Stories, Theatre, Food
Oct. 15th, 2019 03:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreFall for the Book Storytelling: Better Said Than Done did a free storytelling show Thursday night as part of the Fall for the Book Festival in Fairfax, Virginia. The theme was True Lies: Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them. I went with a story that was about various members of my family and lies they told, primarily about how old they were. It went well, as did the show as a whole. At the end, the audience was asked to guess who was lying and who was telling the truth. The one lie I had in my story was pretty obvious, so nobody had any trouble guessing my story was true. But a couple of people did snooker the crowd.
Escaped Alone: I went to see Caryl Churchill’s play, Escaped Alone. at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. I barely made it there as I had flaked out on the way there and made a wrong turn. Given how often I make that trip, I have no idea what was going on in my head.
Anyway, I did make it just in time and am glad I did. The play was intriguing, albeit confusing. The premise is that a woman named Mrs. Jarrett (played very smoothly by Valerie Leonard) is passing by a house where three women are sitting and drinking tea and is invited in to join them. Their conversation is wide-ranging, but each scene is interrupted by Mrs. Jarrett giving a monologue involving some sort of disaster (collapsed buildings, floods, disease, famine). Most of those monologues mix in a certain level of dark humor, e.g. most food being diverted from people to television cooking programs. The conversations the women have touch on some odd aspects of their lives. One of them spent six years in prison for stabbing her husband to death. Another is terrified of cats. The third is apparently agoraphobic. I thought that those scenes took place over several weeks, but it was ambiguous and some people seemed to think it was a single afternoon. After the play (which is only about an hour long), they served tea and had a video about the play. Since Churchill refuses to speak publicly about her work, it’s not like anything much was going to be revealed, but it was an interesting play to see.
Kellari: A friend had gotten a groupon deal at a good price for brunch at Kellari Taverna so we went on Sunday. The three course prix fixe menu includes unlimited drinks, which was pretty much wasted on us. I did drink about half of a mimosa, but that was it. I had spanakopita (which was excellent), tuna salad (nicely seared tuna, with a lot of salad), and cheesecake (good, but I have had better). Both the food and service were good, but I wouldn’t want to pay full price to eat there.
Escaped Alone: I went to see Caryl Churchill’s play, Escaped Alone. at Signature Theatre on Saturday afternoon. I barely made it there as I had flaked out on the way there and made a wrong turn. Given how often I make that trip, I have no idea what was going on in my head.
Anyway, I did make it just in time and am glad I did. The play was intriguing, albeit confusing. The premise is that a woman named Mrs. Jarrett (played very smoothly by Valerie Leonard) is passing by a house where three women are sitting and drinking tea and is invited in to join them. Their conversation is wide-ranging, but each scene is interrupted by Mrs. Jarrett giving a monologue involving some sort of disaster (collapsed buildings, floods, disease, famine). Most of those monologues mix in a certain level of dark humor, e.g. most food being diverted from people to television cooking programs. The conversations the women have touch on some odd aspects of their lives. One of them spent six years in prison for stabbing her husband to death. Another is terrified of cats. The third is apparently agoraphobic. I thought that those scenes took place over several weeks, but it was ambiguous and some people seemed to think it was a single afternoon. After the play (which is only about an hour long), they served tea and had a video about the play. Since Churchill refuses to speak publicly about her work, it’s not like anything much was going to be revealed, but it was an interesting play to see.
Kellari: A friend had gotten a groupon deal at a good price for brunch at Kellari Taverna so we went on Sunday. The three course prix fixe menu includes unlimited drinks, which was pretty much wasted on us. I did drink about half of a mimosa, but that was it. I had spanakopita (which was excellent), tuna salad (nicely seared tuna, with a lot of salad), and cheesecake (good, but I have had better). Both the food and service were good, but I wouldn’t want to pay full price to eat there.
