Kids and Plays

Last weekend was our weekend with our two young grade school kids. (We share custody with their mom, my ex-wife.) We spent the weekend in San Francisco. We went Saturday afternoon to a great Giants baseball game. Barry Bonds hit a home run and the Giants won. Currently they are on a winning streak after a bad start on the season.
That night we all went to a dinner party hosted by a wonderful gay couple. There were about a dozen gay men, our two well behaved kids and three, almost as well behaved, dogs. It was a fun evening to catch up with some old friends we had not seen in a while and meet some new ones.
After the party we took a cab to our hotel, The Pickwick. We all slept in the next morning and then headed over to the Westfield San Francisco shopping mall. It is a brand new, beautiful mall; part of it is inside the façade and dome of the old Emporium store. The kids had a fun time riding the spiral escalators and playing with the mirrored tables below the glass dome. Oldest son took a break from his studies at Hastings Law to join us for lunch at the food court.

We are still busy going to plays and musicals. Our count for April is 14 shows so far. (Complete list here.) The four best shows for the month were:
“After the War” by Philip Kan Gotanda at A.C.T. It is a wonderful ensemble piece in a SF boarding house on Fillmore in 1946. Japanese Americans, African Americans, rural whites from the Midwest, and other societal outcasts fill the rooms.
“Terre Haute” by Edmund White at New Conservatory Theatre Center. It is a haunting imagination of Gore Vidal's relationship with Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.
“Merrily We Roll Along” by Stephen Soundheim. It is revived by TheatreWorks in Palo Alto. It tells the rocky rise to fame of three writer and composer friends. Told in reverse, rolling backwards from the self-serving cynicism of the '80s to the starry-eyed idealism of the '50s.
“Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf” by Edward Albee. This is the touring production starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin as Martha and George. An exquisite and excruciating evening of games: Humiliate the Host, Get the Guests, Hump the Hostess and Bringing up Baby.