Sean's Cultural Tour of Ohio - Day 1

My pal Sean arrived from Portland last night. This is her first visit to the Midwest. We stayed up late talking, eating a selection of cheeses and crackers and having a few glasses of wine.

We went to bed, and Sean read for awhile from her latest book, Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. And she taught me a new word - AMBIGRAM, which while not being terribly useful, sure is fun to say and to know. And it gives you a little mental gymnastics while trying to work it into a conversation.

In the morning, we went to Coventry in Cleveland Heights and had brunch at Tommy's, a well-respected mainly vegetarian restaurant. It was quite nice, and I was particularly impressed by the photographs on display, but I was not able to get the name of the photographer to share with you.

After brunch, we strolled up and down Coventry and, of course, stopped in to the BIG FUN store, which is famous for being jammed from corner to corner, floor to ceiling with every bit of ephemera, kitsch and toy from your childhood.Always a good time at the BIG FUN store.

We headed downtown to Playhouse Square, but as we were a bit early, we found a parking lot that overlooked Lake Erie and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Sean was pretty impressed by the size of the lake, and I told her about my self-induced childhood delusions that if I looked really, really hard across the lake, I could see Canadians. We tried, but even on a clear day, you just can't see Canada from there.

We got to Playhouse Square and proceeded to the adjacent Starbuck's for San Pellegrino's and to wait for Heather, who was joining us. We were seeing The Great Lakes Theatre Festival's The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Abridged. As we were finishing our beverages, a lavish horse-drawn carriage came down Euclid Avenue, with Queen Elizabeth. Not the current QE II, but THE Queen Elizabeth. Members of the troupe were outside the theatre on the sidewalk in costume (codpieces, tights and high top tennis shoes) and this had all of the earmarks of a "happening", so we quickly crossed the street to catch some of this pre-show excitement. What was best about this little event was the Queen was fairly obviously, in drag - a REAL drag queen, if you will. Anyway, the Queen officially opened the theatre, and we were allowed in.

The show is crazy - all of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets in two hours, performed by three male performers. The actors, Lynn Robert Berg, M.A. Taylor and Jeffrey C Hawkins, are all accomplished physical comedians, and I presume accomplished improvisers as well. While all of the great bard's works are at least mentioned, not all of them are done in their "entirety”. For example, almost all of the comedies are put together to make one commingled work, which, when you really think about it, makes sense. Are they really that different?

Happily for me, my favorite of Bill's plays, Titus Andronicus (thanks to the genius of Julie Taymor) is given a star treatment - as a cooking show starring Julia Child. Very amusing. Among the frenetic hysteria of the performance, M.A. Taylor gives a completely serious reading of the great "What a piece of work is man" speech from Hamlet, which underscores the fact that these guys AND Shakespeare are GOOD.

The other highlight of the show, for me, was the conclusion, in which Hamlet is performed, and then performed again in double time, then again in triple time, and finally, they perform it in reverse - flawlessly and hilariously. (Hamlet's ghost has a walk-on, carrying a sign reading "BOO"...in the reverse performance, the sign, of course, reads "OOB")

Following the show, Sean and I met two other friends of mine for dinner at Pad Thai in Hudson. That was a bit disappointing, as Sean and I were frequent diners at Thai restaurants in Portland, and our favorite dish, which we remember as being called Phad Ram, was not on the menu. But we found acceptable substitutes.

After dinner, we returned to my friend's house, as she had gone to the trouble of baking peach pies for dessert!

It was a very full day, and we were eager to get to sleep, as tomorrow's plans were quite exciting...