Category: Theater

Tidy Tidbits: Lobster, Roe & James

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DINING OUT

Lazy Lobster

We’ve enjoyed food from the Lazy Lobster on Longboat Key several times, so it was a pleasure to dine again in their light-filled airy dining room.  There is outside seating too, but it was already taken on this bright Sunday afternoon.  Service was attentive, but leisurely given the crowd.  We, like others, took advantage of their early dining menu, which offered several salad and entrée choices at very good prices.  We were not disappointed.  The shrimp scampi over linguini was very tasty!  The shrimp were cooked just to doneness atop a generous bed of pasta seasoned with garlic, herbs, oil and diced tomato and onion. Their Caesar salad was also a pleasing rendition with enough garlic to make it sing, but not overblown.  My dining companions sampled and were delighted with the fish and chips, and we all tasted the key lime pie which was nicely tangy.

 OUTSTANDING THEATER

Roe, a drama by Lisa Loomer, and part of Asolo Repertory Theatre’s current season, is one of the most powerful plays I’ve ever seen!  By the end, I was exhausted.  Superbly acted and staged, it shows the history leading up to the 1970’s Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in Roe vs. Wade.  Lawyer Sarah Weddington, who argued the case at the tender age of 26, and single pregnant addicted 21-year old Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, are the central characters.  Act I ends with the historic ruling by the high court.  Act II shows how life plays out for the hapless Norma and her partner Connie and for Weddington up to the present day.   Operation Rescue is on the scene and their message is given air time as Norma changes her views and joins them.  Especially poignant is modern-day student Roxanne, pregnant, who outlines all the delays and obstacles she’s encountering in her quest for a legal abortion.

The real Sarah Weddington (Chambers Associate)

While I certainly knew some of the history behind the ruling, I hadn’t realized or remembered that it all started with a case in Texas.  This is hard-hitting, thought provoking drama and definitely worth seeing.  It runs through April 15.

 

RECENT READING:  CHANNELING HENRY JAMES

Mrs. Osmond by John Banville.  I loved this novel, but I’m not sure everyone would.  Using Henry James’, The Portrait of a Lady, as a jumping off point, Banville presents Isabel Archer Osmond roughly six years after her marriage to Gilbert Osmond.  The marriage is at the breaking point as Isabel has learned of the intimate relationship between Gilbert and Madame Merle and that Serena Merle is his daughter Pansy’s mother.  She also realizes she’s been duped and married for her fortune.  Disillusioned and fed up, Isabel flees Rome, against Gilbert’s wishes, to be at her dying cousin Ralph’s bedside.  When the novel opens, she is in London where she seeks out her old friend Harriet Stackpole, an acerbic journalist.  She also visits Miss Janeway, a suffragette, for her advice on what to do.  Recognizing that she needs to return to Osmond for a showdown of some sort, but first determining what her course of action will be, Isabel nonetheless lingers in London and Paris.  In Paris she runs into Madame Merle at a party and makes her a proposition.  Then she goes on to Florence to see her Aunt Lydia and discovers that Osmond is there too.  The Osmonds’ get-together is a tour de force as a newly self-assured Isabel flexes her figurative muscle and penetrates through Gilbert’s savoir faire.

Like James, Banville writes wonderfully long descriptive sentences about the weather, the interiors the characters inhabit, and the city streets.  John Bayley writing about a different novel by Banville even commented “that the author ‘does not quite coordinate pace with expectation in the reader’s mind; his felicities are apt to hold him up, so that the reader wants to read faster than the author is doing the writing.'”  Nonetheless, the language is marvelously rich, and action is at a minimum.  You could summarize the plot of Mrs. Osmond in about two sentences, yet that would be a shallow statement of Isabel’s growth in self-awareness and her efforts in resolving her dilemma.  Winding and deliberate though Banville’s prose is, there are flashes of wit, and the occasional directness in conversation that is contemporary in a way that the sedate, indirect, ambiguous James wasn’t.   (~JWFarrington)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note:  Header image from the New York Times and is attributed to 26Eugenides.  Mandala colored by the author.

Tidy Tidbits: The Local Scene

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This was a fun week filled with theater, opera, dinners out and in, and long conversations with old and new friends.

SMALL SCREEN

After war in early 20th century Morocco, I’ve taken up a Kiwi crime series.  The Brokenwood Mysteries (available on Acorn) are set on the North Island in a very small fictional town of the same name.  Detective Mike Shepherd is new to the area and has two junior colleagues, Kristin Sims and D.C. Breen.   Often turning up to provide background information and assistance is Jared Morehu, a young Maori man who doubles as a handyman.

Murder is on the docket whether it be drowning in a wine vat, dying on a golf course, collapsing on stage, or cast adrift on the sea.  With four ex-wives and a bit of the city around the edges, Shepherd is passionate about country music and always has a cassette tape or two to pop in when he hops into his car.  These episodes are long, an hour and a half each, but I’m caught up in the experience of life and death in this beautiful somewhat rural area.

NOT TO BE MISSED

Rhinoceros at the Asolo Theater.  Ionesco’s absurdist play, first presented in 1959, has a simple plot line, but raises challenging questions for our time.  How does one remain an individual and true to one’s values when everyone around you is joining the herd?  Creatively staged and wonderfully acted, this production is both humorous and thought-provoking.  We had the added pleasure of seeing this with good friends from Philadelphia.

As a graduate student, the Chief Penguin was a volunteer usher in Boston for five nights when the Metropolitan Opera came to town.  He credits that performance of Bellini’s Norma, starring Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne, with sparking his love of opera.  Earlier this week, we were at the Sarasota Opera’s production of Norma, and it was wonderful!  The singing is not quite the level of those divas, but it was very good, especially Joanna Parisi as Norma.  The staging was also nicely done.  There are more performances of both Norma and Rhinoceros.

 

PRE-THEATER DINING

Two of our favorites for pre-performance dining are Muse at the Ringling and Louie’s Modern in downtown Sarasota.  Muse is consistently very good for both lunch and dinner, and we’ve recently enjoyed both.  The quesadilla is a frequent choice of the C.P., and I’m partial to their salads, particularly the green salad topped with grilled chicken and their Caesar.  In the evening, entrees include trout, salmon, and short ribs plus they have crab cakes, always good, as an appetizer.  Service is pleasant and efficient almost to the point of briskness. But they do want to be sure you make it in time for your play!

It’s “the season” as they say, so Louie’s is again offering their Modern Theater Menu (3 courses) for $30.  It’s a good deal!  The portions are a nice size and for each course there is a choice among three options.  We’ve eaten this menu twice recently and the North Palm salad with grapefruit is a light starter, while the salmon with couscous and the chicken breast are both excellent.  The chicken is accompanied by a silky mascarpone polenta and root vegetables.  Dessert offerings include a warm chocolate cake and polenta cake with berries, both of which we’ve sampled.  Muse and Louie’s are both part of the Tableseide group so there can be a bit of overlap between the menus—one example being the delicious and attractively presented burrata with heirloom tomatoes on a coral Himalayan salt block.  

WHAT I’M READING

Ann Veronica by H.G. Wells. Watch for more about this 1909 novel about a modern young woman in a future blog.

 

 

 

Notes:  Brokenwood image from all3mediainternational.com, principals in Norma from mysuncoast.com, and burrata photo from sarasotafoodies.com.  Header photo ©JWFarrington.

Tidy Potpourri

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BIRDS

This week we’ve had several early morning low tides with a wide expanse of mud.  Perfect for the birds.  One day there was a flotilla of pelicans (white ones in a ring), the usual gulls, several groups of ibis with their heads and beaks mostly in the down position, and far out in the water a dense cluster of ducks.  Other days, I’ve watched a lone great white egret or two just standing still or a great blue heron stalking the water’s edge.  This morning it was a bright pink sherbet spoonbill by itself bobbing and darting its head into the water foraging for food.

(broadwayworld.com)

PROVOCATIVE COMEDY

Reactions to Asolo Theater’s Morning After Grace were mixed.  Some didn’t like it much and others didn’t need to see the lead character’s “naked ass.”  Actually, said actor was nicely toned.  All that aside, I liked this play and thought it was funny and very well done.  And it had a touching theme about all of us needing to be appreciated and loved, no matter our age.

It’s a three-character play with Angus, a new widower; Abigail, a grief counselor who has also been divorced for three years; and Ollie, a retired pro baseball player who also happens to be gay.  Their ages are 70, 62, and 68, respectively, which is key to the actions of the play. It’s a bit slow at the start with a few too many racy jokes, but these are probably needed to set up the extended dialogue that follows.  Overall, I recommend it!

 

WONDERFUL NOVEL

The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish

I loved this 500+ page novel!  And my librarian and archivist friends would find it fascinating too.  It’s about being a female academic in the 21st century, about doing scholarly research using primary documents, and about the Portuguese Jews who left that country for Amsterdam in the late 17th century, some of whom then emigrated to London.  One 17th century London resident is Ester, a young woman who, contrary to all the allowed roles for women, is tasked with being a scribe for a blind rabbi.  She is very smart and begins to question the rabbi’s views of the faith.

I admired the level of detail and the elegant and nuanced portrayal of the three main characters:  unmarried professor Helen Watt, soon to be retired; Aaron Levy, the somewhat conceited, but also confused doctoral student; and the accomplished and tortured Ester, who though ruled by her intellect, still contemplates passion and love.  There is a mystery to solve about Ester and it is this which drives Helen and Aaron’s laborious journey through a newly discovered trove of letters and manuscripts.

(miamibookfair.com)

In reading about Ms. Kadish, I discovered that she had an unusual speech impediment growing up that made it almost impossible for her to say certain letter combinations.  She learned to be very deliberate in her speech and to think ahead about different words to use other than the ones that would trip her up.  But, when she took pen to paper, she was liberated and could freely use any word she chose.  Perhaps that’s partly why this novel is very long.  I found it compelling, engrossing, and informative as I knew nothing about this aspect of Jewish history. (~JW Farrington)

 

Note:  Spoonbill header photo from carolinabirdclub.org

Tidy Tidbits: Viewing & Reading

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CULTURE NOTES

This month, the Sarasota cultural scene re-awakens with orchestra, opera, theater and choral performances.  Not as many as in the new year, but what I’d call a mini-season.  Earlier this week, we had the treat of a session on the costumes for the musical, Evita, being presented by our favorite Asolo Repertory Theater.  This costume brunch featured a Skye conversation with the show’s costume designer along with commentary from the head of the costume design shop and a key member of his team.  Not only are Eva’s gowns and dresses lovely, they are  flawlessly constructed so that quick costume changes can be carried off on stage by other members of the cast!  Very ingenious use of clips and magnets and the like!  Now, I doubly can’t wait to see it all.

We also went to see and hear the Sarasota Opera’s production of La Traviata.  The local maestro is a big fan of Verdi’s works, having presented all of them over the past 28 years, and this was a lovely evening.  The sets were gorgeous and the singing most enjoyable.  We thought that this Violetta was very good and the Alfredo, exceptionally so.  I like this opera because it has fewer characters than some and  one main plot line.  And we saw a performance by the San Francisco Opera a few years ago which meant I was familiar with it.

RECENT READING

Female Spies  

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.  Novels about young women during the two World Wars are plentiful these days and practically a genre in themselves.  This new novel, like so many others, has parallel story lines, but takes up the topic of female spies during WWI.  It’s 1947 and Charlie St. Clair, English, is unmarried and pregnant and under the influence of her mother who has her own plans for this unplanned pregnancy.  Charlie, with ideas of her own, is on a quest to find her cousin Rose who has not been heard from in three years.  A cryptic note takes her to London where she meets Eve, a ravaged and emotionally damaged former spy.

Charlie ends up traveling with Eve and Finn, Eve’s aide-de camp and general factotum, in her search for Rose.  The Alice Network of the title refers to a group of real female spies who worked for Britain under the direction of a young Scotsman.  The novel unfolds in alternating chapters between Charlie in 1947 and Eve in 1915.

It becomes a somewhat harrowing tale of danger and torture as Eve shares her experiences during both world wars, and you, the reader, come to understand why she drinks to oblivion and what she has suffered.  While Charlie yearns to find her cousin, Eve is out for revenge, and over time, the two quests become intertwined in ways neither could have imagined.

Eve is a brilliantly drawn character with her stammer and her insignificant appearance.  I enjoyed this novel, but, in some ways, found it more of a vehicle for relating the history of the Alice Network.  The characters Alice,  Violette, and Uncle Edward are based on real spies while the other three, Charlie, Eve, and Finn are the author’s creation.  To me, the pairing of Charlie and Finn was not a convincing one for the long haul.  (~JW Farrington)