Archives for June 30, 2009

I’m in downtown Los Angeles, where I’ll be seeing Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles in David Mamet’s Oleanna tonight. Meanwhile, the cast of The Letter has assembled in Santa Fe, where rehearsals began yesterday morning with a table reading of the libretto. That surprised me, but then I remembered that Jonathan Kent, our director, spends most of his time staging plays, so it stands to reason that he’d start the ball rolling by having the singers read the script out loud.
I know you shouldn’t wish time away, but I can’t help wishing that I could turn the clock forward to July 13, the day when I report to the Santa Fe Opera House for my first rehearsal. Would that bilocation were possible! For now I’m having to rely on long-distance reports from the members of the cast. I returned home from dinner last night to find an e-mail from James Maddalena, who created the title role of John Adams’ Nixon in China and is playing Howard Joyce, a lawyer who bends his code of ethics to save the life of his best friend’s wife, in The Letter. “I think this is going to be stupendous!” he said.
Sounds good to me.

“Critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion.”
Alexander Pope, letter to William Wycherley, Dec. 26, 1704