Archives for November 30, 2004

It remains the policy of this blog to answer all correspondence that does not recommend anatomical impossibilities. (Sometimes an occasional e-mail does slip through the cracks, but that’s strictly accidental.) If you haven’t heard from me lately, though, please be patient. I’m chipping away at the accumulated contents of my e-mailbag, more or less randomly, but I doubt I’ll get everything answered for another couple of weeks. Keep reading and you’ll see why.

In the meantime, thanks as always for writing. It’s very much appreciated, and that goes for Our Girl, too.

Seeing as how I didn’t bring my iBook to Smalltown, U.S.A. (and good for me!), I wasn’t able to post the usual Friday-morning teaser for my Wall Street Journal column. This one was a doozy: I wrote about four different shows, two good and two bad.

Topping the list was Doubt:

The best new play of the season is about a Roman Catholic priest suspected of molesting a young boy. Don’t roll your eyes: I couldn’t believe it, either. Not only does the priestly sex scandal offer endless opportunities for tendentious pontification of one sort or another, but John Patrick Shanley, best known for his screenplay for “Moonstruck,” is a gifted but uneven playwright whose previous work has never rung my bell. Nevertheless, “Doubt,” which opened Tuesday at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Stage I, is that rarity of rarities, an issue-driven play that is unpreachy, thought-provoking, and so full of high drama that the audience with which I saw it gasped out loud a half-dozen times at its startling twists and turns. It’s this year’s “Frozen,” minus the plagiarism.

Actually, it’s not quite right to say that “Doubt” is unpreachy, since it starts with a sermon in which Father Flynn (Br

I forgot to mention that in addition to eating a lot of turkey (make that a whole lot of turkey), I consumed a pretty fair-sized chunk of art over the extra-long holiday weekend.

For openers, I read three new books, Meredith Daneman’s Margot Fonteyn: A Life, Ada Louise Huxtable’s Frank Lloyd Wright, and “Richard Stark”‘s Nobody Runs Forever, all of which I commend to your attention (and about all of which I’ll try to post at greater length next week). I also listened to Jim Hall’s brand-new CD, Magic Meeting, which I was lucky enough to hear recorded live at the Village Vanguard earlier this year. And not only did I take my mother to Ray, but I also rented two older movies that were new to her, Spellbound (the documentary, not the thriller) and Lilo & Stitch.

Now that I’m back in New York, I have some really serious consuming (and producing) just ahead of me. Here’s my week:

TODAY: First up is my Washington Post column, of which I have yet to write a word (it’s due this afternoon). Once I stuff that one in the bag, I’ll meet Galley Cat at Playwrights Horizons to see a preview of Rodney’s Wife, about which the only thing I know is that it stars David Strathairn, which may well be reason enough to go. We’ll see what the Cat thinks, though.

WEDNESDAY: To Studio 54 for Amon Miyamoto’s revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures, accompanied by a young friend who’s never seen a Sondheim show before. Boy, is she in for a surprise, no matter what she’s expecting….

THURSDAY: I’ll be spending the whole morning wrestling with my Wall Street Journal column for Friday, followed (I hope) by a nap. Then it’s off to The Triad to hear Julia Dollison, one of my very favorite young jazz singers. This particular one-nighter is a shakedown cruise for Dollison’s upcoming appearance at the International Association for Jazz Education’s annual conference, which will be held Jan. 5-8 in Long Beach, Ca. If you can’t go, come to the Triad instead. The music starts at 9:30, and I can’t think of a single good reason to be anywhere else. Look for me as close to the bandstand as possible.

FRIDAY: I’ll be seeing Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays with a Friend to Be Named Later.

SATURDAY: Another preview, this one of August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean.

SUNDAY: Yet another preview, La Cage aux Folles, preceded by brunch with the notorious Maccers, at the prospect of which I tremble nervously. Will I be cool enough to pass muster? Or will she stalk haughtily out of the restaurant, leaving me to quiver in the gutter? Eeeeeeee….

MONDAY: One more preview, Caryl Churchill’s A Number, starring Sam Shepard (I hope he hasn’t forgotten how to act, too).

TUESDAY: Collapse of middle-aged party. Memorial service to be announced later.

I haven’t even begun to sort out my accumulated snail mail, but I did make a point of opening an envelope from the National Endowment for the Arts, which turned out to contain a copy of the official press release announcing that the Senate has confirmed my appointment
to the National Council on the Arts.

(Incidentally, I neglected to mention in the general welter of Thanksgiving-related confusion that two other arty types, James K. Ballinger of the Phoenix Art Museum and Gerard Schwarz of the Seattle Symphony, were confirmed along with me. I’ve never met either fellow, and greatly look forward to doing so at my first NCA meeting in March.)

Tucked into the same envelope was a form letter from Dana Gioia, my new boss, warning me that I still have “several important forms to complete and return.” Seeing as how I’ve already chewed through a dictionary-sized stack of paperwork…but let’s not go there. I’m pleased, I’m proud, and I’m resigned to spending the next six years filling out forms of one kind or another at regular intervals. Such, I hear, is bureaucratic life.

“But the rising sun swallowed up the wind, and by half-past seven the next morning all that was left of the storm was the swell and a line of clouds low over the distant Gulf of Lions in the north-west; the sky was of an unbelievable purity and the air was washed so clean that Stephen could see the colour of the petrel’s dangling feet as it pattered across the Sophie‘s wake some twenty yards behind.