Last weekend's theme was set, at least dramatically: 1590s London meets 1960s London, but in San Diego. Saturday's offering was in North County, at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts -- a magnificent, well-funded building seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I think the arts community in this city has a bit of an inferiority complex when compared to Hollywood, but I admire their enthusiasm. And money.
For one night only, Michael York was here to perform Will and I, a show about his days as a Shakespearean actor on stage and in film. While he doesn't bring up Basil Exposition from Austin Powers, it's evident from his anecdotes that he's a part of that era. And while he doesn't bring up Asher Fleming from Gilmore Girls, he's still very much in literature professor mode.
To some degree the evening went as expected. The actor's clear and calming voice would seamlessly volley between storytelling and performance. Name dropping would be par for the course. Moments of levity would invite much needed laughter, mostly from the older, starstruck patrons. And the whole event would seem very pretentious.
I wished the atmosphere had felt more transporting, and less like a lecture. The actor wore no costumes and brought nothing more decorative than a projected illustration of William Shakespeare. He brought some notes and usually stood at a podium. His voice was a little too clear and calming; sleep became very tempting. To this audience member, seated fourth row center in the balcony, his mere mentions of Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney, or Judi Dench were pleasant breaks, and reasons to sit upright. It's obvious he loves the subject matter -- he calls it bardolatry -- and as lectures go, it was good.
But I wonder if this show had to be a lecture at all. Couldn't he have brought a sword or something?
First things first: the Oscar nominations are here. This news used to feel a bit like Christmas morning, and I guess it still does, now that I don't celebrate the holidays the same way. No real comment, but I've noticed that boring nominations yield exciting winners, while exciting nominations yield boring winners. Use your own judgment to determine which is the case this year.
In San Diego last weekend I saw two shows that I considered companion pieces. The first was a production of Much Ado About Nothing set in the swinging 1960s. The second was Will and I, a one-man show about the Bard by Michael York, or Basil Exposition in the Austin Powers movies.
Friday night brought me to the La Jolla Playhouse, paying $15 for a last-minute rush ticket (sixth row center) that was far better than the $52 others paid for generally poorer seats. This production of the show (by the Aquila Theatre Company) called for a large square stage, bare with the exception of a British flag covering the wall and a 1968 Mini Cooper that was rolled around for various scenes.
While the dialogue was unchanged from the text (made familiar by Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film), the look of the play strayed. The men wore bowlers and sharp gray business suits, some with brightly colored shirts and ties. The women were in skintight black leather, like Emma Peel in The Avengers. Music resembled The Saint, and "Hey Nonny Nonny" became a vamped-up musical number in the style of Burt Bacharach.
The actual business of the men was unclear. As in the play, Don Pedro, Benedick, Claudio, Don John, and Borachio have arrived from war, but my best guess is that they were doing spy work, or special ops. Don John carries an umbrella with a sword inside. Borachio appears in a short but dressy raincoat. As the governor of Messina, Leonato wears a black glove with a button on it to help move his (apparently mechanical) hand. Suitcases are exchanged, bombs are defused, handguns are wielded. Friar Francis hangs among the lights and descends a rope to make his entrance. It's all very strange and amusing.
The comedy only works if the actors playing Benedick and Beatrice can dominate their own scenes, but can also have good chemistry together. Here they succeed on both counts. This Beatrice was very young, but still effective because her portrayer channeled older actresses, holding her mouth like Ellen Barkin and delivering her lines like Priscilla Barnes. (Yes, I notice these things.)
It's great fun. I notice that, through the end of April, the Aquila Theatre has touring productions of Hamlet and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, mostly along the East Coast. I have no idea if their adaptations are similarly inspired, but performance dates and locations are here. If you have the means...
Just in case, I shaved Friday night.
Judgment day is upon us. We reach the U.S. border around 9 am Saturday. I let fate and Murphy's Law converge in choosing a checkpoint lane. Wise decision. The Asian-American guard reviews our Nevada driver's licenses, notes the Oregon license plates on the rental car, and takes our truth at face value.
"We bought children's books and some items at the duty free."
"And you have no proof of your citizenship?"
"No, I haven't flown out of America since I was five."
"Where were you born?"
"North Carolina."
"Illinois."
Another glance at the well-positioned stuff in the back seat. "Okay, well, you should really bring proof of your citizenship next time. Enjoy your day."
What? No customs agents? No cavity searches? This day just got a whole lot better. We celebrate by spending that allotted extra hour at the Seattle Premium Outlets on our way back down to Portland.
We arrive and check into the Silver Cloud Inn by the airport. Surprisingly nice for $75 a night: our first fridge and microwave of the trip, plus computer access and continental breakfast in the spacious but cozy lobby. My sister rests as I begin to compile our bounty (which includes four Sokol Blosser Winery glasses and some Okanagan hard apple cider) into suitcases and carry-ons.
Last weekend we ordered front row tickets to Frogz, an avant-
garde children's show at the Imago Theatre. I called Kristy and arranged to meet up at the nearby Old Wives' Tales restaurant so that I could deliver some peach cider and her copy of Take the Cannoli. She was very nice to give us gifts in return, appropriately from a store called Made in Oregon. My hot chicken and veggie sandwich was a little simple and dry, but the Hungarian mushroom soup more than compensated. The show was a nice capper. We were surrounded by youngsters, one of whom provided a running commentary. (I blame his parents, and most of the audience for their encouragement.)
The production is mostly wordless, and occasionally a little risque and scary, but overall worth seeing. They move the show to an extended run in Cambridge, Massachusetts later this summer. Readers in that area would be wise to catch it.We toasted the trip with refrigerated hard apple cider and meaningless TV. The breakfast Sunday morning was startlingly divine: limited packable items, but they had a decent French toast and bagel, and we especially liked the option of preparing our own fresh Belgian waffles. We each ate one and split a third. Within hours we had returned to nonstop sun, but with an important lesson learned: we can't bring the Pacific Northwest to Las Vegas, but we can buy a French press coffee maker and a Belgian waffle iron.
Like death and taxes, rain in the Pacific Northwest is a sure thing. We'd managed to avoid any significant downpour the entire trip, but Friday morning was a bit on the cold and damp side. Fortunately, we did the outdoor stuff Thursday, and could work a relaxed travel schedule.
First up was brunch, in the local restaurant chain White Spot. Unimpressive. My burger lacked structural integrity and was heavy on the mayo-esque sauce. And their near-5-dollar milkshake was probably not of Jack Rabbit Slims quality.
Vancouver has a tented Shakespeare festival called Bard on the Beach that begins the first week of June. We came to catch the first show, As You Like It, but later in the season (starting July 13) the troupe puts on productions of Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. While the concept of seeing both plays the same day is thrilling enough, what makes it particularly cool is that the same actors play Hamlet, Polonius, Ophelia, Gertrude, Claudius, etc. But the icing on the cake is that the actor who plays Rosencrantz in one becomes Guildenstern in the other, and vice versa. And I thought Crabbe and Goyle were confusing.
Speaking of Hogwarts, we discovered the Canadian equivalent on the uniforms worn by about half of our matinee audience. They attended the Mulgrave School, which is actually divided into four house teams. (Seriously. Click the link.) The students provided an interesting perspective to this show, which was heavy on the girl-girl kissing and homoerotic man-wrestling. Of course, in this crowd, you couldn't see a codpiece or hear the word "ass" without a few unstifled giggles. The actress who plays the cross-dressing heroine Rosalind -- Lara Gilchrist -- has that look of someone who is bound for bigger things, seeing as how our TV shows stateside have placed a premium on Canadian ingenues in their quest to find the next, say, Evangeline Lilly.
After the show we drove south to the Kitsilano district, where stumbled upon another Cobs Bread location. We couldn't resist. Their spinach and feta cheese croissant is such a simple marvel.
To wrap up our trip we dined on coupon-friendly fondue dessert at Inlets Bistro in the nearby Blue Horizon Hotel and late night appetizers at our hotel's jazz bar, and sandwiched a visit to the Pacific Centre in between. All in all, time well spent.
Next year: the fully planned Smallville tour. Failing that, a Degrassi tour.
HOLDEN: You got a weird thing for Canadian melodrama.
BANKY: I got a weird thing for chicks who say "aboot."
Thursday morning breaks in Vancouver with a knock at the door. Complimentary French-pressed coffee. My sister says it's the best brew she's had all week. Even I drank some.
Though the prepaid tickets we bought Wednesday had open dates, we decided to use both Thursday so that Friday would be less stressful. We drive north to see the Capilano Suspension Bridge, but get sidetracked by hunger. We take a side road and find ourselves in Edgemont Village.
I don't know why I know this, but I'm aware of a Canadian show called Edgemont that starred Kristin Kreuk of Smallville fame. Knowing that both shows film in Vancouver, and that we were unlikely to locate the Kent Farm or Luthorcorp building, we capitalize on our discovery.
We pick up some croissants and rolls from Cobs Bread, then stop by Kidsbooks to buy gifts. All in all, a nice detour. The Capilano Suspension Bridge is scary but secure. We cross.
On the other end is a new feature: the Treetops Adventure. Ostensibly, it's a chance to be elevated among the tall trees, but we dug the fact that it looks like an Ewok village.
Driving back through Stanley Park we get to the Vancouver Aquarium. Their collection lacks penguins and manatees, but the dolphin show was nice.
We're not remotely done for the day. We head back to Granville Island to pick up reduced-price community night tickets to Shear Madness, and visit the island's markets before they inexplicably close at 6 pm. We use one of our dining coupons for a free entree (with the purchase of an entree at equal or greater value) at the Dockside Restaurant, and bide our time before the show.
The play is a murder mystery set in a hair salon. It dares to invite audience participation, and has been adapted to make topical references to Vancouver (which we didn't get). The first half is scripted, and a detective -- described as a local yokel from the rural outpost of Burnaby -- invites audience members to ask investigative questions after the intermission. I get my chance.
"How is it that Mr. Edwards knew the victim was stabbed in the neck by a pair of scissors?"
"Ah, an excellent question. Tell me, are you from Burnaby as well?"
"I spend my summers there."
My ad-lib gets a laugh from the audience. My sister gets to ask a question too, but not an opportunity to be funny. I hold the higher ground for the evening.
We don't have passports. Or birth certificates.During Tuesday dinner, Julie raises an unusual issue: once my sister and I enter Canada, can we get back? My atlas said that a driver's license was all I needed to get into Mexico or Canada, and I had no problems walking into and out of Tijuana during a San Diego visit back in 2004. Unfortunately, it never occurred to me that a U.S. citizen with a driver's license would face trouble re-entering his birth country. I don't know where my birth certificate is, and the last time I needed a passport I was roughly this size.
So there's a concern that we will face serious problems if we carry no proof of our citizenship. Maybe not as bad as Bridget Jones stuck in a Thai prison, but hey, the thought crossed my mind. Fortunately, the resources at our hotel gave us some assurances. The desk clerk informed us that he only endures a delay when he comes back into the States without his passport, and a Google search of border rules explained that passports, while recommended, were not required until December 31, 2006.
My sister suggests that, for future travel, we get current passports."But I don't want to be on the grid," I reply.We reach the Canadian border late Wednesday morning, where the checkpoint guard politely asks us to drive forward to the customs office. No mounties in sight, but we decide to comply. We get barraged by questions expected (Do you know anyone in Canada? Where are you staying?) and weird (Where did you go to school?). When I showed the customs agent our stapled, chronological itinerary, she seemed duly impressed. We were free to enter.We stopped at the tourist information center for, um, tourist information. Good call. We saved money by prepaying for tickets to the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Vancouver Aquarium, picking up a guidebook with dining coupons, and finding a place that sells same-day stage tickets at half-price.I bring up consumer economics because there's a common misconception about Canada. While it is true that the U.S. dollar is of greater value than the Canadian dollar (20 of one exchanges to 24 of the other), it does not follow that visiting Canada comes cheap. Maybe in past years the spending was easy, but no more.Basically, visiting British Columbia is an exercise in conversion math. The initial thrill of seeing a gas station list its price as 98.9 cents was eventually tempered by the knowledge that such a price is Canadian currency per litre, not U.S. dollars per gallon. So we decided not to get gas."The speed maximum is 80 kilometres per hour. It should take us about 30 minutes to get to downtown Vancouver.""But did you calculate that in Canadian minutes?"
We arrive in Vancouver. At the ticket office we bought discount passes to The Imprentice, a reality show parody by the Vancouver TheatreSports League. Then we checked into the Listel Vancouver hotel, the priciest lodging of our trip. (I made the choice because it was ideally located on the Robson Street shopping district, had secure elevators, was considered the arty hotel, and is 100-percent smoke-free.)After some local window shopping and dinner at Sala Thai -- again, too upscale for my taste, and the peanut sauce was bland -- we headed to Granville Island for the show.
The Imprentice stars an ill-coiffed Donald Trump type who will choose one of six performers as his apprentice. He divides them into two teams and gives each team some odd improv assignment, and the audience is prompted for suggestions. It's all extremely cheesy and low-budget, but works very well.
For one night only, Michael York was here to perform Will and I, a show about his days as a Shakespearean actor on stage and in film. While he doesn't bring up Basil Exposition from Austin Powers, it's evident from his anecdotes that he's a part of that era. And while he doesn't bring up Asher Fleming from Gilmore Girls, he's still very much in literature professor mode.
To some degree the evening went as expected. The actor's clear and calming voice would seamlessly volley between storytelling and performance. Name dropping would be par for the course. Moments of levity would invite much needed laughter, mostly from the older, starstruck patrons. And the whole event would seem very pretentious.
