Archives for December 30, 2005

Friday again, but this week I didn’t review any new plays in my Wall Street Journal drama column. Instead I took a look back at American theater in 2005:

What’s wrong with Broadway? Nothing–and everything. Yes, I saw several Broadway shows I liked in the year just past, and a few that I loved. But only one of them, Joe Mantello’s revival of “Glengarry Glen Ross,” originated there. With that lone exception, all of the plays, productions and performances that impressed me most in 2005 came from Off Broadway, England or out of town.

Such is the new reality of American theater. Given the fearsome costs of mounting a Broadway production, nobody in his right mind is likely to gamble on a property that doesn’t already have a solid track record. So in looking back on the year’s highlights, I’ve decided to give Broadway a miss. Readers of this column already know how well I thought of “Doubt,” “The Light in the Piazza,” “Sweeney Todd” and “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” What were the other must-see shows and performances, in New York and elsewhere?

No link, so for the answer, go out and buy a copy of today’s Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with instant access to the complete text of my drama column (along with lots of other art-related stories). Start the year right!

UPDATE: The Journal has just posted a free link to this column. To read it, go here.

I’d tell you what I did all week, except that I didn’t do much of anything. I got eight hours of sleep every night and had breakfast every morning. I wrote two pieces, taking my time with both of them. I read a couple of books (right now I’m midway through Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede) and watched a half-dozen old movies. I took my mother out to dinner twice, eating as sensibly as it’s possible to eat in southeast Missouri, not many of whose restaurants are heart-healthy. (If you know anything about Smalltown, U.S.A., you won’t be surprised to hear that I stayed as far away as possible from this one.) I talked on the phone to Our Girl and a few friends with whom I hadn’t spoken since I went into the hospital, but for the most part I fell pleasantly out of touch with the world.

That was my week, and now it’s over. I’ll be spending most of today making my slow way from my mother’s house in Smalltown to my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I’m reliably informed that several bags’ worth of snail mail await me. (Yes, it’s mostly press releases, but apparently it looks intimidating.) I have a play to see on Saturday afternoon and another on Monday evening. I have pieces due next Tuesday and Thursday, and I head up to Boston a week from today to cover a revival of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit.

At first blush it sounds as if nothing has changed–and yet everything has changed, for I know that in between these various events I must live my life very differently, if I want to live at all. I have an appointment with my cardiologist on Tuesday. I expect him to lecture me sternly on all manner of things, and I mean to do just as he says. My list of New Year’s resolutions is growing fast: I do solemnly swear to eat breakfast every day, go to the gym every weekday, spend a little time enjoying the Teachout Museum every afternoon, pay a visit or two to Central Park every week…et cetera, et cetera. I’m full of good intentions–how could I not be? But this is the most important one of all: I promise not to fall back into my old ways the first time I slip up. Because I will, repeatedly. Learning to live differently is no small task, least of all for a middle-aged workaholic accustomed to doing as he pleases, and New York is full of temptations.

No sooner will I step off the plane Friday afternoon than I’ll feel the overwhelming urge to rev up my own engines, to rush back to my apartment and empty all those mailbags and start calling up everyone I know. Only I won’t. I’ll sit down, look happily at the art hanging on my living-room walls, and wait for the knot of tension inside my head to start unwinding. Then I’ll take Cole Porter’s advice: Why don’t we try staying home?

That’s my plan, anyway. Wish me luck–and a happy New Year!

“A job is home to a homeless man.”

Clifford Odets, The Country Girl