Archives for October 2008

5 x 5 Books … is a recommendation of five books that appears regularly in this space. Last Halloween, author Kelly Link and husband Gavin Grant, publishers of Small Beer Press, were kind enough to share spooky and not-so-spooky tales for Halloween reading. (If you missed it, here’s Kelly’s list and here’s Gavin’s.) If you’ve ever been to one of Kelly’s readings, or met her, you’ll know she’s a generous booster of other people’s work — and that her book recommendations are always the best. So it’s great to have her return with another 5 x 5 of Halloween reading for About Last Night. Kelly’s the author of three short-story collections, the most recent of which is the YA collection Pretty Monsters, itself an excellent choice to bring home this Halloween weekend.
1. Painted Devils by Robert Aickman. This collection is worth picking up for the short story “Ringing the Changes” alone, but I’ve never read an Aickman story that didn’t leave me unnerved and afraid of the dark.
2. Be My Guest by Rachel Ingalls. Like Aickman, Ingalls’ short stories will simultaneously unsettle and satisfy. For this list, I’ve picked her pair of novellas published as Be My Guest, but the collections The Pearl Killers and I See a Long Journey would also be great starting places.
3. Yoshitoshi’s Thirty-Six Ghosts by John Stevenson. This book collects a series of Taiso Yoshitoshi’s ukiyo-e (woodblock prints). There are monsters, creatures from Japanese folklore, and some really terrifying ghosts. The text accompanying each print gives provides background on the folklore that Yoshitoshi drew on.
4. Resume With Monsters by William Browning Spenser. This isn’t just one of the best Lovecraft pastiches I’ve ever read, it’s also one of my favorite comic novels. Spencer’s protagonist is a would-be novelist working in Lovecraftian territory. He also has a temp job at the Pelidyne Corporation, where devolved office workers living in crawl spaces and ducts pass alarming office memos about cannibalism back and forth, and true believers use Xerox machines to send their consciousnesses into outer darkness where the elder gods lurk, waiting to rise again.
5. Strange Toys by Patricia Geary. Geary’s novel encompasses childhood games, toy poodles, black magic, and sibling rivalry. Like Lynda Barry’s Cruddy, I read it every few years in order to remind myself of the strange and dangerous territory childhood can represent.
I’ll finish by recommending three short stories you can find online. At LitGothic, you’ll find some M. R. James as well as Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” one of the one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. Google Books has the text of Michael Shea’s powerful and graphic story about a mining disaster and a small-town doctor, “The Autopsy.” Lastly, there’s Lucy Lane Clifford’s extraordinary fairytale “The New Mother“.

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted to a pair of shows playing in alternating repertory at Cleveland’s Great Lakes Theater Festival, Into the Woods and Macbeth. Both are excellent, while the company’s new theater, which just opened, is sumptuous. Here’s an excerpt.
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When Noël Coward, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne wanted to tune up “Design for Living” before bringing it to Broadway in 1933, they opened the show at the Hanna Theatre in downtown Cleveland. Theaterwise, that’s about as historic as it gets. Now this grand old building, built in 1921, has been taken over by the Great Lakes Theater Festival and remodeled in order to make it suitable for modern repertory theater. The result is one of the most satisfying theatrical renovations ever to be undertaken in this country. The “new” Hanna, designed by the Cleveland firm of Westlake Reed Leskosky, has been turned from a 1,421-seat Broadway-style house into an intimate 548-seat thrust-stage theater whose seating and public areas flow together seamlessly, thus encouraging playgoers to come early and use the Hanna as a meeting place. At the same time, the charmingly elaborate architectural detail of the original interior has been preserved. I can’t imagine a more pleasing place in which to see a show….
I’ve seen quite a few productions of “Into the Woods,” starting with the Broadway premiere in 1987, and this one ranks close to the top of the list. The cast is very strong, with Jodi Dominick giving a top-notch performance as the Baker’s Wife, at once richly funny and vibrantly physical. Joanna Gleason, who created the role on Broadway 21 years ago, was and is a tough act to follow, but Ms. Dominick makes an impression all her own. Victoria Bussert’s staging is no less impressive in its clarity and drive…
I don’t want to spoil any of director Charles Fee’s surprises, so I’ll say only that he’s given us a Japanese-style “Macbeth” that evokes the stylized rituals of Noh theater. The stage is flanked by a pair of costumed percussionists who provide thunderous accompaniment for the play’s horrific occurrences. Instead of buckets of blood, we get long, fluttering ribbons of red silk, while the three Weird Sisters are dressed as bats on crutches, a deliciously jolting touch. Gage Williams, who designed the set, and Star Moxley, who devised the costumes, deserve co-equal credit with Mr. Fee for the success of this “Macbeth.” Rarely have I seen a Shakespeare production in which staging and décor were fused so indissolubly….
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Read the whole thing here.

“The fact is popular art dates. It grows quaint. How many people feel strongly about Gilbert and Sullivan today compared to those who felt strongly in 1890?”
Stephen Sondheim (quoted in the International Herald Tribune, June 20, 1989)

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• Boeing-Boeing (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, reviewed here)

• Equus (drama, R, nudity and adult subject matter, closes Feb. 8, reviewed here)

• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• A Man for All Seasons * (drama, G, too intellectually demanding for children of any age, extended through Dec. 14, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN SUBURBAN CHICAGO:

• Picnic (drama, PG-13, adult themes, closes Nov. 30, reviewed here)

“We respond to a drama to that extent to which it corresponds to our dreamlife.”
David Mamet, Writing in Restaurants

Busy as always, I’m off to Washington this morning to attend a meeting of the National Council on the Arts. On Friday afternoon I’ll be lunching at the U.S. Supreme Court, where the National Endowment for the Arts and Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg are throwing a lunchtime bash for Leontyne Price, Carlisle Floyd, Richard Gaddes, and James Levine, the first recipients of the new NEA Opera Honors.
Well-informed readers will recall that Gaddes retired the other day from the Santa Fe Opera, where one of his last duties was to commission Paul Moravec and me to write The Letter. I had nothing whatsoever to do with Gaddes’ receiving an NEA Opera Honor–the NEA is exceedingly fussy about conflicts of interest, real or perceived–but it goes without saying that I’m glad he’s getting it, and I’ll be saying a few words to that effect on Friday.
You know the rest. I’ll blog when I can. See you around.

• There was no more sleep for me that night, and I was thankful when daylight came. Another story to print and read in a sunlit place, Edith Wharton’s “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell.”
(Previous Halloween installments: Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” and Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat.”)
• This catalog of haunted libraries in the Northeast makes a good companion to the Wharton. The case of the ghost who habituates the U.S. Capital Building Rotunda (former near neighbor to the Library of Congress) is particularly poignant. He’s said to be the ghost of a librarian who is looking for “$6,000 he stashed in the pages of some obscure volumes.” The library of course has long since been moved, the money found and (one assumes) dispersed … and still the poor guy wanders. One wonders, Can no one tell him? Can’t a collection be taken up? And what exactly were the titles of those obscure volumes? I picture the librarian alive and stalking through the stacks all, “Population Fluctuations on the Lapsang Peninsula (1812-1843)? Ain’t no one looking in there.” (Via Maud.)

Frank Lloyd Wright appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line?:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)