Archives for March 6, 2020

Mrs. T continues to recover smoothly from her double-lung transplant surgery. Her chest cavity, which was deliberately left open after the operation, was washed out and closed up last night, and the doctors at New York-Presbyterian Hospital told me afterward that the procedure was uneventful (as they expected it to be).

As for her new lungs, one of her nurses described them to me as “looking beautiful.” She is still deeply sedated and on a respirator, but the slow process of waking her up will commence at some point in the next day or two, and I hope to be by her side when she opens her eyes and realizes that she is (A) not dead and (B) has a brand-new pair of lungs.

I didn’t go to the hospital yesterday, though: I stayed home and spent several hours on the living-room couch, waiting for a call. As those of you who follow the news closely and are familiar with the geography of upper Manhattan may have already guessed, coronavirus has come to my neighborhood. Not only are two victims being treated at New York-Presbyterian, but Yeshiva University’s uptown campus, which is only a few blocks from the hospital and our apartment house, was closed until further notice when an undergraduate there tested positive for the virus.

I’m not an alarmist, and I’m well aware that any personal risk to me is nugatory. On the other hand, Mrs. T, unlike me, is in the highest possible risk category, and it struck me that under the circumstances, it might well be prudent for me to sit tight and wait just a bit longer before visiting her again. Besides, it’s a good time for me to stay home—I’m completely caught up on my work and have no more shows to see until Wednesday—and I can be at the hospital inside of fifteen minutes should anything unexpected happen.

For the moment, then, my plan is to continue resting up from the accumulated stresses of the past few months—and years. Last night, for instance, I sent out for Thai food and watched a Shirley Temple movie, John Ford’s Wee Willie Winkie. I’ll be seeing Mrs. T soon enough, and welcoming her back to the world.

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For previous reports on Mrs. T’s surgery and subsequent recovery, go here, here, here, and here.

To learn more about her rare illness, go here.

To find out how to become an organ donor, go here.

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway premiere of Katori Hall’s The Hot Wing King and the Broadway transfer of Girl From the North Country. Here’s an excerpt.

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Katori Hall’s plays remind me of a sign I once saw over the front door of an unpretentious little restaurant: “NOT FANCY, BUT GOOD.” Sure enough, there’s nothing fancy about the down-to-earth dramaturgy of Ms. Hall’s kitchen-sink chronicles of family life in all its varied aspects. All she does—if “all” is the word—is tell stories about ordinary men and women who, as Jack Webb said of the characters in “Dragnet,” sound “as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee.” Yet truth gushes out every time they open their mouths…

After praising “Saturday Night/Sunday Morning” (2008), “Our Lady of Kibeho” (2014) and “The Blood Quilt” (2015), I decided that Ms. Hall, who is 38, was one of the most promising American playwrights of her generation. With the off-Broadway premiere of “The Hot Wing King,”directed with galvanizing vitality by Steve H. Broadnax III, I’m now inclined to go a notch or two further…

Cordell (Toussaint Jeanlouis), the title character, is an amateur chef from Memphis who specializes in elaborately sauced chicken wings—his latest creation is Cajun Alfredo With Bourbon-Infused Crumbled Bacon—and is going for the gold at this year’s Hot Wang Festival. (That’s how they say “wing” down in Memphis.) He is also a straight-acting gay man who left his wife and children in St. Louis and moved to Memphis to live with Dwayne (Korey Jackson), a local hotel manager…

As for Dwayne, he has family problems of his own. TJ (Eric B. Robinson Jr.), his widowed brother-in-law, is a small-time thief who is neglecting Everett (Cecil Blutcher), Dwayne’s 16-year-old nephew. Everett in turn longs to escape the chaos of his own splintered home and live with Dwayne and Cordell. Dwayne is fine with that—but Cordell isn’t. That’s where things get complicated…

“Girl From the North Country,” Conor McPherson’s self-directed jukebox musical based on the songs of Bob Dylan, has reached Broadway after hugely successful runs in London and at New York’s Public Theater, slightly altered but essentially the same as the show I reviewed in 2018, calling it “a musical that does complete justice to the artistry of the great American songwriter whose genius inspired it.”…

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To read my review of The Hot Wing King, go here.

To read my review of Girl From the North Country, go here.

Steve H. Broadnax III talks about The Hot Wing King:

Clips from the Broadway transfer of Girl From the North Country:

Bing Crosby sings “Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da,” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, on an episode of The Hollywood Palace originally telecast by ABC on March 1, 1969:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“There must be a spice of mischief and wilfulness thrown into the cup of our existence to give it its sharp taste and sparkling colour.”

William Hazlitt, “On Depth and Superficiality”