Archives for 2007

I still feel lousy. I hate colds.

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review the four shows I saw in California last week, Speed-the-Plow at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, The Four of Us at the Old Globe in San Diego, Life Is a Dream at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, and Hedda Gabler at American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco:

Going to Los Angeles to see David Mamet

My

“Illness is the doctor to whom we pay most heed; to kindness, to knowledge, we make promise only; pain we obey.”

Marcel Proust, Cities of the Plain

Here

“All my life I

I seem to have caught a cold. No doubt I picked it up last weekend in an airplane cabin, which doesn’t make me any happier about it. How could I possibly have gotten sick just when I have to spend the whole day writing about Tom Stoppard for Commentary, followed by a trip to the theater district to see Alfred Molina in Howard Katz? Damn, damn, damn.

Ah, well, the hell with it. In the immortal words of James Burnham, if there’s no alternative, there’s no problem. Back to work.