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Morsels:
Gardening:
Character
Studies
What if Edward Albee's caustic classic Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf were aggressively softened into a warm and wacky farce? For the results, check out Tina Howe's One Shoe Off, currently playing at Very Little Theatre. The play follows a disastrous evening in the decaying, plant-ridden home of Leonard (Lloyd Brass) and Dinah (Darcy Guhl), a married-too-long couple entertaining their pretentious new neighbors, Tate (the playful Alex Elkin) and Clio (Jessica Haverly), a children's book editor and actress, respectively. Naturally, nothing goes right and everyone ends up bored or angry. Many clever running gags ensue, such as the dual inabilities for anyone to actively carry on a conversation or remember anybody else's name. Nobody really cares about spending the evening together. Leonard and Dinah invited the neighbors over because they felt like they had to, and Tate and Clio came out of obligation, not the desire to socialize. Watching the couples endure the horrors of this is quite fun. Yet One Shoe Off's best moments are not gags or symbols, but careful dissections of character. Did Dinah cheat on Leonard? Will Leonard ever find work or calm down? But it often takes things too far, devolving into fits of inexplicable wackiness, such as Tate's penchant for reciting nursery rhymes as classical poetry or Dinah's continuous changes into crazy play costumes she designed. These tics are meant to show the characters' nervousness, but the straight approach is funnier. Steve Mandell (Parker) is a fascinating and gifted comic actor. He shows great range, from pitch-black humor in one scene to heartbreaking pathos in another. Mandell's subtle, spacey facial expressions, slow deliberate movements, even the direction of his sightlines reveal much about his character. Overall, the play is inviting and dryly funny with a fantastic (to say the least) set and a handful of good performances. It's cute, innocuous and thus not terribly thought-provoking. Directed by Suzanne Shapiro, One Shoe Off runs through June 14 at Very Little Theatre.
On the other end of town and the theatrical spectrum comes Lord Leebrick's production of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize winner How I Learned to Drive. The story, presented backward through the 1950s for full emotional impact, follows the sexual relationship of a young girl named Lil' Bit and her Uncle Peck. On the surface, the play is about incest, but
that would be far too simple. Vogel refuses to make it that easy.
How I Learned to Drive analyzes the sexualization of children,
the effects of alcoholism and the panic of adolescence. The thematic
aim of the play just might be to de-romanticize the 1950s, cars
and teen Like Brecht, who wanted to motivate audiences to change social ills rather than become wrapped up in characters' emotions, Vogel makes it hard to neatly package Lil' Bit and Peck into Good or Evil archetypes. Peck is a predator, but he's human; disliking him is hard because he's handsome, seductive and, ironically, great with kids. And Lil' Bit is no damsel in distress. She's often cruel, difficult and a willing participant in the relationship. The acting is among Eugene's finest in recent memory. As Lil' Bit and Peck, Jennifer Coombs and Stephen C. Speidel have a layered chemistry that can be both sweetly romantic and painfully repulsive. Both are able to pull off the tricky Brechtian acting approach, simultaneously performing their parts while also being detached. Kim Bates is her usual brilliant self, particularly
as Lil' Bit's fidgety, sexually repressed grandmother. Sharon
Sless is at turns wounded and hilarious as Lil' Bit's mother and
is both during her uproarious monologue on "How to Drink Like
a Woman." Bill Reid plays creepy Despite the uncomfortable subject matter, the production is a delight of the theatrical. The senses are assaulted with aesthetic pleasures, ranging from the road sign projections to a warm, misleading light scheme straight out of a musical. The raked set, resembling a highway off-ramp, does exactly what it should: suggest but not overpower while serving as a versatile canvas. It's not for everyone, but if you like theater that makes you squirm a lil' bit, check out How I Learned to Drive. It plays at Lord Leebrick through June 28.
Food
on the Fringe JUNG'S
MONGOLIAN GRILL The Bethel area offers few interesting dining options — I can count on one hand the restaurants that actually require you to get out of your car, where food is served on a table and not through a little glass window. Lucky for hungry West Eugene wayfarers, Carrie and Stephen Snyder opened their first restaurant, Jung's Mongolian Grill, on May 20. Located on W. 11th Avenue, between Courtsports and Target, the new eatery boasts ochre walls, red kanji-inspired borders, blue silhouette lamps over the booths and marble-finished green concrete floors that take you from the standard mini-mall restaurant to a place far more stylish. Chest-level curved walls separate what could have felt like a cafeteria into a more intimate dining environment. On this Friday night, only 10 days into the new venture, Chef Greg Dunkin and Chef/Owner Stephen Snyder are stationed behind the grill and brushed steel counter. After my companion and I are seated, we dash for the buffet, filling our bowls with fresh, raw peppers, onions, carrots, mushrooms, water chestnuts and broccoli; next we heap on the noodles, then move to the protein: tofu in large chunks, shrimp, scallops, thinly sliced beef, pork and chicken. (Note: There is no separate vegetarian grill.) Finally, we savor the sauces: citrus and ginger-based sauces delight the palate and the chili sauce sends even the toughest tongue begging for ice water. We hand our buffet selections over to the chefs, who whisk everything onto the grill for the ensuing cooking entertainment. Spatulas flip and clap. Dunkin and Snyder add liberal amounts of teriyaki upon request and then dish up and hand back the whole steaming mess. While a second round of grilled goodies sounds appetizing (the meals are all you can eat), waiting in the now long grill line does not. I guess being Bethel's best does have its downside. The air is filled with the sounds of families chatting and the smells of grilled food. Co-owner Carrie Snyder sits smiling in a booth with her baby on her lap — Jung's fills the bill for what West Eugene has been missing and Snyder knows it. Lunch: 11:30 am-4 pm daily, dinner 5-9pm Su-Th, 5-10 F & Sa. $$. — Erin Lusk POP'S
DINER Inside Strike City on Highway 99 is a little café with great strawberry milkshakes — the kind with big chunks of frozen strawberries and thick, creamy ice cream. It's not served in a metal cup, sadly, and you don't get a long metal spoon, but the flavor and texture are impeccable. The menu includes all the Americana favorites: great big, fat burgers, crisp fries, chicken in all forms and specials. The prices are reasonable, the side vegetables were once frozen, and the waitresses are down-home friendly. Of course, Strike City is really better known for its entertainment. There's bowling, miniature golf, pool, air hockey, bowling, and more video games than you can shake your quarters at, including Dance Revolution, which is much harder than it looks. Diner hours: 7 am-9 pm Su-Th, 7 am-10 pm F & Sa. Call for bowling and mini-golf hours. $-$$. — Marina Taylor
Don't forget it's U-pick strawberry season. Go get a bucket and freeze yourself some. It's fun and easy, it supports local farms, and you do the work yourself, making the reward that much sweeter. Bush's farm, north of Elmira on Territorial, has big, red, juicy Shuksan berries — call 935-4083 for availability. Or try Corwin Farm's smaller, tangy, intense Bentons. Corwin Farm is at the end of River Loop #2, out River Road. Call 689-7297 for more info. Now is also the time to nominate your favorite server or chef for Chow's Happening Server. Call 484-0519, x. 20 or email marina@eugeneweekly.com and tell me all about them!
Mop
Heads & Lace
I made a bit of a blunder in my last column ("Garden Umbels," 5/23) by recommending purple fennel as a garden plant. I had just submitted my copy to EW when I spotted fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) on the Native Plant Society of Oregon's invasive species list. Having written a piece on invasive plants for EW in January, I should have known better, especially as I have seen common green fennel growing in lusty thickets along the bike path by the Willamette River. Purple fennel is just as productive of seed, and presumably just as dangerous. While I was wiping the egg off my face and casting around for a non-controversial topic, EW's editor forwarded a press release about hydrangeas. As it happens, these old-fashioned stand-bys were already on my mind. I'm helping a friend make a new shady garden, and hydrangeas are high on her list. The press release itself, from Spring Meadow Nursery in Grand Haven, Mich., is not very relevant to western Oregon gardeners because it promotes only species hardy enough for the bulk of American gardens with a continental, rather than a maritime, climate. That rules out two important groups of hydrangea that we in the Northwest can grow very easily. Some people will argue that the familiar bigleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla) needs no promotion at all, being, if anything, over used in the Willamette Valley. But there are usually good reasons why popular plants are popular. Hydrangeas, like roses and rhododendrons, do so well here, and are such reliable producers of heaps of summer color, almost every gardener is likely to plant some, sooner or later. They are particularly valuable for their ability to grow and bloom in shade. Some people nonetheless plant them in sun, where they bloom heavily but need copious amounts of water to thrive. Bigleaf hydrangea comes in two basic bloom styles. Hortensias, also known as mop heads, have large, rounded balls of sterile flowers with showy bracts in white, blue, pink or wine red. (As in flowering dogwood, the showy portions of the flower are bracts, not petals. That's why they last so long.) Lace cap hydrangeas have flattened heads in which showy, sterile flowers surround a central group of smaller, fertile flowers. Lace cap types have the advantage that the flower heads are lighter and less apt to yield to gravity. Some varieties of both types have blue flowers in acid soil, pink in neutral or alkaline soil. Use aluminum sulfate to acidify the soil and ensure blue flowers. With the exception of a few compact varieties such as 'Pia,' Hydrangea macrophylla can grow to 6 by 8 feet when well-fed and watered. The plants seem over-large and coarse for small gardens, where I prefer to grow them, semi-starved, in pots. Hydrangeas make magnificent pot-plants, blooming for years with no attention other than light pruning, regular water and moderate fertilization. There is a second group of colorful hydrangeas that are naturally more petite. A species (or possibly a sub-species) named Hydrangea serrata has yielded a group of cultivars that can be maintained at 3 to 4 feet. Serratas favor refinement over drama. Some books scarcely mention them, but serratas are showing up more and more in nurseries. The first to become widely known was actually a macrophylla-serrata hybrid named 'Preziosa.' I think it was the popularity of this distinctive plant that brought other varieties to the attention of nursery people. Serratas are a little less thirsty than macrophyllas and a little better adapted to sun. Most are lace caps, though 'Preziosa' has round heads of bloom that turn from chartreuse to pink and eventually rich red. The stems are almost black, making for a plant full of character. The color-progression is even more marked in 'Beni-Gaku,' which has white, pink and red florets all at the same time. In 'Grayswood' the outer flowers are white at maturity. In 'Bluebird' they are blue, but not the strong, hard blue of some hydrangeas when they grow in acid soil. Many people cut hydrangeas to the ground each winter. The bush responds with strong, un-branched stems, each with one huge flower head on the top. I think this is an ugly way to go, and it doesn't seem to make the plant smaller, as you might expect. Pruning more lightly (in April, preferably) for shape and an even distribution of buds, removing about a third of the height, results in more moderate growth and more abundant but smaller flowers.
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LEFTOVERS:
