April 8, 2008 | About Last Night

I hope I’m not any more vain than I need to be in order to get through the day, but I won’t deny that I find it encouraging to know that some people not only read my theater reviews but act on them. This posting, for instance, pleased me immensely. The author read what I wrote about the Acting Company, took her daughter to see their touring production of Moby-Dick Rehearsed, and enjoyed it immensely. Even better, so did her daughter.

It also pleases me to see my name in front of a Broadway theater. A blogfriend recently sent me a snapshot of the Gypsy marquee, beneath which hangs a sign on which my name and enthusiastic words can be seen by passers-by. Did it tickle me? You bet.

That, however, is mostly vanity, albeit of an innocent kind. Of course I like seeing my name in lights on Broadway, but I think I’m realistic about what it means, to me as well as others:

The kick I get out of seeing my name under a marquee is not to be confused–nor do I ever confuse it–with the justifiable pride a playwright or actor or director or producer takes in his work. It’s simply the forgivable (I hope) vanity of a small-town boy turned big-city critic who never imagined that such things would happen to him, and it’s a far cry from the vulturine posings of, say, Addison DeWitt.

I’ve lived in New York for twenty-three years, and I have yet to start feeling blasé about it. Nor do most of the New Yorkers I like best. As I wrote on the day this blog was launched in 2003, “I hear there are places to live that are almost as much fun as New York City, but I wouldn’t know–I live here, and I’m not going anywhere.”

The friend who sent me the snapshot of the Gypsy marquee moved here last year, and after we saw South Pacific together a couple of weeks ago, she told me that none of the excitement she felt on her arrival in Manhattan had diminished in the slightest.

May she always feel that way–and me, too.