ItIt was a Saturday night at the chic Zyn- odoa Restaurant in Staunton, Va., and we were trading forkfuls of entrees between the two tables. Mind-blowing, consid- ering the other diners were complete strangers. We had started it; we were curious about their garbanzo-stu;ed rainbow trout and they were eyeing our cornmeal-dusted oysters in black bean tomatillo sauce. They had driven an hour from northern Virginia to sample Chef Michael Lund’s fare, after reading that he was the selected chef for President
Obama’s first White House state dinner.
Lund is the new chef here, hailing from
the five-star Inn at Little Washington.
We couldn’t help but wonder “Why
Staunton?” as we walked around the cor-
ner to Blackfriars Playhouse, the world’s
only reproduction of Shakespeare’s
indoor theater. Inside, we roared with
laughter along with the rest of the audi-
ence as a male actor who was playing a
woman pretending to be a man adjusted
his fake mustache. Then he wiggled his
eyebrows at the crowd, inciting another
rupture of chortles, even among the
performers onstage. The house lights
were fully ablaze, because Shakespeare
wrote his plays with the intention that
his actors would see and engage with the
audience. At the American Shakespeare
Center, it’s serious Shakespeare with a
farcical twist and an occasional insider’s
quip, and it is luring devoted theatergoers
from around the country to this little
town in southern Virginia.
