Archives for December 21, 2007

It’s A Wonderful Life leaves Mr. Tingle va klempt but I tend to wander off halfway through. However, there are a few movies we always watch together this time of year: Thin Man (for the Christmas party scene); Wonder Boys (not technically a Christmas movie but it feels like one, and not just because of all the snow and sleet); and the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy (because nothing says “Merry Christmas!” like 10,000 Orcs on your doorstep).
The other Christmas-watching tradition calls for Mr. Tingle (who is a tolerant man) to trundle an old television with VCR attachment from our attic so I can watch a VHS tape of Gelsey Kirkland and Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing The Nutcracker. This year I intended to pair it with Mark Morris’s Hard Nut, which Terry recommended here a while back, but Netflix has alas, not obliged.
I plan to pop in here next week. But just in case: I wish you all a merry and joyful holiday!

• It’s hard to read this list of drinks inspired by Dickens novels and not want to head immediately to the store to pick up the ingredients for some Smoking Bishops. (via Bookslut.)
• Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder (so secondeth Strindberg).
I’ve not yet had absinthe, and I long to try a thimbleful. My adult self feels about it the way my kid self once felt about Turkish delight. As you’ll remember, Turkish delight is what the White Witch gives Edmund a packet of in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and it sounded so mysterious and delectable. I have a distinct memory of standing in front of the candy counter at the Marshall-Fields in Chicago as a child looking in vain for the tray of Turkish delight. (A few years ago a friend brought some home from a cruise in Greece, and I finally got to try some. It turns out that Turkish delight is made up of oddly nubby, jelly-like candies covered in powdery sugar. Not quite what I imagined — which was something even more snowy with a deep emerald center — but still very satisfying to eat.)
It’s funny how many of the food descriptions one reads as a child stick. For me it wasn’t just the Turkish delight from The Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe that I fancied, but also the buttery toast points and tea Lucy has with Mr. Tumnus. The blancmange Jo brings Laurie in Little Women. The acorn pancakes in My Side of the Mountain. And the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as well as the toad in the hole in Danny the Champion of the World.
Meanwhile, the list of drinks inspired by Dickens novels makes me want to re-read Pickwick Papers and make a list of all the food consumed in it. The club eats so many gluttonous meals, many of the components of which, if I remember correctly, are pleasantly strange and slightly disgusting to read about now.

I reviewed two plays in today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, one on Broadway (Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming) and one off (George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple, performed by the Irish Repertory Theatre). Here’s a preview.
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“What the hell was that all about?” said the friend who went with me to “The Homecoming” as we left the theater. The last scene of Harold Pinter’s best-known play hasn’t lost its power to reduce audiences to head-scratching confusion 40 years after it was first seen on Broadway. But even if you’re not sure what all of “The Homecoming” is all about, you’ll still get the message of the viciously comic revival now playing on Broadway–and you’ll revel in the work of six actors who definitely know what’s what….
Daniel Sullivan is one of New York’s most uneven directors, but when he’s hot, he’s hot, and his staging of “The Homecoming” cuts like a hacksaw. Ian McShane, Eve Best (who is a very great actress in the making) and Raúl Esparza have the showiest parts and make the strongest impressions, though no apologies need be made for their colleagues, or for Eugene Lee’s seedy set, which looks as though someone had worked it over with a wrecking ball….
Like so many of Shaw’s plays, “The Devil’s Disciple” is a sneaky piece of theatrical prestidigitation in which the shell of an old-fashioned Victorian melodrama is stuffed with decidedly un-Victorian notions about morality (“He has been too well brought up by a pious mother to have any sense or manhood left in him”). Director Tony Walton, who also designed the production, takes care to keep the pace brisk–not even the preacher is preachy–and the cast responds to his lightness of touch with acting to match. John Windsor-Cunningham comes close to stealing the show as the urbane General Burgoyne, but Lorenzo Pisoni and Curzon Dobell steal it right back from him, and Cristin Milioti catches the eye and ear in the supporting role of Essie, the bastard waif who loves Dick in her own desperate way….
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To read the whole thing, go here.

And though in tinsel chain and popcorn rope

My tree, a captive in your window bay,

Has lost its footing on my mountain slope

And lost the stars of heaven, may, oh, may

The symbol star it lifts against your ceiling

Help me accept its fate with Christmas feeling.

Robert Frost, “To a Young Wretch”