Archives for February 26, 2009

Yesterday Andrea Schulz, my editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, e-mailed me three possible dust-jacket designs for Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. “I am thrilled by these amazing designs, truly exuberant in a way I almost never am when sending this sort of thing,” she wrote. “I think they’re fabulous, in that way that good designers take you to places you don’t expect.” I agree–and I very much look forward to posting the finished product.
This morning I’ll be sending the copyedited manuscript back to Harcourt, complete with my final changes and next-to-last corrections. I still have to read the page proofs, but the hard editorial work is over: Pops is now officially finished. After that I’ll catch a cab to LaGuardia, followed in short order by a plane to Raleigh, North Carolina.
More as it happens….

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)

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, 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:

• Aristocrats (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, closes Mar. 29, reviewed here)

• Enter Laughing (musical, PG-13, extended through Mar. 20, reviewed here)

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

• Love/Stories (or But You Will Get Used to It) (one-act plays, PG-13, vastly too complicated for children, extended through Mar. 30, reviewed here)

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes Apr. 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (black comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cherry Orchard (elegiac comedy, G, not suitable for children or immature adults, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• The Little Foxes (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

• Macbeth (tragedy, PG-13/R, nudity and graphic violence, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN LENOX, MASS:

• Bad Dates (comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

Outside of their all being mysteries of one sort of another, what do these books have in common?
Blood on the Bannisters
Excuse My Gat! Gore by the Gallon
The Man with the Missing Toe
Severed Throats
Three Dead on Tuesday
The answer is below the fold.

[Read more…]

“It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”
P.G. Wodehouse, Cocktail Time