Sorry for the prolonged absence. We are just about to finish up our third week of school, and the back-to-school time has been busy enough that I ignored ye olde blog for too long. On the up side, blog-wise, Mer and I have been so busy that we have not done too much, so I’m really only three or four entries behind.

Thursday, August 19th
On this Thursday, we cheated the weekend of our first week back to school by going out on a Thursday (a school night!). Mer and I collected our friend and colleague Brandon at school, and we headed northward to an Italian restaurant named Jimmy Dadonna’s. We were to meet Brandon’s wife, Jen, there and have supper before heading the rest of the way to Cleveland to see the musical The Scarlet Pimpernel. Jen had to work a tad late, but met us at the restaurant just a few minutes after we sat down. We had a really good meal (the rolls there are drool-worthy) and a great time talking. The service was leisurely, but we did not mind since the play was only 30 minutes away and we had almost 50 minutes to get there by the time dinner was over.

Then Mer asked me if I was sure that the play was at Playhouse Square in Cleveland. I said I had checked a couple of times, but she had the tickets and could check them. She did, and found out that the play was actually at the Cleveland Playhouse. Brandon quickly looked up the directions on his iPhone and found out that we were 45 minutes away. Not good. Things were going to be very tight.

Jen gave us her iPhone so we could stay in touch, and we got in our car and Jen and Brandon got in their car. Somehow, our car ended up in front, but I knew how to get to the highway, so I figured that would be okay. That is, until I got to the highway and the only ramp sent us east and we needed to go west. We quickly called Jen and we decided to keep going on Riverside Road, which is a major road that we knew eventually led to the highway. Except we did not know that Riverside was under construction and was stop-and-go for about 2-3 miles. Mer and I gave up on making the play on time since we were now less than 30 minutes to curtain, and we just hoped we might get there for intermission. During this time, Brandon’s phone ran out of battery, so we could not call him anymore. Happily, Mer figured out how to use the iPhone to find directions to the Cleveland Playhouse on their website, so we had a way to go if we could get there.

Riverside Road is normally four lanes, and it was down to two lanes. We were traveling in the wrong lane (the one normally for oncoming traffic), and were separated from the normal lanes by orange barrels. We came to a major intersection, and the sun was in my eyes, but I could see the barrels continued, so I kept on going. After a few seconds, Mer pointed out (rather calmly, I thought) that the cars a little ways ahead of us were coming at us. I concurred, and quickly made a three-point turn in the middle of the road, with Brandon doing the same right behind me. Apparently, at the major intersection, our lanes went back to normal, but I hadn’t seen that because of the sun.

I got back to the major intersection and turned left with the idea of turning around and continuing along the correct side of Riverside. While waiting for oncoming traffic to clear so I could turn in to a parking lot, I saw a green highway sign in the distance. I figured we were going to be late anyway, so I decided to chance it. It turned out to be an on-ramp for the highway we needed, so we got on it. As I approached the highway at 65 mph, the car in the lane I needed to get into did not slow down or move over, and I think he even sped up. I had to slow down and ride in the break-down lane for a few seconds. In my very frazzled, we-are-late and I-almost-got-us-killed and I-just-want-to-merge state, I was not on my best game, so to speak. I’m afraid when I saw that the car ahead of me had a Massachusetts license plate, I reacted poorly, in Maine fashion, by calling the driver a nasty name that starts with the state and ends with “hole.” I felt terrible immediatly, but Mer found it rather amusing.

Anyway, we got on all the connecting highways and onto the regular Cleveland roads without further incident. Somehow, by the grace of God having mercy on idiot me, and with Mer’s good directions from the website, we actually made it to the theater with about five minutes to spare. It took all of those minutes to relax after that ride.

The Cleveland Playhouse is a major theater, all made of brick and looking like a cross between a cathedral and a castle, including a tower. It is a pleasing building. It had a huge mainstage, but our production of The Scarlet Pimpernel was in a small theater in one wing of the building. I’m guessing the theater could hold maybe about 150 people. The stage was long and narrow, being maybe 30 feet wide and maybe 60 feet long, with a huge ceiling that turned out to be a very useful fly space for the simple scenery that was used.

This production of Pimpernel was being produced by Mercury Summer Stock, which is an amateur acting company with the mission to keep talented artists in Cleveland. They did very well for themselves this night. The stage was mostly bare, with the five or six musicians at the back of the stage. The actors, when not involved in the action, usually sat on chairs on the sides on the stage. The scene was set by use of simple props like a dressing privacy screen for a dressing room or a couch for a den, and France was signified by a guillotine that was dropped from the fly space above. The orchestra was quite good, and did a flawless job all night.

I was not sure about the main leads at first. The hero, Percy, was fairly short and a little thin. He quickly won me over with his acting and charm, though. He even stayed in character when a front-row audience member said the last rhyming word to a song; Percy just waggled his finger at the man in a foppish way, and told him, “Not yet!” It was a fine moment.

The villain of the play did a nice job of always being unpleasant. He never smiled and always wore a scowl on his face. He was very tall, thin, and dark, and it worked.

The love interest in the story, Marguerite, also won me over after my initial skepticism. I’m afraid I was originally swayed by looks – the actress was of Asian decent, so it was a little hard to imagine her as an 18th century  French actress. Still, after a few minutes, I forgot about that, and she did a very good job.

The actors did very well, and the major difference I could see (hear) in this production from the professional production I saw was two-fold: the actors in this version could not sing so loudly as the professionals, and for some of the more difficult notes, the actors in this version had to “slide” into them to hit them. It did not detract from the music at all – just a point of interest for me.

Percy and his friends all pretend to be fops, or men more concerned with fashion and fine living than anything else. This is to deflect any suspicion from them that they might be the Scarlet Pimpernel and his men. This is the basis for much of the play’s humor, including a wonderful scene where all the men come out dressed to the nines in very tacky clothes, and do a long song-and-dance number about how men were created by God to be the pretty ones of our race. This production played this scene up, and it was great.

This play is one of Brandon’s favorites, and Jen had never seen it before. Mer and I love the music and the play,  and all of us agreed it was worth the effort to get to see it.