Month: April 2015

Categories
Arts

Talent search: Get Hard shakes down a stand-up cast

Despite the talent-packed combo of Kevin Hart (left) and Will Ferrell, Get Hard meanders too far into unfunny territory. Photo: Warner Bros.

Was prison rape even funny to begin with? The team behind Get Hard seems to think it’s the funniest thing in the world, maybe the only thing that’s ever been funny. A few jokes here and there are to be expected—though it’ll be nice, not to mention not gross, when we no longer delight at someone’s fear of sexual assault—but it’s the punchline of every single joke. Sometimes it is its own drawn-out, meandering joke that has no punchline, an approach that would have sucked the comedic value out of any premise let alone one so questionable to begin with. But here we are with Get Hard, a movie that seems to think the only thing funnier than prison rape itself is making a joke that’s not about prison rape also be about prison rape.

Kevin Hart plays Darnell, a down on his luck family man who desperately wants to raise his young daughter in a better school district. Meanwhile, James (Will Ferrell) is a businessman with a trophy fiancée, a fresh promotion and lots of money. When James is falsely convicted of fraud, he racistly assumes that Darnell, who owns a car cleaning business that operates in the office garage, has been imprisoned himself and asks the squeaky clean aspiring entrepreneur to be his prison survival coach, offering enough money for the down payment on a new home. To get the money he needs to make a new life for himself, Darnell must now embody James’ preconceived notions about black culture.

As far as throwaway plots go, it’s not awful, and could have been an effective springboard for subversion of stereotypes, the intersection of wealth and race, with plenty of room for male insecurity and inspired crudeness. To work, all it had to be was funny, and co-writer/director Etan Cohen is no stranger to successfully edgy comedy, having co-written Tropic Thunder, Idiocracy and Beavis & Butthead. Cohen occasionally flirts with transgressive ideas only to end in familiar or unfunny territory. Familiar premises are rarely expanded on, the commentary on corporate America feels borrowed from another movie, and the punchline to a dick joke is just seeing a literal dick.

Will Ferrell does what Will Ferrell does, and it’s occasionally funny, though playing the aloof white guy in fish out of water comedies has rarely been a sign of good things to come. More than anything, this is the Kevin Hart show, and what big belly laughs Get Hard has are completely thanks to him. We’ve known he’s a gifted stand-up for some time and he has the makings of a terrific movie star, but his delivery and scene-stealing charisma belong in far better movies than what he’s been given.

The world is ready for a movie that is crass, cathartic and unapologetically confrontational in its treatment of race and class, which is what Get Hard wants desperately to be, the Trading Places of a new generation. But instead of an effectively transgressive film that blends lowbrow jabs and high-minded commentary without letting either quality get in the other’s way, what we get is a throwaway reaction-as-comedy flick that drags its talented lead down at a time when his star should be rising.

Playing this week

Cinderella

The Divergent Series: Insurgent

Do You Believe?

Focus

Furious 7

The Gunman

Home

It Follows

Kingsmen: The Secret Service

Mr. Turner

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: The Murphy Beds

The Murphy Beds entrance listeners with traditional folk, close harmonies and the beautiful imagery of their lyrics. Photo: Anna Colliton

Traditional folk duo Eamon O’Leary and Jefferson Hamer (above) sing and play the guitar, bouzouki and mandolin as The Murphy Beds. They draw on experience from Irish and American traditions (O’Leary grew up in Dublin and Hamer has roots in the New York music scene) on numbers like “Rise Up, My Darling,” a folk song translated from Irish Gaelic. Each tune is lovingly crafted with respect for the past.

Friday 4/3. Free, 8pm. C’ville Coffee, 1301 Harris St. 817-2633.

Categories
Arts

Mud slinging: Artist-activist Malena Magnolia gets down to the nitty-gritty

Malena Magnolia’s “No More Violence: A Community In Recovery And The Struggle For Safety” opens on April 3 at The Bridge PAI. Photo courtesy of the artist

Like most artists, Malena Magnolia has been drawing and painting for as long as she can remember. But unlike the galleries and fine art materials most dream about in childhood, she now creates assemblages of mud and dirt on concrete sidewalks and the sides of buildings.

“I want to make art that is accessible to everyday people, not just folks who have an art background,” she said in a recent interview. “There is a very small demographic who attend galleries. To reach more people, it makes sense to put it on the street. And the fact that it washes away over time is a perk because it’s not permanently altering something and is environmentally friendly.”

Reaching as many people as possible is at the heart of Magnolia’s mission to share messages of social justice and foster change through her work. Her interest in art “that affects people on a deeper level” began at Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was introduced to feminism during her freshman year. Raised Mormon, Magnolia said that feminist theory “made sense to me. My religious background was restricting and didn’t see me as an equal, and I’m not the kind of person who takes that.”

At first, she applied feminist concepts personally, “exploring gender with myself and what it means to be a powerful woman in charge, or just in charge of her life.” Now, she said, she sees feminism as the intersection of conversation and action—an ideology to be lived as well as talked about. She described the connection between gender-based and sexual violence, its ties to race and class, and how she makes art to empower as many people as possible.

When Magnolia creates a new piece, she develops a stencil and uses mud instead of spray paint to fill it, then leaves the final product right there on the street. She usually hears about a new work’s reception through word of mouth.

“Not all of my art is blatantly political—sometimes I use these floral designs,” she said. “People might stop as I’m putting it up and say ‘Oh, that’s really cool.’ If there’s any sort of political rhetoric or text about women’s lib, I get a lot more pushback, but that’s only within a couple of minutes. The work that’s more blatant, that’s usually the work that gets added to or defaced.”

She described a college project in which she made a mud stencil of an average-sized, curvy woman and the words “There’s nothing wrong with you, it’s society that’s f&@*ed.” “I put that up on canvas, and someone else made a stencil over the top that put a McDonald’s icon on her butt and then wrote ‘But the scale doesn’t lie, fatty,’” she said.

Magnolia said she welcomes this type of interaction. “Usually when people deface my work it proves why the work is necessary,” she said. “I just leave it. It’s interesting. That’s part of the beauty of street art—my work isn’t a commodity—anyone can deface it or interact with it. I don’t get paid for it, but I don’t care. I think that’s a beautiful thing.”

Magnolia’s latest work revolves around a project she’s leading through The Bridge PAI. “No More Violence: A Community In Recovery And The Struggle For Safety” is an ongoing series of community-led artistic projects designed to address and challenge sexual violence in our area.

Based on the statistic that every 107 seconds, someone is sexually assaulted in the U.S., Magnolia created 107 Seconds, an event in which she mounted onto the back of her truck a mud stencil that read “Stop rape, believe survivors,” then drove around the UVA campus 107 times—once for every passing second—clocking a total of 14 hours of road time. She also spent a day photographing 80 people holding this same sign around Grounds.

“No More Violence” projects include a series of safe space discussions about the ways these events have affected the community, what must be done to alter a culture of rape, and workshops led by Magnolia for anyone who wants to create their own stencils to combat sexual violence.

“Most people who came to these meetings are survivors of sexual assault, and as I’ve led these workshops more people have come to me in confidence. It’s overwhelming and heartbreaking how common it is.”

The Bridge PAI will host an exhibit made by the community, plus a stencil that “traces the roots of sexual violence back to valley hunting and Thomas Jefferson,” Magnolia said. “I don’t think anything in the present is separate from its history. I’m doing a 5′ long mud stencil of Sally Hemings in front of Monticello, focusing on her as a survivor and not focusing on Thomas Jefferson, which is what we always see in Charlottesville.”

During the exhibition, The Bridge will also offer a space in its gallery as a “therapy wall” with assorted markers, paints and brushes for people to anonymously (or not) share quotes, feelings or thoughts about their experiences.

“This series uses art to engage with history, to challenge the current system as it deals with sexual assault, to take back our community and public domain, and to act as a vehicle of healing,” Magnolia said. “It gives voices to survivors who will no longer be silenced.”

Categories
Arts

April First Fridays Guide

Local abstract painter Susan Northington's works are on display at McGuffey Art Center in April. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto

Contemporary artist Susan Northington specializes in capturing her Central Virginia surroundings in exaltations of personal expression. Her abstract interpretations of the Blue Ridge Mountains and flat horizon lines aim to evoke the emotion of a place, rather than the physical reality of location. Northington’s works are currently included in the McGuffey Art Center’s collaborative exhibit “Anew,” which features images of the garden from local artists’ perspectives. Over 20 artists are participating in the show and all of their entry fees benefit the City Schoolyard Garden.

First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many Downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Listings are compiled in collaboration with Piedmont Council for the Arts. To list an exhibit, please send information two weeks before opening to arts@c-ville.com.

First Fridays: April 3, 2015.

The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. “No More Violence: A Community In Recovery and the Struggle For Safety,” featuring a cohesive mud stencil composed of stencils made by community members and another stencil tracing sexual assault back to the era of Thomas Jefferson. 5:30-8pm.

City Clay 700 Harris St. Suite 104. “Out of the Heart and Into the Fire,” featuring wood fired pottery by Kevin Crowe. 5-7pm with an artist talk at 6pm.

C’Ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 East Main St. “A Candle in the Darkness,” featuring artwork by Terri St. Cloud. 6-8pm.

JMRL Central Library 201 E. Market St. A mixed media exhibit by Sara Gondwe. 5:30pm.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Constructed Meditations,” featuring works from 1995 to 2015 by Susan Bacik. 1-5pm.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. “Keeping It All in the Family: Where Art is in the Genes,” featuring works by resident artists in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery and Upper Galleries; “Anew,” a garden inspired collaborative art show in the Lower Hall Galleries. 5:30-7:30pm.

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. “Regina Miele: Meridians” and “Edward Thomas: Praxinoscopes,” featuring oil, watercolor, ink and charcoal works by Miele and oil paintings in series displayed in turntable praxinoscopes by Thomas. 6-7:30pm with artist talk at 6:30pm.

Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St. “Springtime at Spring Street,” featuring oil on canvas works by Abby Ober Liable. 6-8pm.

OTHER EXHIBITS

CitySpace 100 Fifth St. NE. “Arts Fusion: The Power of Creativity in Dementia Care,” organized by the Alzheimer’s Association Central and Western Virginia, with a reception on Friday, April 10, 5:30-7:30pm.

Fellini’s #9 200 Market St. “Art and Music: Above and Beyond,” featuring works by Lee Alter and students, with a reception and live music on Wednesday, April 1, 6-8pm.

Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia 155 Rugby Rd. “What is a Line?,” featuring a voter-chosen collection of works, and “The Body in Motion,” featuring an intern-curated collection of 20th century photography, with a reception on Friday, April 24, 5:30-7:30pm.

Hot Cakes 1137 Emmet St. N. “Romance of the Sea,” featuring acrylic landscapes by Nanette Morrison.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “New Narratives: Papunya Tjupi Prints with Cicada Press,” and “Art and Country.”

Loving Cup Vineyard 3340 Sutherland Rd., North Garden. “Moments in Time,” featuring oil works by Julia Kindred, with a reception on Friday, April 10, 5:30-7:30pm.

Oakhurst Inn 100 Oakhurst Circle. An exhibit of contemporary figure paintings by Jeffrey Stockberger, with a reception on Thursday, April 2, 6-8pm.

PCA Office Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. Work by PCA member artist Eve Watters, with a reception on Friday, April 10, 5:30-7:30pm.

Southern Cities Studio 214 W. Water St. “The Five,” featuring work by Bill Atwood, Michael Bednar, George Beller, Warren Boeschenstein and Nina Ozbey, opening April 27.

The Garage 100 E. Jefferson St. “Moonlight Silhouettes,” featuring photographs by Rich Tarbell in collaboration with circus performers Stephanie Helvin and Mallory Paige, with a reception on Friday, April 10, 5-7pm.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church 717 Rugby Rd. A retrospective exhibition of the paintings of Bennett Curtis, with a reception on Sunday, April 5, 12:30pm.

Warm Springs Gallery 103 3rd St. NE “Around Town,” featuring oil paintings by Elaine Lisle, with a reception on Friday, April 10, 6-8pm.

WVTF & Radio IQ Studio Gallery 216 W. Water St. “Line & Color: A Willco Studios Collaborative Show,” featuring oil and mixed media paintings, works on paper, gouache on claybord and sumi ink on paper by Stephanie Fishwick, Ken Horne and Cate West Zahl, presented by New City Arts, with a reception on Friday, April 10, 5-7pm.

Yellow Cardinal Gallery 301 E. Market St. “Duet: Landscapes Real and Imagined,” featuring new works by Krista Townsend and J.M. Henry.

Categories
News

Red flag? Group plans to hoist Confederate flag

Virginia Flaggers Susan Hathaway and Patrick Anderson were in town March 2 to object to City Council ditching Lee-Jackson Day. Their organization has a Sandston address. Submitted photo

The same people who came to Charlottesville earlier this year to defend the city holiday honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, which City Council axed March 2, now plan to raise a Confederate flag on private property here.

“Any time people try to take something away from our heritage, we try to put something back,” said Mechanicsville resident Grayson Jennings, a member of Virginia Flaggers, a group that promotes Confederate history and heritage, and honors Confederate vets, according to its website.

The Flaggers ran an eighth-page ad March 18 in The Daily Progress seeking roadside land for a Confederate flag memorial, and Jennings said he got four calls offering up potential flagpole sites, “no thanks to y’all.” C-VILLE Weekly did not accept an ad from the group. “We gave [the Progress] $500,” he said.

Virginia Flaggers put up a flagpole on I-95 north of Fredericksburg last summer, and just this past weekend on March 28, raised a giant 20′ by 30′ battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, also known as the Southern Cross, on an 80-foot pole on I-81 northeast of Lexington. It’s the second one the group has placed in Lexington after Washington and Lee University removed Confederate flags from Lee Chapel last summer.

Jennings said the flagpoles are expensive. The 80-footer cost $6,000, and installing it cost another $1,200. The as-yet-undetermined Charlottesville area flagpole could be 50 or 60 feet, Jennings estimated, and funding it is not a concern.

“We’ve got people from all over who donate,” said Jennings, mentioning a recent $1,000 gift.

Jennings scoffs at the notion that some people see the Confederate flag as a racist symbol. “A lot of people want to make it the same as the Nazi flag,” he said.

Local civil rights legend Eugene Williams disagrees with those who claim the Confederate flag is not racist. “To my knowledge, the Confederate flag has never served a purpose of improving race relations. I think it’s very distasteful for the Confederate flag to be here in Charlottesville at a time when there’s so much talk about improving race relations. It’s a real step backwards.”

Williams also said he believes a Confederate flag would deter tourism, new business and admissions, both white and black, to the University of Virginia. And following the bloody arrest of Martese Johnson, a black UVA student, by white ABC officers, such a banner “will fuel the fact that racism is still alive,” he said.

It’s not the first time a Southern Cross has flown in a Charlottesville neighborhood where one man’s honoring of family heritage is another man’s symbol of slavery, racism and discrimination.

For years Quality Welding owner Lewis Dickerson proudly flew the battle flag in front of his business on Harris Street, while his African-American neighbors had to live with what many of them considered an offensive symbol flying in their neighborhood. The flag is no longer flying, and Dickerson did not immediately return a phone call from C-VILLE.

Flying a Confederate flag on private property is “unquestionably” protected First Amendment speech, said Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead. Cities can regulate the display of flags for aesthetics or safety, but not for content, he said.

City Councilor Kristin Szakos, who has suggested it might be time to get rid of statues of Lee and Jackson in downtown parks, said she finds it “petty” that the Flaggers want to put up a flagpole here “because they’re not from Charlottesville. Why they care, I don’t know.”

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Danny Schmidt

Be the first to get your hands on Danny Schmidt’s upcoming release, Owls, on Thursday at the Southern. Photo: Chris Carson

Although acclaimed singer-songwriter Danny Schmidt is currently based out of Austin, Texas, his musical career began in Charlottesville. A contemporary of Devon Sproule and Paul Curreri, Schmidt got his start playing The Prism Coffeehouse and The Gravity Lounge, and was named oneof “the 50 most significant songwriters of folk in the last 50 years” by “The Midnight Special” host Rick Warren. His new record, Owls, won’t be out until May 19, but he’s giving his old friends a sneak peek in a special CD pre-release show.

Thursday 4/2. $12-15, 8pm. The Southern Café and Music Hall, 103 S. First St. 977-5590.

Categories
Living

Guerrilla dining: Former Clifton Inn chef strikes out as C’ville pop-up scene leader

Tucker Yoder puts finishing touches on dishes for March 27 and 28 dinners in the l’etoile space. A highlight of the meal was snapper and stone ground oats set in an almond-thickened green onion veloute. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto

Local celebrity chef Tucker Yoder’s new restaurant doesn’t have a catchy name. It doesn’t have a glossy logo. And the dining room? You never know what you’re going to get.

But all that is sort of the point. Yoder, who’s been flying under the radar since he left his job as executive chef at Clifton Inn in December, isn’t trying to create a highly marketable restaurant in Eljogaha, C’ville’s latest little piece of the pop-up restaurant scene. The idea, instead, is to maintain a bit of mystery, a bit of secrecy, to give diners the feeling they’re part of the in-crowd and some of few in the know.

Yoder launched Eljogaha on March 20 in the former l’etoile space on West Main Street. For two consecutive nights he turned out a five-course meal all while feeling his way around an unknown kitchen and working with a makeshift service crew. The next weekend, March 27-28, he was at it again, this time serving a dining room of 13 people an amuse-bouche, appetizer, fish course, pasta, entrée and dessert on Friday night and repeating the feat for about the same number 24 hours later. Next on his schedule are dinners at the end of April at Grit Café on the Downtown Mall and during graduation weekend at Crozet’s Grit Café, located in the former Trailside Coffee space.

Debriefing after his second weekend doing his own thing in the l’etoile kitchen, Yoder said what he’s appreciated most about doing pop-ups so far has been taking risks that he might have been more nervous about while at Clifton.

“I don’t want to say it’s more freedom, but that is probably the best way to describe it,” he said. “I can do whatever I want and don’t have to worry too much. If one dish is totally off the wall, that’s fine because there are four more coming. I did take risks at Clifton, but you had to color in the lines a bit more.”

Yoder said doing private dinners and off-site catering events over the years has prepared him for working in the pop-up setting. Eljogaha, a title that’s derived from a combination of his four kids’ names, is really just putting a new label on it.

“It’s all about being organized,” Yoder said. “The hard thing is when someone comes in and wants something that’s not on the menu.”

Pulling off a pop-up is indeed not without its challenges. Yoder’s able to accommodate certain dietary restrictions if informed in advance, but the diner’s experience is completely pre-scripted, so everything has to be planned. Someone wants a cocktail while waiting for the other patrons to arrive? Probably not going to happen. Someone else would like a beer instead of wine? They’ll have to see what’s lying around.

Then there’s the variable kitchen space, skeleton staff and unique sourcing concerns. Where brick and mortar kitchens have running relationships with farmers who know what ingredients their customers like and in what volumes, Yoder’s forced to rely on his industry connections and get creative. That’s especially challenging at the end of March.

“It’s a hard time of year because it’s the beginning of spring and you want all the spring vegetables, but they’re just not available,” he said. “Fortunately the same farmers I’ve always worked with are being very supportive.”

The menu on March 27 at l’etoile featured creative preparations indeed. Faced with some less-than-perfectly fresh vegetables, Yoder leaned heavily on a technique of dehydrating and rehydrating. The beets served as a snack were themselves de- and rehydrated and crusted in dehydrated mushrooms. Yoder used the same preparation to make a sprouted turnip the textural touch-point of the opening dish, braised Rockbarn pork with caviar butter. In the case of the beet, the result was an almost jerky-like texture; the turnips became nearly cartilaginous, yielding to the bite at first then snapping at the end.

“Dehydrating gives you nice textures without having to deep-fry,” Yoder said. “You get nice crispy things.”

Highlights of the meal were a sharp, almond-thickened green onion veloute used to punch up a dish of snapper and stone ground oats, a handmade garganelli and Yoder’s own sourdough bread. The drink pairings, another highlight that included a saison-style beer and three wines, were drawn from l’etoile owner Mark Gresge’s own cellar, so the tipples in store for future Eljogaha diners are anyone’s guess.

Yoder said predicting his coming menus won’t require much guesswork—with the full complement of spring veg coming in, he expects to be relying on “more raw ingredients and simple quick preparations for vegetables, more so than meat.”

And the accomplished chef plans to keep the pop-up concept going beyond the spring meals already on the schedule. Eljogaha, which has attracted nearly 450 fans in its first three weeks on Facebook, does require “more patience and a little more energy to get people in the seats,” Yoder said, but it’s a lifestyle he could get used to.

“It gives me more free time,” he said. “I can go to Richmond for my son’s soccer game and not have to be rushing back to the kitchen. I like that freedom.”

Categories
News

Downtown developer files suit over Water Street garage land appraisal

The new owner of Charlottesville Parking Center LLC, which owns the land under the Water Street Parking garage, is suing over an appraisal of the property he said was too low. File photo

Developer and businessman Mark Brown’s takeover of the company that controls most of the public parking in downtown Charlottesville last August was the sale of the summer, but the saga of the Charlottesville Parking Center acquisition isn’t over. Last week, Brown filed suit against appraiser Ivo Romenesko, who valued one of the company’s key holdings—the land underneath the Water Street parking garage—shortly before Brown bought a controlling share of CPC. Brown is alleging negligence on Romenesko’s part and claiming millions in damages, saying the appraiser violated professional standards and significantly undervalued the property.

CPC, founded in 1959, has a complicated history and structure. The company was controlled for years by bankers Jim Berry and Hovey Dabney until Brown bought it for $13.8 million. Among CPC’s properties are the land under the Water Street garage, which it leases to a condo association that runs the garage; CPC and the City of Charlottesville each own a portion of the parking spaces within the garage. The company also owns the flat surface lot at Water Street and Second Street SE destined to become part of a nine-story mixed-use development that will house the Charlottesville City Market.

Brown’s civil suit, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court on March 27, takes aim at an appraisal of the Water Street garage land by Romenesko on behalf of CPC on June 1, 2014, two months before the sale to Brown was finalized. The appraisal was mandated by the terms of the lease of the property, which was drawn up in 1991 and calls for the rent to be reset at fair market value after 23 years—and locked in for a decade after that.

Romenesko valued the two-acre parcel, sans structure, at $7.35 million, and concluded the annual rent should be $415,000.

That number, the suit claims, is far too low. Without laying out an argument for why, the suit says fair market rent of the property should be closer to $1 million, and says Romenesko and his company, Charlottesville-based Appraisal Group, Inc., “employed inferior appraisal techniques, violated professional standards governing real property appraisals, and deviated from past applications of superior techniques involving the Property.”

Brown, who declined to comment, is suing for breach of contract, gross negligence and vicarious liability, and seeking $4.25 million in damages.

Romenesko founded Appraisal Group, Inc. in 1979. The statement of qualifications attached to the challenged appraisal says he has valued property for dozens of local and national firms as well as UVA, Albemarle County, the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, the Virginia Department of Transportation and many others.

He also played a major role in another local court battle over land valuation. Romenesko was responsible for one of several appraisals at the center of a long legal fight over Biscuit Run, the 1,200-acre parcel bought by developer Hunter Craig and a group of investors in 2009 for $46.2 million—the biggest land deal in county history. Craig and the investors then donated the land to the state in return for tens of millions in tax credits, but later sued, claiming the Department of Taxation had low-balled its estimate. Craig’s appraiser was Romenesko, and the developer won a big victory in 2013, when a county judge sided with Craig and the investors on Biscuit Run’s value.

Romenesko did not return a call for comment by press time.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Mother Bombie

Bridget Rue stars as Mother Bombie in a Shakespearean arranged marriage farce that proves timeless at American Shakespeare Center. Photo: Lindsey Walters

Mother Bombie is an Elizabethan comedy that tells the timeless story of parents’ fruitless efforts in matchmaking. Plans go awry when two couples are caught in the middle of an arranged marriage scheme. The roller coaster plot features disguises, servant’s antics, awkward teen love and a shocking reveal. With snappy one-liners like, “You must, for fashion sake, confess yourself to be asses,” this comedy delights audiences of all time periods.

Through 4/4. $18-44, 7:30pm. Blackfriars Playhouse, 10 S. Market St., Staunton. (540) 851-1733.

Categories
News

Illegal norms: Is the 21 drinking age working?

Photo: Martyn Kyle

Americans have an uneasy and contradictory relationship with alcohol—and with how underage drinking laws are enforced. Last week, while Virginia was reeling from another high-profile arrest of a 20-year-old, the Richmond Times-Dispatch published an editorial that urged rethinking the nation’s minimum drinking age of 21. The same day, Mothers Against Drunk Driving sent out a release urging states to toughen their underage laws and be more like Utah, which has 20 laws, including a “use and lose” driver’s license suspension for any alcohol infraction.

Despite its illegality, people under 21 drink, and alcohol has been a factor in multiple stories that brought the national spotlight to UVA this past year. Eighteen-year-old Hannah Graham ended up downtown after reportedly drinking illegally with friends. She walked alone, passing several bars, until she encountered a 32-year-old named Jesse Matthew who allegedly offered her a fatal ride and is now charged with her murder.

Although Jackie’s story of a gang rape in last fall’s Rolling Stone article has been discredited, no one challenged the article’s assertion that fraternities offer the forbidden fruit to vulnerable first-year girls who want to drink.

And then there was the violent arrest of Martese Johnson by Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents, eager to bust college students wanting a beer on St. Patrick’s Day. That followed the 2013 arrest of Elizabeth Daly, 20, when agents suspected the sparkling water she’d just bought at Harris Teeter was illegally purchased beer. They pounded on the windows of her car with flashlights, and one pulled a gun, prompting Daly to flee the scene, and resulting in three felony charges against her, which were later dropped. Daly sued the ABC and received a $212,500 settlement.

At the University of Virginia, students petitioned Governor Terry McAuliffe and the General Assembly to take away law enforcement powers from the ABC following Johnson’s arrest. And sparked by the Rolling Stone article, campus sexual assault and its reporting were a major issue in the General Assembly session this year.

Yet no groundswell to reevaluate the drinking age has arisen since 2008, when the Amethyst Initiative, a coalition of college presidents, said the 21 drinking age doesn’t work and caused a disrespect for the law, among other problems.

Proponents of the law say it’s saved lives by reducing the number of drunk driving fatalities, while opponents say it’s caused other harm with increased binge drinking, which the Centers for Disease Control call a major public health problem, and increased sexual assault.

Two presidents at UVA are questioning the current drinking age. New Student Council president Abraham Axler said he’s ready to organize a movement and wants the University to host a national conference on the drinking age with experts weighing in. And former UVA president John Casteen said he’s ready to give money to an organization led by smart, strategic young people willing to take the complicated steps necessary to make change.