The Global Search for a Theater in Balboa Park

Our group was going on Saturday evening to see Neil Simon’s new play, “Jake’s Women,” at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park. We were to dine in a restaurant near the theater.

Balboa Park is about as big as Connecticut, and poorly signed. We drove around curving streets through miles of grassy knolls and saw no sign of the theater. First we stopped and asked a young couple sitting in a parked car. They were eating. They said they were lost, and thought they might as well eat; keep their strength up.

Next we stopped a man walking. He turned out to be an Australian who had no idea where he was. Then we stopped a young woman walking with a little girl. She said she was not lost, but she didn’t know where she was in relation to the Old Globe.

We found it finally by sheer perseverance, or else luck.

Times critic Sylvie Drake has already dealt astutely with “Jake’s Women” in her review. All I will add is that I usually enjoy dramas in which the main male is more of a cad than I am; it makes me feel more decent by comparison. I really believe that I am a nicer man than Jake, less self-absorbed and less egotistical. So, whatever its shortcomings may be, the play left me feeling better about myself. I really couldn’t see why Jake’s six women clung to him. The jerk.

But it was a pleasant experience. We could hear every word in the little theater, and Steve Baer, our driver, was superb in finding his way back to the hotel. We capped the evening with a little party.

Since the hotel’s grill was closed, my wife and I set out on foot the next morning to find a place for breakfast. There was a light rain. We walked down E Street to 4th Street and turned toward Broadway. San Diego has a homeless problem. We were beset by several panhandlers. Many wore knit caps and carried canvas bags or bedrolls. A few were women. One man sitting against a building asked me mechanically for a nickel and said, “Thank you” when I failed to oblige. I felt cheap. Another man, sitting on a bench in Horton Park beside a woman, said wryly, “Could you spare $100?” I complimented him on aiming high, but I didn’t have $100 and I felt that giving him a lesser amount would be demeaning.

We finally ate in a Carl’s Jr. I have had good food in Carl’s Jr., but our breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon was not one of the memorable breakfasts of my life. Street people kept walking through the restaurant and congregating at the exits.

Afterward we explored the new Horton Park Plaza, an opulent shopping center. We wandered into an art gallery and were approached by no fewer than three salespersons (one being a woman) who must have zeroed in on us because of my wife’s elegant seaweed green ultra-suede suit. They probably thought we were rich. (My wife ordered the suit aboard the QE2 from a Hong Kong tailor.) We looked at two LeRoy Niemans, one priced at $75,000, the other at $100,000. A salesman assured us that Nieman was really peaking, and that the prices could only go up. Remembering the hideous rugs we had bought in Morocco for $1,300, I decided against making an investment.

The Committee of Professional Women champagne brunch in the Picasso Room at the hotel was better than breakfast. Having had my quota of eggs already, I had mostly champagne.

Then we walked to the Civic Theater, past the beautifully restored U.S. Grant Hotel, to see Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment.”

The plot is rather thin. Marie was adopted by this French regiment as an infant. She loves them all and they love her. She believes that war is the highest moral good.

Then she falls for a civilian. But it turns out she is the daughter of the local marquis, who snatches her away and arranges for her to marry a rich German princeling.

Meanwhile, her civilian joins the regiment. I don’t want to give it away, but it ends quite happily; the soprano does not jump off a parapet onto a trampoline. The music is light and melodic, and there is a lot of coloratura.

Driving home, I felt culturally uplifted.