Wine for Not Wearing Pants, Part I

I confess to having a bit of writer's block today. I have been trying unsuccessfully all day to think of what I could write about. It is an uncomfortable feeling, having writer's block. It reminds me of forgetting your lines on stage; that split second of panic that feels like hours, when your heart pounds, your breathing stops, your eyes glaze over and dart back and forth. It is just one of those moments that most actors dread. It feels like the whole world stops. But then, miraculously, someone always saves it. Either the person who forgot his or her lines suddenly remembers them, or someone else onstage finds a way to jump over it, and the play moves on, most of the time without the audience ever knowing anything was amiss.

Sometimes, however, there are mistakes that are so obvious, no one can miss them. One particular production I was in in NYC of A Merchant of Venice was full of such mistakes. As I believe I have mentioned before, this was the production in which I went onstage one night without any pants.

Allow me to elaborate: I was playing Jessica, the daughter of the tyrannical and overprotective Shylock, who has essentially forbidden her from going outside the house where she might be in danger of meeting some nasty Goy boy who might pollute her mind and ravish her body. Unfortunately for Shylock, Jessica has already met and fallen in love with Lorenzo, and together they have planned Jessica's middle-of-the-night escape from her father's house. Most of the time, any significant change in a character's life will require a wardrobe change, and so it was with Jessica. I was supposed to change from the skirt I wore in my father's house to pants and a long cape for my getaway.

The wardrobe change was quick, and the cape was long, down to my ankles, and the fabric swished against the black pantyhose I wore under my skirt and well, one night I didn't realize that I hadn't put my pants on after taking my skirt off until I got out on stage and wondered why my legs felt so much more breezy and cold than usual. Some folks watching in the audience might have thought: "Wow, I see the symbolism of the wardrobe choice; she's naked now, she's newborn, she's left her old restrictive life behind and is now free." I think most people, however, probably just said: "Well now, there's a girl who's not wearing any pants."

There are some more memorable moments from the run of this show, but in the interest of keeping these posts on the shorter side, I will save them until tomorrow. For today, my wine for not wearing any pants (part I) is a Farina Amarone della Valpolicella Classico 2005. Amarone is an intensely flavored dry red wine made from very ripe bunches of dehydrated grapes; in other words, raisins. This perhaps would make this wine more appropriate for a pants-less, wrinkly, old man, but oh well. This medium-body wine has a rich nose of dried fruit, figs, prunes, cherry, black currant and dried leaves with black cherry, raisins, fig, prune and cherry pipe tobacco on the palate.

I just love that this wine is actually made from raisins; I never would have thought it possible to get juice from a wrinkly old raisin. I guess that's what Viagra is for....