Studio Theater's "Road to Mecca" and Cork Wine Bar

Saturday, October 18. Studio Theater's Road to Mecca finishes its run tonight. It's a dark play about South Africa's rural life, brought to the stage as the plight of a late middle-aged woman, Helen Martins, a real artist, who builds her own garden of statues all facing Mecca and lights her home with candles and reflective glass to brighten her life--all to the astonishment and disapproval of her Afrikaner fellow villagers. This play brings out strongly the need for freedom and imagination. Running along with this is the love the local Dutch Reformed pastor has for her, never requited, and the visits of a young woman, Elsa, from Capetown who provides a mother-daughter role for both of them, badly in need of affection. Another subtext is the issue of apartheid and the effects on the people in the village both African and Afrikaner. A superb play by Athol Fugard written in 1974. Ben and John's grade: A.

Following the excellent production at Studio, we walked up 14th Street to Cork, a wine bar, strongly recommended by the Washington Post critic Tom Sietsema. It's a fine tapas bar with dishes built for two as small portions. We enjoyed a 2005 Beaujolais Fleurie coupled with smoked trout with fennel and mache, duxelles of mushroom with onion spread on toast, then salsify caramelized with walnuts, scallops in a light curried cream sauce and stuffed quail. A lovely meal, highly recommended. No reservations. We did not try the wines by the flight, which looked very interesting. The bar was offering flights of pinot noir and vins crémants. The crowd is younger, and the restaurant is quite loud. Very pretty people. Approximately $40-$50 per person.