On this past Sunday night, the night of Father’s Day, we had tickets to see the next LaJolla Playhouse play in the season’s rotation. As season ticket-holders, we see them all, and quite frankly, they do a good job of attracting good new productions that almost all feel like they have a shot of getting to the big time, even though few probably do. Our friends Dulcinea and Bill, who live in LaJolla, are also season ticket-holders. We don’t usually coordinate our attendance to these performances, but this time Kim and Dulcinea apparently compared notes and decided that it might be a nice thing for us two fathers to get a celebratory evening out of the program.
Kim and I went to our last LaJolla Playhouse show five weeks ago and Kim had booked us for dinner at a new Italian restaurant near the venue. That was as opposed to our regular spot right on the Playhouse grounds. At first I was dubious based on a menu that seemed a bit more haute than my normal cuisine choice. Whatever my limited culinary tastes were before my Zepbound journey, Zepbound has made them all the more narrow, so I wasn’t even sure I would find anything to my taste. Strangely enough, on the supposedly tailored pre-theater prix fixe menu (tailored thematically to the show that night…which was called Purpose and was a family drama about a prominent African American family), I managed to find one starter and one entree that I found workable. And guess what, I actually thought it was good. I had melon & prosciutto (something Claude tells me is a great choice for me with a high protein to calorie coefficient) and a 6 oz. sliced flank steak, that Claude also liked for its leanness and high protein content. I came away feeling the restaurant was pretty good, even though it was priced like most restaurants on the Coast Highway Corridor, as it’s called.
So, I was not entirely surprised when we arrived at the venue parking garage and Kim told me we would be meeting Dulcinea and Bill at that same Italian restaurant. As we walked in, nice and early as is my habit, the hostess tried her best to explain the program to us. Five weeks was just long enough for us to have forgotten how they did things at this place. We were told that they only had the prix fixe menu before 6pm (it was 5pm and the theater started at 7pm), but that if we insisted on ordering ala carte, we could but would have to sit at the bar to do so. There was no one else in the restaurant yet. Hmm? I was put off enough by their silly program, clearly designed to maximize revenue over client satisfaction, that I was ready to make a fuss, but Kim was not in the mood, so I just shrugged and we were shown to our table. When Dulcinea and Bill arrived shortly, before I could tell my “prix fixe nonsense” story, Dulcinea looked a the menu and said, “Oh, great, a lovely prix fixe menu…” So, I did what was called for and said, “Oh, yes, the food here is quite nice…we ate here the last time we came…” The menu declared that it was a special and bespoke menu, designed for tonight’s showing of The Monsters. When I looked at the menu I found exactly one starter and one entree that I found workable….coppa (the neck portion of prosciutto) & melon and sliced flank steak…except that the waiter explained that they were out of coppa (did I mention we were the first diners that night?) and would substitute regular prosciutto. OK, then, on with dinner…which was just as good as the last time, despite the managerial shenanigans.
As they said at the start of Looney Tunes, “on with the show, this is it!” Dulcinea and Bill had seats in the front row. Kim and I had seats in the back row. The show had two actors who were an African American brother and sister (actually, half-brother and sister) from a dysfunctional family that had all died and left them as aspiring UFC fighters (or the unspecified equivalent). He is a huge, some might say monstrous man, and she is a slightly crazed and erratic wannabe fighter. He is a hesitant pugilist and she is a relentless force of will. He keeps winning his fights, but with no joy. He has spent his fighting career on the periphery of the big tent and his time is running out. He knows and accepts that he has done all he can do as a fighter. He hates being a monster, which is what everyone who has ever known him thinks of him. She wants nothing more than to be the monster that her step-brother eschews, and with his initial help and training, she moves on to bigger and better representation and training, and starts triumphing. She is offered the vaunted title match just as he fights and loses his last fight.
He gets what he wants and is allowed to stop being a fighter and drop his monstrous cloak and she picks it up and doesn’t lose a beat. They both find redemption in the opposite outcomes. They both engaged in monstrous acts, but neither is a monster at heart. They are just family members who want to get on with their lives and are prepared to be seen as monsters in order to get where they are going.
When the show ended, we caught up with Dulcinea and Bill outside and mumbled our thoughts with little clarity of opinion on the show coming from any of us. When we got to the garage, Bill looked at my truck, charging in the EV spot, and said he was impressed by the size and monstrous nature of my truck. I couldn’t help but say that its just a truck and it gets me where I’m going. In another 20 or 30 pounds, I might get to a weight that is as low as the brother in the show…who wants to be the monster after all, right?