Books & Magazines
Theater Week
Unusual number of theater references in this week’s (May 20) Entertainment Weekl. Especialy considering the Tony nominations were part of last issue. And that this isn’t even one of those weeks where EW’s monthly “Theater” section runs. • Tony Kushner’s The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures gets … Continue reading
Theater Book of the Week
The Best American Short Plays 2008-09 Edited by Barbara Parisi (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books/Hal Leonard, 2010. 350 pages) I’ve been putting off writing about this most recent volume in the for months, for a very bad reason—I’ve been enjoying it too much. How selfish of me. Forgive me for not sharing sooner. But in … Continue reading
Five Trashy Theater Novels
From the vast Christopher Arnott Collection of Trashy Theater Literature Dream Street (1946, Avon) by Robert Sylvester, the theater gossip columnist for the New York Daily News. From the back cover: Jake picked himself one luscious ingénue, Penny Farmer, from the thousand pretty faces on Broadway and set out to send her skyrocketing to fame … Continue reading
R.I.P. Arthur Laurents
I spent an hour and a half on the ‘phone yesterday with Stephen DeRosa, an actor I’ve long admired. DeRosa’s coming to Hartford later this month. DeRosa and I talked for an hour and a half, about many many things. But mostly he gushed and gushed about the greatness of Arthur Laurents. I shared his … Continue reading
Favoritism Thing
Otherwise Known as the Human Condition—Selected Essays and Reviews by Geoff Dyer (Graywolf Press, 2011). This 421-page collection of his essays shows Geoff Dyer to be a critic of varied tastes and exceptional range. (He’s equally renowned as a novelist.) The theater doesn’t seem to be one of his areas of expertise, however. Judging by … Continue reading
Water Works
The current issue of the Atlantic—the first annual “Culture Issue” for the 153-year-old magazine—features a short discussion with playwright Sarah Ruhl and set designer Scott Bradley about how she conceived, and he brought to vivid stage life, this stage direction from her mythic update Eurydice: The sound of an elevator ding. An elevator door opens. … Continue reading