I can’t go on. I’ll go on.

 
Last night I went to see Riverdance with my reluctant wife.  I enjoyed it, its inoffensive well produced hokum; the circus comes to town.

After to show we got a taxi home.  Little did I know that when I got in the cab I was stepping through a portal to a parallel universe.

The taxi driver was a youngish guy and talkative, he knew his job.

“Were you at Riverdance tonight?” A good solid opening gambit.
“Yep.”  I replied.
“What did you think?”
“I liked it, well produced.  A real machine.”
“Do you go to the theatre often?”
“Sure, been a few times this year.”

This is where things began to get a little strange.  The taxi driver continued the conversation.

“Did you see anything good?”
“The Price was great.”  I replied.  It was great.
“I went to see that myself,” the taximan responded, “I thought that the old guy Robert Prosky was excellent, a real surprise seeing him there.  Arthur Miller’s writing is really clever.  Did you see ‘All my Sons’ in the Abbey last year?”      

I was stunned.  Where is my lecture on the dangers of the darkie?  Why am I not listening to a diatribe beginning with “do you know what’s wrong with…”?  I answered his question.

“No.”
“Should have done.  I went to see Godot as well.  I was reading it at the time but it was much better on stage.”

Now I was being straight-up out-flanked.  I have never read Beckett, I fell asleep watching the DVDs.  Time to move the conversation.

“Pygmalion is in the gate at the moment,” was my attempt at moving the topic along.
“Yeah, I want to see that.  Have you seen the 1930’s movie of it?  It’s the definitive version in my mind.  My Fair Lady is poor in comparison.”
“Haven’t seen it.”

The conversation continued as the driver told me that he was just back from seeing Bob Dylan in Seville, spent sometime in San Diego where is saw Bob again. Bob sang a few Warren Zevon numbers.  Warren was at the gig.   He also talked about WZ appearances on Letterman.    

We arrived home.  I tipped.