Show Boating

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

My review of the pizzazzy Show Boat at Goodspeed Opera House will be posted any day now, but let’s get the sideshow out of the way first.

For atmospheric accoutrements, no theater in the state beats the Goodspeed. This current show is Show Boat, so already the elegant old Opera House ties-in aesthetically without even trying—the whole place overlooks the beautiful Connecticut River. (Not the Missippi, but it’ll do.)
Indoors, at the ground-floor bar, the Goodspeed is offering drinks dubbed “The Mighty Mississippi” (mint julep, bourbon & mint) and The Cotton Blossom (gin and orange juice). The kiddie cocktails have been renamed Cap’n Andy and his daughter Magnolia (Shirley Temple never performed on a show boat, did she?).

In the upstairs auditorium, the ushers wear straw hats, as they might have in the late-19th century era of Southern riverboats. For the previous Goodspeed show, the Gershwin-studded tap musical My One and Only, the ushers put on top hats. Will they don fedoras, I asked our usher, for the next show, the noir pastiche City of Angels? She was mysterious about it, or perhaps she just didn’t know.

One connection I was surprised not to see more prominently proclaimed regarding the Goodspeed’s Show Boat: Norma Terris, the actress whose very name festoons Goodspeed Musical’s other performance space, the Norma Terris Theatre in Chester, originated the role of Magnolia in Show Boat’s groundbreaking (uh, waterbreaking?) Broadway production of 1927.

Can’t help lovin’ her.

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Lenny Lives

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

Two Quotes About Lenny Bruce… plus recently rediscovered photos of Gary Cavello as Lenny Bruce in a production of Julian Barry’s play Lenny that I directed for New Haven Theatre Co. in February of 2000. (Other actors in the photos: Kim Mikenis in red, Rob Rocke in purple and Craig Gilbert in yellow.) Photos by Kathleen Cei.



In the early sixties I gained inspiration from two red see-through discs pressed by Fantasy Records. The first, Lenny Bruce’s Picnic in a Graveyard, will make me laugh for a hundred more years. For a long time I found myself imitating his nasal whine and sharp barbs. There’s not enough space here to talk about Lenny Bruce. In ’61 I hitched to New York to see him at the Village Vanguard. Chuck Isreals, a Brandeis classmate and bass player sharing the program with Lenny, introduced us. Even knowing his routines by heart, his spontaneity amazed me. Once, during one of his monologues, there was a loud thud on the floor above; he jumped on a chair, pounded on the ceiling, and screamed out, “Hey Frankenstein, quit jerkin’ off!” He completely cracked me up. Of all today’s comedians, only Richard Pryor can top the Bruce on quick-draw humor. ‘Tis a pity Lenny’s gone. I dedicated Woodstock Nation to him. We all know Lenny’s story. Mother fuckin’. Shit. Piss. An Anglo-Saxon hero.

 

—Abbie Hoffman, Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture (Perigree, 1980), page 123.

 

Back then, the Bay Area was just surging with bohemian-type artists and performers; they blanketed the coastline like the city’s famous fog. Raw, new talent emerged—people who were willing to push the satiric envelope just a little further. I became friends with emerging talents Ronnie Schell, Jorie Remus, and a young talented housewife-turned-comedienne, Phyllis Diller. They were all performing at another great club in San Francisco, the Purple Onion. I was so impressed with the talent of these people that I called Herbert Jacoby at the Blue Angel in New York. “Herbert!,” I told him excitedly, “you must book these people, they are all fantastic!” Eventually he did, along with another struggling unknown, Lenny Bruce.

Lenny was one of the sexiest men I had ever met. Extremely good-looking, with an incredible body that just oozed sex appeal (not a very common trait among most comics of the day). But Lenny was more than a comic. He had things to say. And a hell of a lot of those things were spelled with four letters. I went to see him at a local club called FACKS, where he was appearing with singer Jack Jones. I’d heard so much about him I just had to see this guy for myself. Like everyone else, I was shocked by his language. But Lenny Bruce was an extremely bright kid, an intellectual who used certain language only to make a point. His material was strictly for adults, but it was very funny and very powerful.

When, a little later, I was offered an engagement in Hollywood following Lenny on the bill, I told his agent that even though I thought Lenny was brilliant, with my material I could never follow someone with his kind of act. When we eventually did work together, it was at another club in Hollywood, the Interlude, and I opened for him. Despite out different performance styles, we became friends. One night in the dressing room,l I asked if he would write some material for me. Lenny pulled out the cardboard from a shirt he’d just gotten back from the laundry and scribbled out this satire of the song “Autumn Leaves” for me right there on the spot:

 

The autumn leaves pass by my window

And then the trees, and then the buildings

The automobiles fly by now

The hurricane has finally come

The river overflows

I must prove my love

A raft comes floating by, just room for one

I will miss you most of all,

My Darling, when autumn leaves start to fall.

It’s a dog eat dog world, right?

 

I wish I still had that piece of cardboard. I recorded his parody on an album called Boo Hoo Ha Ha, and Lenny received a royalty check for the sum of fourteen cents. When he showed it to me, I said, “So, you gonna cash it?” “No, he said, gleefully, “I’m going to keep it and fuck up their books.”

—from How I Lost 10 Pounds in 53 Years—A Memoir, by Kaye Ballard with Jim Hesselman (Back Stage Books, 2006, $24.95)

Categories: Obituaries, Rock Theater, Stand-Up Comedy | 1 Comment

Water Cooler Theater #2

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Christopher Arnott

A: I’m sorry, but the other side is being more stubborn than ever.
B: so is the other other side.
A: I’m afraid this stalemate may go on until the last minute.
B: The very last last minute.
A: darn this broken- down partisan government system.
B [cliffhanger voice]: Tune in tomorrow to see if the American
Government escapes eternal ruin! Will the…
C: Excuse me, senators? I’m with What’s left of the print news media. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but we don’t really work that way anymore.
[All leave the stage, mourning the death of the 24-hour news cycle.]

Categories: Politics, Water Cooler Theater | Leave a comment

The Late Nite Catechism 2 Review

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


Sister Strikes Again! Late Nite Catechism 2
By Maripat Donovan. Through Aug, 21 at Long Wharf Theatre Stage II, 222 Sargent Dr., New Haven. (203) 787-4282.

Nun but the brave.

It was a slow, sultry Wednesday—a lowkey night both at theaters and churches. But at Sister Strikes Again! Late Nite Catechism 2, The Late Nite Catechism 2 Review, all Hell was close to breaking loose.

Long Wharf Stage II has already hosted the first, third and fourth installments in the now five-strong LNC series. Bringing part two to a theater that’s already witnessed the comparatively extravagant and over-the-top Christmas edition (featuring an elaborate nativity play influenced by forensic crime dramas) is instructive. Sister Strikes Back is a welcome return to the natural pace and low-tech expectations which truly distinguish the shows. It’s a Catechism class. The topic today is sin. The laughs come not from watching fellow audience members putting on silly costumes and making fun of TV shows but in watching good-natured theatergoers struggle to answer stuff they learned in school, with wry and revealing commentary from an amusingly austere nun.

If you think that sounds too tame, you weren’t there July 27. The show’s indomitable Sister (Nonie Newton Breen), wearing her traditional habit and scowl, performed her accustomed browbeating of latecomers—a standard part of all audience-interactive shows, whether it’s Sister or Dame Edna or a strip club emcee doing the scolding. And the chastened theatergoers left!, fleeing the auditorium a minute or so after the umbrage. It’s possible, as Sister conjectured onstage, that the two chastised women had simply found themselves in the wrong theater. (Menopause—The Musical is playing on the Long Wharf mainstage just a few yards away from Stage II). But without the comfort of fact-gathering and audience-appeasing, the defection could easily have cast a chill on Late Nite Catechism 2 just minutes into the performance

Others might be unsettled by such unplanned, unresolved episodes, by I was riveted. I love watching Nonie Newton Breen work. I’ve seen a host of Sisters over the years, and Breen is among the best out there. The Second City vet has quick-wit improv skills—when learning that a misbehaving woman in the crowd was named Sandy, Sister volleyed “Sandy? That’s not a Catholic name! That’s a beach name!” But she also studies and memorizes. If you do happen to have a Christian name derived from the Bible or a saint, this Sister can reference it immediately. She drops current events references that really are current. Breen keeps to the two-act structure, teaches what’s required and even shows a filmstrip (“It’s all right, boys, I’ve got it,” she says while setting up the projector). But Nonie Newton Breen is so aware and in-the-moment that she makes it impossible to tell when Late Nite Catechism 2’s scripted material (by the original Sister, Maripat Donovan, who’s now written five full-length LNC shows) ends and the improvisations begin.

Did the exodus of a couple of audience members cause Sister to hold back? No, she made the wise choice to roar ahead and even up the ante on the interactions. A regular part of the act is the shushing of spectators (as if they were students at the titular church class; the set is a present-day yet antiquated schoolroom replete with blackboards, cursive handwriting samples and pictures of both Obama and that lionized Catholic presdent JFK). On the other hand, she regularly awards students who behave, or answer questions correctly, with tchotchkes. On this night she gave away a button reading “Thou Makest Jesus Vomit.” When a woman named Barbara rustled for something in her purse one time too many, Sister took the purse away from her—and later awarded it to someone else in the audience.

I love watching Nonie Newton Breen work. I love her delivery, her attitude, her teacherly control over a crowd. I love how she brings so much of herself to Late Nite Catechism while staying completely in character. I love how she educates while she entertains, rather than vice versa. I love how you she can be openly satirical without resorting to cheap insults. For a show rooted in the centuries-old tenets of a major world religion, Late Nite Catechism is remarkably open-minded and politically correct. Breen never lets it disintegrate into dogma or nostalgia.

The theater is a temple, and Late Nite Catechism is as good a place as any to get religious instruction. It’s a comedy show, certainly, but it’s also a subversive and progressive place to debate major issues of the day. A conventional nun would not refer to Episcopalians as “Catholics with cash,” deem the phrase Christian Science is an oxymoron, or explain the evolution of Judeo-Christian faiths in terms of a movie and its TV sitcom spinoffs: “If the Jewish relgion was American Graffiti, then the Catholics would be Happy Days and all other religions are Joanie Loves Chachi.”
What real Catholic leader would publicly extol Mother Teresa as “great with the lepers, even better with the fundraising,” then note that “she looks like Joe Garagiola.” And who outside the Vatican (or George Carlin) has ever felt comfortable identifying all-new confession-worthy “Sins for the New Millennium”? Number one: “Dining at Hooter’s.” Number Ten: “Having a child with your housekeeper, then waiting ten years to tell your wife.”

An underrated genre of experimental theater with several built-in danger elements, targeting audiences of lapsed or willing-to-laugh-at-themselves Catholics, the LNC series gets specific where shows like Nunsense and Sister Act merely skim the surface. It’s a classroom, all right—not just for catechism brush-ups but for performance studies.

Categories: Connecticut Theaters, Long Wharf Theatre, Reviews of Shows | 5 Comments

Little Theater for Little Women

Posted on July 31, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


I’ve had kids’ theater on my mind these days, and want now to acknowledge my awe for one of the best anthologies of theater BY children that’s ever existed.

Comic Tragedies was copywritten 1893 by Anna B. Pratt but the title page says “Written by ‘Jo’ and ‘Meg’ and acted by the ‘Little Women’.” A foreword by Meg (not in quotes this time) and dated “Concord, Mass. 1893” reminds the reader of how, in Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women, the sisters would write and stage plays for their own amusement, then explains:
From the little stage library, still extant, the following plays have been selected as fair examples of the work of these children of sixteen and seventeen. With some slight changes and omissions they remain as written more than forty years ago by Meg and Jo, so dear to the hearts of many other “Little Women.”
We then are presented with complete, multi-act scripts for:
Norna; or The Witch’s Curse
The Captive of Castile; or, The Moorish Maiden’s Vow
The Greek Slave
Ion
Bianca: An Operatic Tragedy
The Unloved Wife; or, Woman’s Faith

I had a copy out for months from the invaluable Institute Library, a private lending library here in New Haven. Nabu Press issued a glossy covered paperback last year for $24.20. But Comic Tragedies is also easily available on Project Gutenberg and other book-archive sites. It has even been recorded for LibraVox.

Scholarly commentary on the book is relatively scarce, considering the scads of theses that have been written about Little Women. Is Comic Tragedies a literary fabrication or as advertised, the actual works that inspired one of the imaginative highlights of Alcott’s famous novel?

Christine Anne Alexander and Juliet McMaster, in The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf appear to have the straight dope:

In 893, Anna Alcott Pratt published some of these amateur dramatics… Here, with editorial changes, were the real prototypes of the dramatics portrayed in Little Women. Unfortunately, Louisa’s part in composing these juvenilia cannot be accurately determined, since Anna, as a teenager, wrote too.

Lit scholars can pick apart the verbiage to declare which words might be Louisa. Little thespians will just enjoy performing them:

RIENZI: ‘Tis a wild and lonely spot, and ‘t is said strange spirits have been seen to wander here. Why come they not? ‘T is past the hour, and I who stand undaunted when the fiercest battle rages round me, now tremble with strange fear in this dim spot. Shame on thee, Rienziu, there is nought to fear.
[Opens a scroll and reads.]
Here are their names, all pledged to see the deed accomplished. ‘T is a goodly list and Constantine must fall when foes like these are round him.
[Ione appears within the glen.]
Ha! Methought I heard a sound! Nay, ‘t was my foolish fancy. Spirits, I defy thee!
IONE: Beware! Beware!
—From The Greek Slave

Categories: Books & Magazines, Children's Theater, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The Never Ending Orchard

Posted on July 30, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


OK, here, for what it’s worth (and I fully acknowledge the ridiculous elements of the concept) is the kid version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard I devised (in a single three-hour session) with a bunch of kids at the Never Ending Bookstore in February.
What’s missing from this excerpt is an opening burst of pageantry in which all the characters announce themselves and recite their main mantra-like line of dialogue. This segment plunges into the show a few scenes in, but then rides it right to its abandoned-butler conclusion.
One of these days I’ll post a follow-up production, a similarly structured adaptation of Aristophanes’ The Clouds.
I’m doing five more of these exhilarating dramatic workshops Aug. 1-5 from 2-5 p.m. at the same location, 810 State St. in New Haven. $5 a head to participate. chris@scribblers.us for details.

Categories: Children's Theater, European Theater | Leave a comment

Play in a Day—My Julian Marsh Moment

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


I’m gearing up for another round of my patented “Play in a Day” events, where I, and a bunch of kids of all ages, prepare and perform a theater classic in the space of three hours. This is an impromptu mid-rehearsal pep talk from my very first attempt at such a thing, a pint-sized variation of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard done during school break this past February. I’ll be posting parts of the actual performance here shortly.
An entire WEEK of Christopher Arnott’s Play in a Day events are happening Monday through Friday, Aug. 1-5, 2011, from 2-5 p.m. at Never Ending Books, 810 State St., New Haven. Each day, a different theater classic (Aristophanes! Moliere! Maybe Chekhov again!) will be adapted, designed, rehearsed and performed, within a three-hour session. Each show is staged separately; you can take part in one, some or all. Fee is $5 per person per day. Especially intended for children (all ages) but adults can be accommodated too. Email me directly at chris@scribblers.us for details, or just show up.

Categories: Children's Theater | Leave a comment

Lady Zeppo

Posted on July 29, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


Lady Blue Eyes: My Life With Frank
By Barbara Sinatra with Wendy Holden (Crown Archetype, 2011)

Not that I care nothing about Frank Sinatra, but the reason I got Lady Blues: My Life With Frank out of the library was that, before Barbara Ann Blakeley became Mrs. Frank Sinatra, she was Mrs. Zeppo Marx.
Few words are expended anywhere in print on the fourth, straight-man Marx brother. Zeppo left the act after their five Paramount films, never rated a biography, and never rated a biography. There are really only one Marx Brothers bios where Zeppo’s later life is given much ink at all; usually the historians limit themselves to Zeppo’s conduct during Groucho’s time with the controversial Erin Fleming. (Zeppo, countering his other siblings, supported Erin’s conservatorship of the ailing, smitten Groucho).
Barbara Sinatra’s book has pages of personal anecdotes about life with an aging Zeppo—how he behaved toward her son from her previous marriage, the extent of the fortune he’d gained from his manufacturing and inventing careers. (Other books downplay these lucrative pursuits, tending to mention his exploits as a Hollywood agent instead.) There are suggestions that Zeppo could be callous and shallow, but also many instances of his renowned sense of humor. (The more hyperbolic bios of the brothers trumpet that Zeppo was the funniest Marx offstage.) We experience Zeppo’s feelings at the death of his eldest brother, Chico. Since Barbara began seeing Frank Sinatra while still married to Zeppo, there’s a steady chronicle of how and why she and Zeppo drifted apart.
Of course, there are stories about the other Marxes. There’s a photo of the “future brothers-in-law” at Zeppo & Barbara’s engagement party. In the text, Groucho appears as foulmouthed as he does in Richard Anobile’s wonderful warts-and-all Marx Brothers Scrapbook. When, one Easter, Barbara introduces Groucho to a family with nine kids that Zeppo had out to lunch so that he could get the electric chord organ he’d decided to buy for Barbara as soon as possible, Groucho sauntered by, noticed the number of offspring, and commented “Been doing a lot of fucking, haven’t you?” Meanwhile, Harpo’s reputation as the sweetest of the Marxes is unruffled.

As a reader who came looking in Lady Blue Eyes for tidbits about stars other than Sinatra, I was further rewarded by an item where Barbara recalls working on a TV show with Ernie Kovacs—an opportunity she’d gotten through Zeppo. “Ernie was wearing a a huge false mustache, which I was supposed to find ticklish when I kissed him.”
Some of the reminiscing is supported by bad scholarship—Barbara (or her collaborator Wendy Holden) writes that Harpo’s “given name was Arthur,” when in fact it was Adolf and was later changed. But Barbara Sinatra doesn’t stint with her memories of her husbands before Frank. This is not a reference book but a dishy reminiscence, and as that it hits its Marx.

Categories: Books & Magazines, Vaudeville | 1 Comment

Long Day’s Journey Into Nightclubs

Posted on July 27, 2011 by Christopher Arnott




The phenomenon of a reunited band performing one of their old studio albums live in its entirety is not a new one. It goes back years or decades depending on how you define the craft. But now the practice has become not only ubiquitous but creatively stifling.

Bands which, often for good reason, split up and moved on to more individually expressive or stylistically various follow-up project are forced to regroup and pretend to recapture their younger selves, for fans who can’t imagine them any other way and who won’t let the artists expand and move on. More than that, the performances are rethought to mimic the convenient package of the music’s most popular packaged format, the studio album.

This retro-fitted formalism is even more apparent when the shows are of albums which grew organically over years of touring, and which were never intended to be performed as concept albums (the rock equivalent of scripted performances).

Two prime examples of such devolved, devalued rock theater are coming up in Connecticut in October.

The Lemonheads revisit It’s a Shame About Ray Oct. 13 at Daniel Street in Milford for a mere $15. Evan Dando’s commercial breakthrough was nearly 19 years ago.

The Pixies are performing their 1989 album Doolittle, with a third act of “related B-sides,” Oct. 29 at the Palace Theater in Waterbury, the same venue which gets the “Best of Broadway” theater tours in that area.

Ray was The Lemonheads’ second album and Doolittle was The Pixies’ third. Both were extensively reshaped in the recording studio. In the case of the Lemonheads, the album’s most familiar track—a hit-video cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”—was added to the CD after its initial release. (Theater geeks know that the record also contains a cover of the Hair tune “Frank Mills.”)

As someone who still looks for spontaneity in live performance, I find this trend of constraining the time frames and set lists of once-uninhibited rock bands to be disillusioning and dispiriting.

The ultimate caveat for putting one’s creativity on hold in favor of crowdpleasing security was published over half a century ago, about a numbing type of performance from decades earlier:

That God-damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in—a great money success—it ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune. I didn’t want to do anything else, and by the time I woke up to the fact I’d become a slave to the damned thing and did try other plays, it was too late. They had identified me with that one part, and didn’t want me in anything else. They were right, too. I’d lost the great talent I once had through years of easy repetition, never learning a new part, never really working hard. Thirty-five to forty thousand dollars net profit a season like snapping your fingers! It was too great a temptation. Yet before I bought the damn thing I was considered one of the three or four young actors with the greatest promise in America. I’d worked like hell. … I was wild with ambition. …
My good bad luck made me find the big money-maker. It wasn’t that in my eyes at first. It was a great romantic part I knew I could play better than anyone. But it was a great box office success from the start—and then life had me where it wanted me—at from thirty-five to forty thousand net profit a season! A fortune in those days—or even in these.
[Bitterly.] What the hell was it I wanted to buy, I wonder, that was worth—Well, no matter. It’s a late day for regrets.
—James Tyrone, in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

Categories: Rock Theater | 1 Comment

Sci-Fi Shakespeare: Four novels

Posted on July 26, 2011 by Christopher Arnott


William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Graphic Novel
Illustrated by Tony Leonard Tamai with Alex Nino. Script by Arthur Byron Cover. (Puffin Books 2005)
Most graphic novels based on classic lit, whether the original source is play or book, are content to let the medium be the message. They refrain from adding new interpretive spins on the material, trying not to stray from what they’ve determined are accessible mainstream renditions. For no good reason, they hold themselves back.
Not William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Graphic Novel. It’s set in “Stardate: 1040.” The warriors ride on flying dragons. There are at least a dozen MacBeth graphic novels out there, including a modern “Manga Shakespeare” adaptation with ninja light sabers. But none goes so far as this one.

Available through Amazon, you can also find William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: The Graphic Novel in a lot of libraries. I love that it bears this statement on its cover: “For sale in the educational market only.” Thanks for casting Macbeth with dragons and robots, guys, then chilling the buzz with that word “educational.”


Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak (1976, Berkeley Medallion Books)
The Shakespeare of the book’s title is an impostor, but he’s done more than borrow the playwright’s name. He’s started his own sort of Prospero-esque existence with aliens and robots. Moreover, he’s scrawled his memoirs in the margins of a copy of The Collected Works of William Shakespeare. The venerable Clifford Simak’s prose can be absorbed quickly, but that doesn’t mean it’s not deep. There are lots of comments and tangents that allude to Shakespeare, even though his world—and ours—is long gone in this tale of future survival.


Tomorrow and Tomorrow, by Charles Sheffield (1997; I’ve got the 1998 Bantam Spectra paperback edition).
Charles Sheffield is classified as a writer of “hard science fiction.” That means his plots rely on “hard science,” speculation based on proven theories which govern the world as we know it. For some fiction-lovers, however, it just means they’re hard to get through. This one has a 34-page appendix explaining Big Bang Theory, gravitational force, the stability of protons and even the scientific basis for the existence of God.
Too much like school for me. On the plus side, the title and many of the chapter headings derive from Shakespeare: “Brave New World”; “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments”; “These our actors, as I foretold you…”;

Other headings come from Kipling (“These were never your true love’s eyes”; “There’s trouble in the wind, my boys”), Wilde (“Yet each man kills the thing he loves), Masefield (“A wild call and a clear call”), Huxley (“Brave new world”), Coleridge (“Her lips were red, her looks were free…”), even Wilfred Owen (“Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to death”). Oh, and Homer: huge sections of Tomorrow and Tomorrow are labeled “Odyssey” and “Iliad.”

Overall, more physics than Shakes, though all those lit references (uncredited and unexplained, unlike the sciencey parts) give Tomorrow and Tomorrow a polymath quality that’s not just math.

Too Too Solid Flesh by Nick O’Donohoe (1989 TSR Inc.)
A fantastic “science fiction murder mystery” about an android theater troupe created to perform classic drama for jaded Manhattanites of the future. There’s even a character named Capek, referencing the author of the robot play R.U.R.

Actors suffer the same indignities as they do now:

“Simulas killed live acting the way talking film killed silent film, the way color almost killed black and white, the way synth killed live music.” He added bitterly, “Nobody will pay new actors now. “Horatio looked back at Hamlet. “I thought you knew.”
“But our audience.” Hamlet gestured to the seats. “The people who come night after night to see us. Surely there’s still a demand—“
Horatio shook his head. “There’s an old line from a siumula—I think it used to be a movie: ‘Not even Shakespeare could watch Hamlet three nights in a row.’ Some people watch you because they’re LabTeks. The rest probably came because androids are a novelty, or because they want sex. They can’t care about live theater anymore.” He added gently, “I’m sorry, my lord.”
Hamlet dropped his eyes. “I wondered why they hardly ever clapped.”

Categories: Books & Magazines, Lists | 2 Comments