Archives for January 2006

Cheerio, cheerios! (This is a pretty considerable term of endearment in my book, but you’ll know you’re really in good when I call you my little rice chex.) Terry wanted me to tell you he’s back in New York but without benefit of a working computer, which, logistically speaking, is making meeting his deadlines highly challenging and blogging highly improbable. He hopes to be back later this week, the less late the better.

A wonderful time was had by all during Terry’s visit to Chicago. We spent Saturday and Sunday running around and taking things in before kicking back Monday and doing whatever we felt like. This amounted to very little. We ran some of my errands, watched a video, planted ourselves in the living room to read our books, went out to dinner, and read some more. This to me is the lap of luxury: sitting around with a friend reading books, making as much or as little conversation as you like because you’ve been friends long enough and well enough to enjoy shared silence as much as chatter. I once planned an entire vacation in Maine around this very activity, with another friend, and ended up discovering the glorious Dalziel and Pascoe in the process. This weekend was, of course, the first time I’d seen Terry since before he was sick, and it seemed especially right to spend some time simply sitting in a room together, laughing at the cat’s delicate snoring and reading each other the occasional highlight from our books. Normally during these trips, we barely pause to tie our shoes.

But the high-gear part of the weekend was excellent too. It began with a blistering, Bach-graced double-mandolin concert at Chicago’s comfy, intimate Old Town School of Folk Music–where I’d see damn near anything–and included as well two utterly absorbing plays at two favorite Chicago theaters. First it was Much Ado About Nothing at Chicago Shakespeare, airy and wry with an endearingly clownish Benedick and an imperturbable Beatrice. We then traveled south to the Court Theatre, in my own backyard, for a production of August Wilson’s “Fences” that served as my introduction to the play. And an auspicious meeting it was–a meticulously crafted yet rawly powerful production that’s especially distinguished by electrifying performances from each and every cast member. I can’t speak for Terry (he’ll say his piece on both plays in an upcoming WSJ column), but here’s a great American play I took my sweet time getting around to seeing, and this was a production to make me glad I waited.

Thanks for being patient with us earlier this week. One or both of us will be back soon with more blogging. And I still owe a bunch of you email, which I promise soon.

“I don’t really like Shakespeare on the screen at all–the shot is too big for the cannon. The later plays, like Lear, are too big even for the theatre.”

Laurence Olivier, interview, London Observer (1937)

I came back from New Haven long enough to take my ailing computer to the shop, then hit the road again for Chicago. Since then Our Girl and I have been tearing around town for the past couple of days, seeing shows of various kinds–I’ll let her tell you all about it the first chance she gets. I’ll be back in New York some time on Tuesday, and I hope I’ll be plugging back into the ‘sphere fairly shortly thereafter, equipment permitting. Meanwhile, go visit some of those other cool blogs listed in “Sites to See.”

Not much later.

“‘I know most men go in for love affairs,’ he said. ‘Some of them can’t help it. They can’t get on at all without women, but there are plenty of others–I daresay you haven’t come across them much–who don’t really care about that sort of thing, but they don’t know any reason why they shouldn’t, so they spend half their lives going after women they don’t really want. I can tell you something you probably don’t know. There are men who have been great womanizers in their time and when they get to my age and don’t want it any more and in fact can’t do it, instead of being glad of a rest, what do they do but take all kinds of medicines to make them want to go on? I’ve heard fellows in my club talking about it.'”

Evelyn Waugh, Sword of Honour

The Wall Street Journal has posted a free link to my latest “Sightings” column (it’s about the return of the e-book). To read it, go here.

Friday again, and I’m back in The Wall Street Journal, this time with reviews of two shows now playing in Washington, D.C., The Subject Was Roses and Damn Yankees:

Frank D. Gilroy has been in show business for a long time–he goes all the way back to the golden age of live TV drama and, more recently, was a pioneer of independent filmmaking–but it’s a safe bet that when the roll is called up yonder, he’ll be remembered for his play “The Subject Was Roses,” which has just been revived at the Kennedy Center. The sleeper hit of the 1963-64 season, it ran for two years on Broadway and bagged the Triple Crown of theatrical prizes: the best-play Tony, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize….

Revisiting the hit shows of yesteryear is often illuminating, not least because they sometimes prove on further acquaintance to have been more than merely commercial in their appeal. Such is the case with “The Subject Was Roses.” No, it isn’t a deathless masterpiece, but it’s a solid little job of dramatic work, a period piece that has outlived its period, and if the Kennedy Center revival leaves much to be desired, it’s still good enough to be worth seeing….

“Damn Yankees,” now playing at Washington’s Arena Stage, is one of those second-tier musicals of the ’50s that’s stageworthy enough to be revived with some frequency but whose score is too bland to be truly memorable. Even so, this 1955 tale of a paunchy, middle-aged baseball fan who cuts a deal with the devil to help out his beloved Washington Senators (the team, not the politicians) has its fair share of bright spots, and Molly Smith, the company’s artistic director, has given it an exemplary staging-in-the-round…

No link. To read the whole thing (which I heartily recommend), go to the nearest newsstand and spend a dollar on a copy of the Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with instant access to the complete text of my review, together with plenty of other worthy art-related stories.

I’m not really here. I’m on my way back from New Haven, where I saw two plays, visited the Yale Art Gallery and ate pizza (shhh!). Our Girl has kindly posted today’s items for me.

I’ll be flying to Chicago tomorrow afternoon to meet the lady in question, mere hours after my biweekly “Sightings” column is published in the “Pursuits” section of the Saturday Wall Street Journal. Here’s a little taste:

The e-book is back. So are the technophobes who swear it’ll never catch on. They were right last time, and they might be right this time, too. Sooner or later, though, they’ll be wrong–and when they are, your life will change.

The word “e-book” is short for “electronic book.” The concept isn’t new–the complete texts of countless classics have long been available on the Web in digitized form. (Seventeen thousand of them can be downloaded for free at www.gutenberg.org.) The catch is that until now, there hasn’t been a user-friendly way to read e-books. Few people enjoy reading book-length documents on a conventional computer screen, and though hand-held e-book readers went on the market six years ago, they were insufficiently convenient to use and failed to interest the book-buying public.

Now Sony has announced plans to market a paperback-sized e-book reader that makes use of E Ink, a new display technology…

As always, there’s lots more where that came from. See for yourself–buy a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and look me up.

Terry returns to New York tomorrow, but he’s asked me to warn all and sundry that his computer is out of commission and he’s not receiving his email. Speaking of which, I owe some of you email of my own, though I have no such excuse. You’ll hear from me tonight if I can keep the old eyes open, otherwise over the weekend.