The Gipper - Twice in Two Days

This morning, while I was waiting in line for my Americano from Firehook (where they just raised their prices, making it awfully tempting to go to their corporate suckhole neighbor, Starbucks) I noticed that the woman behind me had a cool looking bag - the square bag style that is popular now, sort of a purse, sort of a catch-all, and the front of it sported a big picture of Ronald Reagan.

It was this picture:


I kept staring at her, trying to figure out if the handbag was intended to be received with a dose of irony, or if this young woman (maybe 26/27) simply adored The Gipper, and wanted the world to know that.

She was blonde and moon-faced, pretty conservatively dressed in an ill-fitted suit like ensemble, but then had this possibly funky, or possibly kind of frightening bag, and those shoes from India that they are selling everywhere now:



Nothing, really... fit, together.

And I wished I had the nerve to ask her - "So, what's the deal with the bag?"

But I didn't. And I hadn't had my coffee yet.

It made me smile because Reagan was a character in the play I saw last night, Passion Play, at Arena Stage. It is not a hugely over the top depiction of him, though not entirely realistic either. Sometimes when I think about that, that we elected this famous movie actor, a "leading man in B Movies" as Wikipedia refers to him, to be president of the United States, it both thrills and devastates me about this country.

The play was quite engaging. I'd heard primarily good things about it from other theater types, which is usually a good sign, but sometimes I find myself sitting in an opposite camp on stuff like this. But I liked it a lot. It reminded me of theater I'd seen in other countries: The Gesher Theater in Israel, or Company B in Australia (at least their production of Cloudstreet) where you get out and can't help throwing around terms like "magical realism" and "post-modernism" and other terms that make me cringe, but nonetheless, you use them because nothing else quite describes it. Everything seems grounded in reality, and then suddenly the writer steps out of reality, without a pause, or even a warning. I like that.

The overlaps of historical periods and symbolism really worked for me in the final act (yes - there are three acts) and I actually do want to read the script, which doesn't happen for me all that often.