Tangled Web

[howeird]

Last week my friend Janice asked me to go with her this Saturday to see a staged reading at the MLK library in SJ, because she was invited by one of the cast members. She had met him online, had not met him in person, and had a coffee date planned with him after the reading. I'm an occasional theater buddy of hers, and it sounded interesting so I said yes. 

Saturday morning she called and said she wasn't going, the fellow called her and said it was not a very good production, and he didn't want her first impression of him  to be reading lamely from a lame script with an under-rehearsed ensemble. Having gone to many staged readings, and been in a few, I didn't think it would be all that bad, and even if it was, who cares, it's only a reading.

So we agreed that I would go alone and check him out for her.

She had told him my name, but she didn't want him to think she was sending a spy, so I was not to use my real name if asked. I would be Fred for the afternoon.

When I arrived at the venue, lo and behold Walter The Giant, who had been Don Quixote in  the last Man of La Mancha I was in, was getting into his period tie - he was in the cast too. So I didn't have to use a fake name because it looked like was there to see Walter. Which I wasn't, but it's always great to see Walter.

The reading was pretty good. The cast was very talented, and well-cast, and the director had done a good job of keeping it simple and not angsting much over the limitations of the meeting room we were in. I did not like the script much, it was an adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray which I thought did not do justice to the original. But the cast did a great job, and Janice's date was the character with the most lines, and I'd cast him in a heartbeat. He seemed like a nice guy too.

After the play, I called Janice and told her he was definitely someone worth meeting. Today we met for coffee and she said she did meet him. My work is done...