Last Saturday was a date day for me and Mer. We listened to a very excellent Wait Wait, although we listened separately because Mer was coming back from singing practice at church and I was at home. We did laugh about the show once Mer got home. We made some lunch, and then watched a movie (Bon Voyage) about a man in WW2-era France who was framed for murder. It had romance, intrigue, Nazis, and heavy water. What was there not to like?
After the film, we jumped in the car to go to an early supper at Olive Garden, where we had a gift certificate we could use. We were fairly surprised that when we showed up at 5:00, there was a 45-minute wait for a table! I guess restaurants on Saturdays are recession-proof. We put our names in and wandered over to Borders for 20 minutes or so. We did finally get a table and ate too much good Italian food.
When we finally left the restaurant (around 7:00 or so), we went straight to Actors’ Summit to see Nixon’s Nixon, and play about, well, Nixon. The play was a fictionalized account of the meeting between Nixon and Kissinger the night before Nixon resigned. I really liked this play. I did not know too much about either Nixon or Kissinger, and although the play was fiction, the playwright worked many real situations into the play as Kissinger and Nixon talked. There was talk about the Soviet Union, and Israel, and China. There was a fair amount of cursing going on, but we have lots of tape of Nixon swearing a lot – the director said the language was actually toned down from the White House tapes.
The actors put on just enough Nixon-esque and Kissinger-esque accents to make the roles distinctive. The actor playing Kissinger said that Kissinger is so monotone that if he had tried to play Kissinger accurately he would never be heard by the audience. The play focused on Nixon and Kissinger both trying to figure out how to protect their legacy in history books. There are many funny moments with Nixon insisting they role play some of Nixon’s greatest moments, so he has Kissinger play Mao, and the Russian premier and Golda (the president of Israel). It is a fine play, and Mer and I both like getting our history on the stage – it is most entertaining.