I boarded a train for Connecticut at Penn Station last Friday afternoon to embark on a long weekend of playgoing. A half-hour later the engine failed, and we crawled back to the station to get a new one. I arrived in Hartford three hours late, having spent the preceding five hours sitting in a jam-packed Amtrak car without benefit of air conditioning.
From that moment on, things started going wrong, and kept going wrong. I presented myself at a rental-car counter in a suburban mall the following morning–and spent fifteen increasingly frustrating minutes waiting for a clerk to materialize. The overworked, well-meaning clerk considerately upgraded me to a convertible–and by the time I got where I was going, I had a nice rosy sunburn. I went looking for lunch in Lenox, Massachusetts, home of Shakespeare & Company–and discovered that there is nowhere to park within the city limits on Saturday afternoons. (No, I’m not exaggerating for a laugh. When I say nowhere, I mean nowhere.) I showed up for a matinee of The Merry Wives of Windsor that I’d mistakenly thought was supposed to start at two o’clock–and found out from the friendly young lady at the box office that it actually started at three.
When I awoke the next day and realized that I had begun the lengthy, exasperating process of passing a kidney stone, it occurred to me for the first time that I might possibly be in a Philadelphia. Anyone familiar with the one-act plays of David Ives will know what I’m talking about, and tremble with awestruck sympathy. In The Philadelphia Ives describes with sadistic relish the kind of day in which “no matter what you ask for, you can’t get it.” This unhappy circumstance, a character explains, is a metaphysical state of mind known as “being in a Philadelphia.” Had I fallen all unknowing into such a dire condition? I nervously swallowed a handful of Tylenol, drove north to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown–and saw as I approached the museum grounds that hundreds of children were playing on the front lawn. It was Family Day. Now I knew: I was in a Philadelphia.
Once I accepted my fate and prepared for the worst, I wondered if perhaps I might only be in the suburbs of Philadelphia, where you get half of what you ask for. Yes, the Clark was jammed–but admission is free on Family Day, and The Clark Brothers Collect: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings, the show I’d come to see,
was every bit as eye-popping as its reviews had promised. Yes, I spent the evening sitting under the Hudson Valley Shakepeare Festival tent, watching the company perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream in ninety-degree weather as I squirmed in discomfort–but I got a good dinner beforehand, and the kidney stone exited my person after the show without further incident. Yes, the air conditioner in my hotel room was on the blink–but the staff of the Hudson House Inn installed a new window unit while I was watching the play, and thereafter I slept deeply and well. Yes, I’d seen three Shakespeare plays in thirty hours–but seeing Merry Wives, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Hamlet back to back is its own reward.
I arose on Monday, breakfasted on a sunny porch overlooking the Hudson River, and drove back to Connecticut along green country roads, certain that I was on my way out of the suburbs of David Ives’ metaphysical city of frustration. Only time will tell, but as of Tuesday morning, I haven’t experienced any further disasters or half-disasters. On the other hand, I’ve still got to write my review, the country home where I’m staying this week has yet to install a high-speed connection to the Internet, and it’s going to be even hotter than it was last week….