Gandertown

I presume that I was conceived somewhere in the little town of Auburn, a little unincorporated burg on a hill along Ohio 129, the road from Hamilton and Millville to Brookville, Ind. That’s where my parents lived, and I don’t think they were much for traveling at the time.

Auburn is what it says on the signs, but my family also called it Gandertown, though I don’t recall there being an abundance of geese. Or even a goose. A few geezers, perhaps, like Cedric Waltz, who owned the general store and gave me my first puff of a cigarette, he and everyone in the store thinking it hilarious to make a little guy choke.

That’s the kind of town it was, the kind of people I came from.

I should add, however, that even though I was 5-ish, I took the drag willingly, perhaps eagerly. That’s the kind of people I am. There’s not much I haven’t been willing to try at least once in my half-century here. I declined to sky-dive, true, but I have twice gone up in an open cockpit stunt plane.

Here’s how it started:
The Lomans lived on Cochran Road. There were seven Loman children, four girls and three boys.

The Joneses lived on Auburn Lane, just a few hundred yards away. There were also seven Jones children, also four girls and three boys. And in both families, the four girls were all older than their brothers.

Barbara May was the youngest of the Loman daughters. Forrest Richard Jones Jr. was the oldest of his brothers. She was 14 and he was 18 when they were married, the Rev. Paul Pennington, the groom’s brother-in-law, presiding.

Their first home as a married teen couple was a converted chicken coop behind Grandma Stokely’s house. She also lived in Auburn, in one of the first houses when you approach from Hamilton on Ohio 129. Grandma Stokely was Grandma Loman’s mother. There was no Grandpa Stokely because Stokely was the name of her second husband Sam Stokely. I wish I had some stories about Sam Stokely because they would be good ones. I understand that he was the town drunk and quite the character. But I digress.

I don’t know if I was conceived in the chicken coop or not, because they were 16 and 20 when I was born, so that was a couple of years on. Now that I think about it, I really hope I was. Maybe when Mom reads this, she’ll text me the answer: “Was I conceived in a chicken coop?” (These essays are not about fact-finding, but about memories. I’ll add a footnote if I learn anything.)

I do have a vague memory of the chicken coop, though, but it wasn’t from living there. I was very young, maybe even a baby, and we were visiting someone, maybe one of Mom’s sisters. I remember someone was ironing. I remember irises.

If I wasn’t conceived in the chicken coop, then it was probably in the first house I do remember living in, also in Auburn, a four-room frame box set up on cinder blocks next door to Grandma and Grandpa Jones on Auburn Lane, a little gravel road that cut across a corner of Cochran Road and 129. The egress onto 129 was really steep and I only remember one or two cars making the attempt in the time we lived there and later, so the only access was from Cochran Road, making Auburn Lane, for all practical purposes, a dead end. And since there was only four houses on Auburn Lane, there was very little traffic. Still, my parents and grandparents made me deathly afraid to go out into the lane. I suspect there was some ass busting involved.

The house had electricity, but no plumbing. It was possible to crawl under it, but I only did that once. Growing up in the country, bugs were no big deal, nothing to be afraid of, but you still don’t want to be swarmed by millions if not dozens of Granddaddy Longlegs.

There was a two-seater outhouse in back, and we got water from the well pump next door at Grandma and Grandpa Jones’ house. There were people living in that well. They might have been gnomes or elves or something, but I just called them the well people. They spoke to me and shared the wisdom they’d gained from living life both underground and underwater. So in gratitude, I would take them with me in the back of the station wagon when we’d go to town so they could see what the rest of the world was like. They had a very strange language with a lot of Ls in it. I was fluent.

I was very young -- we moved before I started school -- so I don’t remember specifically any of the stories or the wisdom they passed along, but I sure could use some advice now that I’m living in a watery cave.

I remember a sandbox where I played with my cousins, which I had plenty of. They were my first friends. On Mom’s side I was closest in age to cousin Dale, with cousin Greg on the other. There were so many of us though, that family gatherings were total chaos. The sandbox was near a cherry tree. That tree seemed huge to me, and I remember climbing it in spite of the danger. The cherries from the tree were tart and bright red. Grandma made excellent pies with them.

Auburn had two gas stations. One was a Sohio, and that’s where Dad worked when he cut off the tip of his thumb slicing baloney. That was pre-memory for me, but legend says they never found the thumb. The other was Waltz’ General Store, which had gas pumps, but now that I think about it, I can’t say that they worked as I don’t remember anyone actually buying gasoline there.

The house itself was tiny, maybe 20 by 20 feet, but memory is not a reliable device to measure that kind of scale. Divided into four more or less equal rooms, the house had three doors to the outside. The room without a door was the kids’ room. It was also the first house for Cindi and Russell, and Randall Wayne, the brother born between me and Cindi and who died in infancy. I don’t remember him at all, though I do have vague memories of CIndi as a baby, and I can remember when Russell was born. In that room, I almost lynched myself playing cowboy, tying a noose to the bunk bed. Mom rushed in as I dangled and saved my life. I can still remember the panic and the relief of my first brush with mortality.

The room catty-corner from the kids’ room was the kitchen. There was a sink with a non-functioning faucet, as I recall, and a gas stove. The food was down-home and overcooked. They tried to get me to eat liver by telling me it was steak. They underestimated my genius even then. I got my ass busted for telling them, “I ain’t gonna eat this slop!”a catch phrase I undoubtedly picked up from one of the three channels on the black-and-white TV, probably a cartoon.

The other two rooms were both Mom and Dad’s room and the living room in my memories, though I couldn’t say when the change occurred or if there was only one change. There was a squarish hole cut high in the wall between the kids’ room and one of the living rooms. When they had the bunk beds along that wall and the TV in the right place, I could sit up and watch “Combat” and “Bonanza.” I think I got my ass busted for that, too.

Looking back, it seems I got my ass busted a lot, but as I said, memory tends to distort scale, so maybe it wasn’t as much as I thought. But there were certainly enough of them that the threat of an ass busting was always imminent. That is, they didn’t make threats, they made promises.

So maybe that’s why I preferred spending time next door at Grandma and Grandpa Jones’ house. Their house was right next door to ours, the only two houses on that side of the lane. There was a footpath that ran between the houses, which Dad and Grandpa later laid down a sidewalk. I learned to ride a bike on that sidewalk, and it was just uneven enough to cause many stubbed toes.

Because I was the oldest Jones grandchild, they coddled me. Grandma Jones would occasionally bust some ass -- my cousins more than me, but I felt her sting a few times. She usually whipped us with a switch from maple tree, and sometimes she made us go get one ourselves. Like little dumb-asses, we would. On the other hand, I don’t think I ever received a cross word from Grandpa Jones. Indeed, as a baby (I’m sure) and as a toddler, I always enjoyed the seat of honor, Grandpa’s lap.

I learned to read on that lap. At least partly so. I don’t think that Grandpa was a big book reader, but he did read the newspaper and magazines like Popular Mechanics, Field & Stream, and detective stories. I have pre-school memories of him helping me sound out words from the the Hamilton Journal, as I believe it was named back then. It had a picture of the old fort in the masthead, which I thought was really cool, but it was long gone before I started working there nearly 30 years later. I probably didn’t understand a word of it, but I do remember making my way through entire paragraphs. Now I write the paragraphs, and I sometimes imagine a little kid out in the world (or Butler County, anyway) sounding out the words to my stories, picking up the first skills to make him aspire to be a writer, too.

I picked up a few other things from Grandpa, too. Mostly dairy-related. He drank a lot of milk and he’d always put ice in it. I don’t drink a lot of milk, but when I do, I put ice in it, too, otherwise it doesn’t taste cold enough. I have stunned people by sprinkling pepper on my cottage cheese, but I learned to like it like that because that’s how Grandpa ate it. I can’t say he’s totally responsible for my liking ice cream (because face it, who doesn’t), but there was always some in his freezer, always vanilla but sometimes also chocolate or Neapolitan.

Grandma was different. I would spend weekends with them all the way up into my early teens. She taught me how to play gin rummy, usually while watching “Hee Haw.”But I knew I was getting special treatment because to everybody else, she was a bitch on wheels. She was the crankiest person you could ever meet and was always giving somebody, but hardly ever me, a hard time about something. I’ve had cousins in recent years tell me how much they hated her. They said she hated kids. That was hard for me to hear, but I understand. I knew how she was. She would be working in the kitchen, going off on Grandpa about something, but he would just sit in his chair, rolling cigarettes, apparently oblivious to it all. You’d almost think he was rolling up good reefer instead of tobacco, but that was way off the radar back then and there. After he died, when I’d go visit Grandma, she’d get all teary talking about him, telling me how well they got along and how they never had a fight in the 60 years they were married. I’d just shake my head at her because she never gave the man a minute’s peace as near as anyone could tell.

Every Thursday, my aunts would come over to Grandma’s house to do laundry. They’d heat water over an open fire in a big galvanized tub, and transfer the hot water by the bucket to a washing machine tub with a wringer. There were clotheslines all over the place and the cousins would all play together while the women worked, generally keeping our distance lest the switches come out. We spent a lot of that time playing in the creek (pronounced “crick”).

Almost exactly between the two houses was a path that led down the hill to the creek. It was just a trickle, not deep enough to drown a toddler, but there was one place wide enough to skip a small rock a couple of times. One of my cousins skipped a rock across my head once and drew blood. We’d pick up rocks to look for crawdaddies, build dams and play war, chucking reedy plants like spears.

So if it’s true what they say, that the first five years are the most formative of a person’s life, this was the stuff I am made of. Juvenile parents and outdoor johns. Crawdaddies and Granddaddy Longlegs. Forts on the newspaper and invisible gnomes in the well.

We lived on Auburn Lane until sometime in 1965 when we moved to Richmond, Ind., where I went to first grade (no kindergarten) at Starr Elementary School, and turned 7 years old that fall.

Photos by Greg Lynch

It’s lunchtime in Somerville, Ohio, and Megan’s Grocery and Pizza, both the only grocery store in town and the only place to buy hot food, is bustling.

With a well-worn wooden floor, two tall racks of greeting cards by the front door and a massive display of Slim Jims on the counter, Megan’s looks as though it hasn’t changed much in the 25 years Randy McGaha has owned it, and except for the lottery paraphernalia, maybe even from the 25 years before that.

On front of the meat cooler, its top covered with individual servings of dry cereal and a pizza warmer with piles of foil-wrapped cheeseburgers, a hand-made starburst sign advertises $5.50 pizzas, cheese or pepperoni, every day. Somewhere behind it all, Randy McGaha hands out sandwiches and good-natured grief to the half-dozen men loitering in the cramped space between the cashier counter and the two aisles of groceries and soft drinks.

McGaha is a multi-tasker in the old-fashioned way, running the slicer, making and wrapping sandwiches, answering the phone, running the cash register, giving instructions to the kids helping him out, telling stories about Somerville and greeting every person who comes through the door by name. His wife Brigitte operates like a third hand, taking money and ducking into the back room occasionally to make a pizza, but mostly it seems like she’s just trying to stay on the fringe of the whirlwind her husband creates.

When he was a child, he said his grandfather had a small grocery in Dayton, Ky., but McGaha (pronounced muh-GAY-HAY) claims he didn’t know anything about the business when he gave up his job making false teeth to buy Sylvia’s Corner Market 25 years ago, changing the name to honor his new-born daughter.

“Now I have three daughters and two step-daughters,” he says.

“I just wanted something different,” he says, “and boy, did I get it. A lot of time; a lot of hours.

“It was doing pretty good when I got it, but there wasn’t any pizza or hot food or lottery in town, so I built it up.”

He grew up in Somerville, just a few doors away from Megan’s.

“It used to be one of the wildest towns there every was,” he says, “but it’s as safe as can be now. The town has slowed down, but not me. I guess it’s because there’s no competition.

“My mom still lives in the same house I grew up in,” he says. “I enjoyed it. I had a good childhood in this burg. We used to have a baseball team, played in Camden and Oxford leagues, out in Reily and Darrtown.”

Standing by the front door eating a lunch meat sandwhich, Alan Dunkelberger, third-generation owner of Dave Dunkelberger & Sons, another of the few remaining Somerville businesses, comments that McGaha is two days older then he is.

“You know how thick bicycle tires are?” he asks. “We rode around this town so much we kept wearing them out.”

A tall man in sunglasses tells McGaha, “Two packs,” and McGaha hands him Marlboros.

“They don’t even have to tell me what kind,” he says. “I know what everybody smokes.”

As he goes back to his slicer, McGaha says, “Everybody who comes in here knows me. I could be in a bad mood or a good mood and nobody cares.”

"I write songs because I need to," said Yellow Springs singer/songwriter Dawn Cooksey. "I would write them even if I didn't play them for anyone."

It's therapy, she said, and she knows a little bit about that because she is a therapist and a licensed social worker. For a time, she worked for an agency in Hamilton, and through her contacts began performing for the Farmer's Market, which in turn led to her upcoming appearance at the Music Cafe on Tuesday, Dec. 23.

Born in Dayton, Cooksey lived several years in Austin, Texas, where she performed in the folk/alternative rock band Dik Dam Dyk. It was in the Austin open mic nights that she overcame her fear of performing her own songs.

"I didn't think anyone would care about my problems," she said. "I'd be a wreck for days before a gig, but I told myself I'd go every week until I'm not scared anymore.

"It took a long time."

Her songs tend to be sad, mad and everywhere in between, she said. "There have been a few exceptions, but I generally don't write when I'm happy and enjoying my life — which is most of the time.

"There are a few exceptions that blow me away, but happy songs tend to be kind of dorky anyway," she said.

She has a band, 68 South.

 Dawn Cooksey on MySpace

Having played Bob Cratchit for two years prior to taking over the helm as the director for the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park's production of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," Michael Evan Haney has been involved in what is now a Cincinnati tradition from the very beginning.

"It's really become a part of my life," he said. "I never thought I'd be involved in a play that would become a city-wide institution. When we started, we didn't even know there would be a second year, but even though it was not critically accepted, it was good in audience numbers."

Every year before rehearsals start, Haney goes back to the original novel and reads it — even though the adaptation uses nearly the same dialog word-for-word.

But he still looks forward to it every year with the goal of putting on a "crackerjack" performance.

"Other groups that do this often allow the quality to slide as the years go by," he said, "but that's just a sacrilege. Dickens is just a sacred as Shakespeare.

The key, he said, to keeping it real is to remember one thing.

"I wrote it at the top of my script: 'It's about Scrooge, stupid,'" Haney said. "The ones that are not successful are those that lose that focus."

For instance, some productions have made that into a lavish, show-stopping production number.

"But you have to remember Scrooge's involvement in the party," he said. "If he's not at the heart of it all, you're in trouble."

Local favorite Bruce Cromer will be humbugging as Ebenezer Scrooge for the fourth year.

"Bruce is a wonderful actor and his Scrooge is special because he never stops working on it," he said. "Each year, he finds something new and closer to the human soul of what Scrooge is.

"I call Scrooge 'the middle-age man's Hamlet' because he goes through just about every human emotion possible."

Also returning are Dale Hodges as the Ghost of Christmas Past/Mrs. Peake, Keith Jochim as Mr. Fezziwig/Ghost of Christmas Present, Todd Lawson as Young and Mature Scrooge, Gregory Procaccino as Jacob Marley/Old Joe, Andy Prosky as Bob Cratchit, Regina Pugh as Mrs. Cratchit, Wayne Pyle as Mr. Cupp/Percy, Tony Roach as Fred, Ron Simons as Mr. Sosser/Topper and Amy Warner as Mrs. Fezziwig/Patience.

"Almost everybody, from Scrooge on down, is a little richer this year and I see some nuances that I haven't seen before," Haney said. "It's like Shakespeare in that the text is so dense with so many levels that you can find all sorts of different ways to use them."

A lot of the production, however, remains exactly the same.

"It's a major decision to change anything," he said, "and you have to have meetings. We changed Marley's entrance a few years ago, and so had to change all the sound and technical cues."

how to go
WHAT: Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol"
WHERE: Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
WHEN: Through Dec. 30
COST: $31-$59
MORE INFO: www.cincyplay.com

Bruce Cromer as Ebenezer Scrooge/Sandy Underwood

The Great Gatsby meets the Bard of Avon as the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company updates the comedy "Twelfth Night" to the Roaring Twenties.

Directory Jeremy Dubin said he hit on the idea over the summer while reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of a man who re-invents himself so that he can work his way into the upper reaches of society.

"I was struck by the similarities between the characters," he said, "and of what comes out of trying to change your fundamental nature.

"And I felt that the scenes with the clowns Toby Belch and Feste have a vaudeville flavor that would work nicely in this kind of format."

The official synopsis:

After a shipwreck, Viola (Sara Clark) finds herself separated from her twin brother Sebastian and alone in the city of Illyria. Bereft at the loss of her brother and forced to make her own way in the world, she disguises herself as a man, "Cesario," and takes a job in the court of Duke Orsino (Rob Jansen). Orsino is hopelessly in love with the Lady Olivia (Kelly Mengelkoch), who has refused all of his previous advances. When Orsino sends "Cesario" to Olivia to plead his case one more time, Olivia falls instantly in love with "Cesario". Meanwhile, Viola has fallen in love with Orsino, but cannot express her desires without revealing her true identity. The classic love triangle becomes further complicated when Viola's twin brother, Sebastian (Kristopher Stoker), arrives in Illyria and is mistaken for "Cesario." As the romance unfolds, Olivia's drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Matt Johnson), conspires with Olivia's servants Maria (Sherman Fracher), Feste (Christopher Guthrie) and Fabian (Billy Chace) to play a practical joke on Olivia's stuffy butler, Malvolio (Jim Hopkins).

"'Twelfth Night' has so many story elements that resonate with the Roaring Twenties," Dubin said. "Women were becoming more independent, dressing in a more masculine fashion, and taking work outside the home, just as Viola is forced to do.

"Prohibition created a black market in bootleg alcohol that led to a lot of outrageous behavior, a perfect opportunity for Shakespeare's drunken rascal Sir Toby Belch to make mischief. And the birth of jazz created a free-wheeling atmosphere where the desire for true love was often at odds with the social mandate to be the life of the party."

While it's become common practice to put Shakespeare's stories in more contemporary environments, Dubin points out that it seems Shakespeare did the same thing in his day, with plays like "Julius Caesar" making topical references to things that Caesar would not have known about — a striking clock, for instance.

"He worked within a certain visual vocabulary, using his contemporary references to place a character's social status to make it relatable to his audience," he said. "We have our visual vocabulary, too, and these plays are not museum pieces, but relevant, living theater."

The danger, then, comes when the production distracts from the script, to become cute or irrelevant to the action.

"It's a trial and error process," Dubin said. "We're careful not to force things into the text that aren't there. You want to make sure that you don't make it something it's not."

how to go
WHAT: "Twelfth Night" by William Shakespeare
WHERE: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, 719 Race St., Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Jan. 4
COST: $26 adults; $22 seniors; $20 students
MORE INFO: (513) 381-2273; www.cincyshakes.com

photo: Rob Jansen and Sara Clark

The title is not only long, but hilarious in its own right: “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” Know Theatre of Cincinnati’s off-the-hook holiday offering.

If only the production lived up to the promise.

The Pageant won an Obie Award for its off-Broadway premiere, with predictions of a cult phenomenon as a dead-pan musical rendering of the life of L. Ron Hubbard, the science fiction writer who was fond of saying that his craft was a waste of time when a guy could get rich by starting his own religion. Then he started a religion and got rich (and I am confident that I will get a stern letter from a Scientologist for writing this — it’s happened before).

The premise, and the hoped-for charm, of the Pageant is that it uses the trappings of a church or school Christmas pageant, calling to mind ubiquitous “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” in telling this story, substituting Hubbard’s life and doctrine for that of Jesus.

But this show is not about making a pageant, but a parody of one, and as such falls victim to the imitative fallacy by being self-consciously, but not skillfully, exactly what it should only be pretending to be.

This is the second show of its kind in the Know season. But with “Reefer Madness,” with the premise of being a school production warning of the evils of marijuana, there was constant winking and nudging at the out-dated propaganda. When the character did something cheesy and over-the-top, we knew that it was a comedic choice (whether it was funny or not).

But the humor doesn’t work when the production doesn’t have something in it to let us know that they’re trying to sing off-key, rush their lines or hesitate on a cue. These things could happen with comedic intent and result, but there’s nothing here to clue us in that this isn’t just a poorly-cast and under-rehearsed show, but a parody of one. There’s no wow factor, no moment when we are awed by either the talent of the cast or the brilliance of the material. We may have had both, but the production seems so poorly-conceived and tossed-together that nothing stands out. Since we never see the man behind the curtain, never get a sense of his presence, we presume he’s not there. Consequently, the show doesn’t seem campy and silly, but pathetic.

how to go
WHAT: “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant” by Kyle Jarrow
WHERE: Know Theatre of Cincinnati, 1120 Jackson, Cincinnati
WHEN: Through Dec. 28
COST: $12
MORE INFO: (513) 300-5669; www.knowtheatre.com

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"The Humana Festival is a celebration of the diversity and strength of new American theatre," said Marc Masterson, the company's artistic director, in a press release announcing the line-up. "The artists in this year's festival represent a cross-section of our culture and include new voices as well as some of the most established and respected writers and directors working in the theatre today."

Six full-length plays provide the heart of the festival:

- "Wild Blessings: A Celebration of Wendell Berry," adapted for the stage by Masterson and Adrien-Alice Hansel from the writing of Wendell Berry. An exploration of the earth, its citizens and the impact of each on the other. This world premiere brings the work of nationally acclaimed poet, novelist and ecological visionary Wendell Berry to the stage in a celebration of words, music and a life well lived.

- "Absalom," by Zoe Kazan. At a Berkshires country house, the children of an aging literary giant gather for a party celebrating the release of their patriarch's tell-all autobiography. When an unexpected guest appears, this family—writers or editors all—must reckon with their stories and who owns them, and with the secrets, betrayals and deep bonds that define what they'll do for love.

- "Under Construction" by Charles L. Mee, created and performed by SITI Company. A collage of America today, inspired by Norman Rockwell and contemporary installation artist Jason Rhoades, Mee's play juxtaposes the fifties and the present, red states and blue, where we grew up and where we live now—a piece that is, like America, permanently under construction.

- "Slasher" by Allison Moore. When she's cast as the "last girl" in a low-budget slasher flick, Sheena thinks it's the big break she's been waiting for. But news of the movie unleashes her malingering mother's thwarted feminist rage, and Mom is prepared to do anything to stop filming...even if it kills her.

- "Ameriville' by UNIVERSES, a cross-cultural, multi-media theater collaborative. UNIVERSES puts the state of the Union under a microscope—race, poverty, politics, history and government—examining our country through the lens of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. "Ameriville" combines an innovative mix of poetry, music, movement and drama to get to the heart of this American tragedy.

– "The Hard Weather Boating Party" by Naomi Wallace. Three men, almost strangers, meet in a hotel room to plan an ugly crime against a powerful adversary. Inspired by research on Louisville's Rubbertown neighborhood, Wallace's play explores the struggle between industrial greed and growth, and the health of the community.

This year's festival also includes a comic anthology showcasing the Actors Theatre Acting Apprentice Company and three 10-minute plays, to be announced.

"Over the past 33 years, the Humana Festival of New American Plays has introduced more than 350 plays into the world," said managing director Jennifer Bielstein. "In this time of economic challenges, the arts provide a vital way for us to examine our changing world."

Humana Festival single ticket prices range from $24 to $55 and will be available Nov. 25.

For information or reservations call (502) 584-1205 or visit Actors Theatre's website at www.ActorsTheatre.org.

If you're looking for scintillating insights on the battle of the sexes (yes, it still rages), then "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" probably isn't the place to go.

The musical revue takes a tired-but-true look at the battle, keeping it very much in the man-Mars/woman-Venus vein.

Unless you don't know that women like to shop and go to tear-jerking movies, that men like sports and action/adventure flicks, and that couples get goofy when they have a baby, there's not much to learn here (Hope I didn't spoil it for you).

The upside is that the show is nicely produced (with the exception of some technical issues on opening night) and beautifully sung, the cast led by Bob Walton, who might be remembered by Cincinnati audiences as Pseudolus in the Playhouse's production of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" a few years back.

While some of the comedy is over-done, better placed on sketch comedy show than the legitimate stage, there's also a poignant moment where a woman creates her first dating video that strikes a few emotional nerves.

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HOW TO GO:
"I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts
Through Dec. 31
Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park
$51-$61
(513) 421-3888; www.cincyplay.com