COMEDY MID MARITAL DISCORD
Grand Horizons
The Asolo Theatre seldom fails to present wonderfully designed sets and compelling productions. Grand Horizons, a comedy from Broadway, showcases Nancy and Bill, a long-married couple. They have just moved to a retirement community when Nancy announces she wants a divorce. Initially, her statement gets almost no response from her husband. But when she gets in motion with her plans, their two sons become overly involved in trying to make things whole. The family members argue and fight over past and present slights. Later, Carla, Bill’s punkish “so-called girlfriend” shows up.
It’s a funny play, but not a perfect one. I thought some of it was overdone and that Nancy’s character was dated in terms of things she had never done or had, like her own bank account. Nevertheless, it’s good entertainment and it was well worth returning in person to the theater! The play runs through April 1.
PRE-THEATER DINING
Ringling Grillroom
Formerly known as Muse, this restaurant in the visitor’s pavilion at the Ringling Museum of Art, has new owners, a new menu, and a lighter brighter interior. We dined here before seeing Grand Horizons, and the food was very good, a notch or two above what we’d experienced under the old regime.
We shared the Sicilian calamari appetizer, lightly battered and very tasty. The Chief Penguin enjoyed a Caesar salad along with the ahi tuna poke appetizer. I sampled the bamboo steamed trigger fish which came on a bed of basmati rice with spinach and artichokes. The fish was delicate and lovely. And, because I just couldn’t resist, we ordered a slice of key lime pie to end the meal. Overall, we were pleased and satisfied. That means more meals here in the future!
BOOK OF THE WEEK
Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith
I don’t often read books of letters, but my friend Jill, who also spends time in Maine, gave me this book. It’s a delightful exchange of views between two writers from 1956 to 1967. Neither E. B. White nor Edmund Ware Smith was a native Mainer; they both moved there in middle age. Both loved the outdoors and were natural storytellers.
Their letters share the details of daily life in the country and dealing with publishers and editors, along with their personal aches and pains. After a few missives, they graduated from the formal, “Dear Mr. “, to addressing each other as Whitey and Smitty. The volume also includes a pair of essays by each of them; one by E.B. White is “The Hen: An Appreciation,” while “The Outermost Henhouse” is by Edmund Smith.
My Maine friends will find it noteworthy that this trove of letters was only recently unearthed from a bank vault in Damariscotta. In 1980, E. B. White gave the letters to the Skidompha Public Library there after the death of Smith’s widow. Smith and his wife had made their home in Damariscotta. The library stored the correspondence at the bank for safe keeping, but it was subsequently forgotten.
When we visit Maine each summer, we are in and out of Damariscotta and always drive or walk by this library. I’ve long been intrigued by its unusual name, and this year I will go inside.
Note: Header photo is the dining space at the Ringling Grillroom (heraldtribune.com).
