwtape was nearly sold out, and then one of the other bigger theaters was hosting Cedric the Entertainer. It was packed.

We got to the theater on time (after I got a quick look at Melody, a sculpture of a fiddle player that I love that is at Playhouse Square); in fact, for whatever reason, the doors were not open yet. While we were waiting, Mer spotted our colleague Ray and his wife Shelly, so we went over and chatted with them for a bit. They told us another of our colleagues, Cindy, was there as well. We did see Cindy across the theater, but did not get to say hello to her.

The theater was very full, and we got to chat with the people sitting next to us. They had driven two hours from Pennsylvania, and they had gone to a church retreat near where we used to live that morning, so it sounded as if they had had a full day.

The production itself was excellent. It was a two-person show. There was Screwtape, who dictated his letters to his secretary, Toadpipe. Toadpipe was played by a young woman dressed as a demon, in a suit covered with scales and bones and hair, but one that was spandex-based so she could move well. It became immediately clear she was a dancer; she sprawled out all over the place while taking letters. She wrote them from sitting on the back of the chair, on the desk, on a ladder, on a footstool, and more. She also got to impersonate humans whenever Screwtape started talking about types of humans, like how the demons influenced taste in women over the years; to illustrate this, the actress played exaggerated types of the women Screwtape described. It was a very effective way of staging the letters.

Screwtape himself was played by a deep-voiced actor who took on the tough job of basically having a series of monologues for an hour and twenty minutes. He played it magnificently. He used a wide variety of emotions, lots of asides, and some snide comments, and he moved around the stage a lot to add interest to the words he was dictating. Having his fellow actor on stage to add some comic moments helped as well, and, at least for me, the play never dragged, and I never lost interest.

The set was basic but effective. There was an easy chair with a footstool, a desk, and a couple of ladders leading up and down. Letters were sent or received by a box connected to a tube halfway up one ladder. The entire set was backed by a backdrop made of human skulls and bones, which was at once creepy without being distracting.

I really enjoyed the play, and it was an excellent adaptation of the novel. It is traveling around the country and is also based in New York for a few months. If you get a chance to see it, I recommend it. It is a thought-provoking book and play.