Archives for June 2006

A reader writes, apropos of Terry’s recent trip to
Chicago:

Dear OGIC and Terry:

No time for hot dogs, but I had a day in Chicago worthy of you both
yesterday. I put the “Gone Fishing” sign on the door and lit out early
from Milwaukee to Chicago, where I caught the matinee Henry IV at the
Chicago Shakes. Terry, I’m with Harold Bloom on Falstaff, meaning I
think more of him and his code of life-affirming values and less of Hal
than you do, but it speaks volumes for how wonderfully this play was
done–and of how great the play itself is–that what I saw yesterday
supports my interpretation as well as your own. And thanks for the tip
on the box lunches–it sure beat the power bar I would have been
eating otherwise.

It was then on to Hyde Park, for an evening with Lettice and Lovage. I
thought the plot was a bit spotty, but the deadly earnest and real
nature of the dialogue, combined with large dollops of humor and
tremendous acting, made it a perfect complement to the Shakespeare.

OK, so I didn’t get back to Milwaukee until 1 this morning. And yes, I
had to get up for work at 6. And yes, I’m exhausted as I write these
words. But I wouldn’t trade my day for anything in the world. There
are few things in life as wonderful as good theater. One of them is
knowing that there are people like the two of you to whom I can write
and on whom I can count to understand exactly what I mean.

And another is having readers like this. Many thanks.

“No artist–like no public figure–should be taken at his own word.”

Clement Greenberg, letter to Irving Sandler, April 5, 1971

Late to the party as usual I’m sure, but I’ve finally discovered Abe Books and am pretty excited. The first thing I did with the site was to search for five out-of-print Reginald Hill novels that I’d skipped over in working through the Dalziel-Pascoe series. This week they’ve been trickling in from five booksellers in five different states, all of this arranged in about ten minutes on the Abe site. Last night I started reading a widely adored one, Deadheads, whose out-of-print status has seemed especially inexplicable, and which arrived in the form of a 1983 Signet paperback that cost more to ship than to buy–but we’re still talking in the neighborhood of $5, and hey, I found it. Already in the first dozen pages I’ve been treated to lines like this:

Dalziel’s eyes glittered malevolently in his bastioned head like a pair of medieval defenders wondering where to pour the boiling oil.

Oh frabjous Abe!

Overheard yesterday at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival:

– Middle-aged woman in socks and sandals: “Have you seen The Diary of Anne Frank yet? I decided to go, even though I don’t like seeing depressing shows–George Bush already has me depressed enough.”

– Older woman: “It says here in the program that William Inge–he’s the man who wrote this play, honey–was

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Ashland, Oregon, having just returned from a performance of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel (a nice coincidence, seeing as how I went to Baltimore on Sunday to watch CenterStage perform another of her plays, Crumbs from the Table of Joy). It was a long trip–twelve hours, portal to portal–but Ashland, a resort town snuggled in the middle of the Rogue River Valley, proved to be refreshingly lovely, as did the Ashland Springs Hotel, the place where I’m staying, with which I am well pleased.

I realized as I prepared to depart from Newark very early on Wednesday that I was embarking on my first transcontinental flight since I went to San Francisco to cover the world premiere of Jake Heggie’s operatic version of Dead Man Walking for Time. (That was in the long-ago days when Time still took note of such things.) I was already afraid to fly in 2000, and a few years later my late-blooming anxiety was on the verge of becoming a full-blown, incapacitating phobia. I didn’t want to rely on drugs in order to keep on flying, so I embarked instead on a rigorous course of psychotherapy. Now, 9/11 notwithstanding, it appears to have paid off. I flew from Newark to Denver to Oregon without the slightest twinge of anxiety. May it always be so.

Not having been to the West Coast in six years, I’d forgotten how compulsively beautiful the American West is when seen from the air. I spent the last two and a half hours of the trip with my nose pressed to the window, goggling at the geographic marvels passing in review beneath me, the words of the psalmist running through my head: What is man, that thou art mindful of him? Alas, I’ve never beheld such wonders other than in movies and from the windows of airplanes. Maybe I’ll do something about it, now that I’m fifty.

For the next few days, though, I’ll be spending most of my time sitting in aisle seats without a mountain view. I have four more plays to see between now and Saturday morning, when I return to New York and resume my regular duties. I’ll do my best to keep in touch between now and then, but I’ve been on the go for twenty hours straight as I write these words, and the very next thing I need is a good night’s sleep!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Chicago* (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– Faith Healer* (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:

– Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 25)

– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here, closes July 2)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, reviewed here, closes July 2)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:

– Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes Sunday)

“Beauty must be a byproduct of some other intention.”

Robert Motherwell (quoted in Irving Sandler, A Sweeper-Up After Artists)