Archives for August 24, 2007

Apropos of yesterday’s reflections on F. Scott Fitzgerald, a friend writes:

I have read Great Gatsby three times and still can’t feel why it slays people. In some funny way I think it is a guy book not a girl book. (I like Tender best.)
But Fitz’s life–that moves me! He had the guts to face his deterioration and write about it; to the end of his life he remained kind to other writers, and generous even to pricks like Hemingway; his naked admiration for their work and his appreciation for what it took from them to produce it; his never joining an ideological tong to protect his reputation, his never going left; his saying ‘life is a cheat and the conditions are those of defeat and the only thing that stands and redeems is work’ ; his love for the Murphys, for every excellent character he met; his admission of his failures; his attempt to make it work in hollywood; his note taking on thalberg; his brave open heart. I know he was an ass, but he was a wonderful endearing ass and in the end his life really did have some epic grandeur.
I just had to hold high the Stand Up for Scott Fitzgerald banner today.

I love this, and sort of agree (except about Gatsby!). The very last act of Fitzgerald’s life was edifying, and I hadn’t finished reading Matthew Bruccoli’s biography when I wrote that posting. But boy, did it take him a long, squalid, pathetic time to get there….

I was back in New York last week, shuttling between Broadway and Central Park to see Grease and A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

Kathleen Marshall needs no gimmicks to make a show a hit. Her revivals of “Wonderful Town” and “The Pajama Game” put her solidly in the running for the title of Broadway’s hottest choreographer-director. Why, then, did she sign up to stage the Broadway revival of “Grease” mounted by the creators of “You’re the One That I Want,” the snooze-inducing reality-TV series that let its viewers choose the leads of this production? M-O-N-E-Y, I assume. Nevertheless, I’m pleased (and relieved) to report that Ms. Marshall has emptied her bag of theatrical tricks onto the stage of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre. “Grease” may not be much of a show, but this revival is still fun to see–in spite of the limitations of one of its audience-anointed stars….
It takes a scene or two for Daniel Sullivan’s Shakespeare in the Park production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to get off the mark. But once it starts moving, it quickly picks up comic speed and turns into a show that’s very much worth seeing….
Three members of the cast give performances deserving of special mention. Martha Plimpton, lately of “The Coast of Utopia,” is commandingly hot-blooded as Helena, the spurned lover. Laila Robins, who made a powerful impression on me three years ago in Bryony Lavery’s “Frozen,” gives a breathtakingly sensual performance as Titania, Queen of the Fairies. As for Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who played the hapless Leaf Coneybear in the original production of “The 25th Annual Putnam Country Spelling Bee,” he’s been cast as Flute, the cross-dressing member of the rude mechanicals, in which capacity he brings off the near-unprecedented feat of stealing the show from Bottom….

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“I hold springtime in my arms, the fullness of it and the rinsing sadness of it.”
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (courtesy of The Rat)