I love food. I love musicals. I love pirates, a fact which everyone in hubby’s family now knows (thank you, Jagermeister). All of this adds up to the Beef and Boards production of Treasure Island being tailor made for me. It was always our intention to visit this local dinner theater as part of our Alphabet Dating journey, even before I discovered they were featuring pirates through the spring.

We had plenty of letter choices—dinner theater, play, musical—but when I won tickets last month it was obvious we would be using the alliteration for our B date.  I was very excited.  Him? Probably not so much.  Musicals aren’t really his thing, especially when he has to dress for the event.  I, personally, couldn’t wait to get dressed up, have dinner with my husband and catch a show. About pirates.

Then the weekend arrived and brought one of our biggest fights yet.  The night was rocky, the next day tough and I didn’t think we’d last to the evening much less feel up to a date.  We hashed through a lot over the course of the day and finally got to a pretty good spot.  It’s been one step forward, two steps back since we began the rehabilitation journey.  We’ve been on our current path for a month now so this time I’m convinced we’ve made lasting progress.

Anyway, the evening arrive and we were still married; I got all decked out (he told me I was beautiful—bonus points), he suited up (yum!), the babysitters arrived (Thanks, Mimi & Papaw!) and we set sail (ha—get it?) for our musical adventure.  I knew very little of what to expect, though I’ve been wanting to visit the place for years.  My parents and extended family all love Beef and Boards but that was the extent of my knowledge.  I didn’t even have real tickets, just an email telling me the show was at 8pm and the hostess had our reservation.

We arrived at 7:30 feeling pretty good about our promptness only to discover that the show starts at 8, yes, but the dinner buffet is 6-7:30.  Oops.  They were gracious to us and the waiter brought us each a plate anyway.  I couldn’t eat most of mine, due to my gluten intolerance, but I picked through what I could (off both plates, of course).  Turns out, the food wasn’t worth an extra hour of our time anyway. We did enjoy our intermission sundae but even that seemed to be nothing more than ice cream from a bucket with Hershey’s syrup.

The show, however, was well worth the price of admission even if it hadn’t been free. The production was fun.  The all male cast was a hoot.  The songs were lively and fun.  I loved that the stage direction kept putting pieces of the show right in front our table.  My one disappointment was that the gift shop was closed after the show.   I wanted a pirate flag, but it’s probably just as well that I didn’t add to our junk collection.  I’ll scrapbook the playbill instead along with the single, slightly blurry picture above.

The “rules” of Alphabet Dating specifically exclude movies because the point is to create experiences and reconnect.  That really requires something other than sitting next to one another in the dark.  It’s my game, though, so I make things up as we go. Still, the lighting and seating arrangement made the play acceptable for our purposes, I think.  We were able to cozy up together to enjoy the show and each another.

Here’s to 24 more letters (plus a lifetime) of enjoying one another.