My bestie and I had fallen behind in our ‘adventures’. Instead of trying to figure out what the other wants or needs, we now commit to 4 different events or adventures a year, 1 for each of our birthdays and 1 each for Christmas. Recently, due to some changes in her life (her husband passed away in August, after declining quickly in the last stages of an incurable disease). She also finally decided to retire at the young age of 70.5 years, which she chose to do just weeks before her husband’s passing. Now, we had the time to look at possible adventures, and we found two small theatre performances that we thought we’d enjoy. One was at McCoole’s, a place we had been to before, and was called “Women are From Mars, Men are From Uranus”. The other was called “Morning After Grace” and was in the Montgomery Theatre, about 25 minutes away, and was a new venue for us. It just so happened that the shows were only 4 days apart and on one of those days we weren’t seeing a show, we were both signed up for a crafting class!

The first show we saw at McCoole’s wasn’t a comedy, but with a title like “Women are From Mars, Men are From Uranus”, it made sense that this would be some kind of gentle male-bashing comedy. WRONG! It was some written in-house thing about two lab scientists accidently releasing something that created a woman and a man. The story was dull, and the female lab scientist was so monotone that one would think she was on the first read-through of the script. The woman that was created wore different pieces of yoga wear throughout each scene, and it was so skintight it was distracting, and there was no denying that the audience could tell when she was cold. If somebody asked me to rate it, I would give it a “1”, but only to assure that it was known that I didn’t ignore the request. It was an absolute waste of $25, in my opinion. The day out was only salvaged by the fact that dinner afterwards was at Red Robin, where neither of us had been since I moved from the one in Lancaster.

As truly bad as that show was, the absolute opposite is true of “Morning After Grace.” The story had three characters who each had something internally that they needed to deal with. Agnus had just buried his wife, Grace, who was killed in a vehicle accident. Ollie is suffering from the fact that he and his son have had no contact for some years and not knowing how to rekindle their relationship. Abigail is a woman who sometimes drinks too much but spends her time advising other people how to fix what’s wrong in their lives to avoid looking at what’s wrong in her own life.

Comedic? Darn tooting it was! These are three ‘senior citizens’ who each feel they have lived long enough to earn the right to say what’s on their minds without a filter. Plus, the show opens up with Abigail and Agnus asleep on a couch as the result of a one-night stand. They met because….well, she crashed Angus’ wife’s funeral!

The best part is that, while we all laughed our way through the dialog, each person has an internal dilemma that needs “fixed”. And the shocker comes when we find out that Grace, Agnus’ wife, died in that vehicle accident on the way to meet her lover.

The cast got a standing ovation, and it was well deserved. I would go back and see it again, just to see if I could concentrate on the depth of the words each spoke and not just the laughter.

As weather turns colder, even though we’re supposed to have a mild winter that is warmer than usual, we won’t be making any plans to see anything until at least March. Neither of us likes to drive at night (gotta love those matinees!) and neither of us likes to drive in bad weather, so we’ll be keeping our eyes open for events happening in the spring.

Meanwhile, I have more than enough books to get me through the winter (and spring, and summer), and I’m very much behind on some craft things, so let old man Winter show up whenever as early as December 1st (I have my nesting pantry list but I haven’t gotten too much of it yet.) I’m ready for soups and stews and grilled cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate and toast!

Oh, and I have such a hoard of recipes to try out for possible sharing and that will keep me quite busy as well!