Liars and Saints

 In high school, I became interested in the Vietnam War--American failures, American atrocities. I wrote a paper on the Kent State Massacre and listened to the soundtrack from "Miss Saigon." There is Kim, singing about Bob Kerrey: Do you want one more tale of a Vietnam girl? Want to know how I'm bound to a man I don't love? Do you want to be told how my village was burned? Want to hear how my family was blasted away? How I ran from the rice fields and saw them in flames? How my parents were bodies whose faces were gone... This is unusual material for a Broadway show. Like Frank Rich, I think that the European mega-musicals are a mixed bag--and that "Miss Saigon" is the best of the bunch. This structurally bizarre spectacle establishes a bond between Kim and a white GI--but then flashes forward by three years. The GI has abandoned Kim (and a small child, a son). Kim has been hiding from her cousin, Thuy, who wants an arranged marriage. In the show's stran...

  My children don't do amusement parks; the parks have not been a top priority. But we have one "ride" nearby. It's the Turtle Back Train experience. The train does several things--it does its tasks very well. You get themed topiary. (The black bear is dressed in a patriotic hat around the Fourth of July.) You get African vistas; real giraffes seem to wander close to your train. (You can also spot sanga cattle. To me, these descendants of aurochs are the unsung heroes of almost any zoo.) ....After speeding through "African grassland," the train makes a sharp turn and soars above a manmade lake (so you may feel you are chugging along the perimeter of Lake Victoria). There are inevitably pedestrians wandering by the lake, and my son, in Princess Di mode, likes to shout, "Enjoy your day!" The final part of the "set" is a model of a ghost town, and here I do think the engineers could have slowed down a bit. They have hastily labeled one build...

  Francine Prose describes Caravaggio and his interest in miracles. Caravaggio made us aware: that these miracles had transpired neither in primary colors, nor in brilliantly hued paintings of sanitized saints and celestial fireworks, but in dusty streets and dark rooms much like the streets and rooms in which he himself lived. With Caravaggio, we see the Biblical scene, but we also see Renaissance-era Europeans in the act of posing. Caravaggio wants us to know that he is painting "actors" or performers. Many Renaissance images of Mary Magdalene are at least partly erotic; Caravaggio goes another way. His penitent Magdalene is not a Hollywood pinup. She wears contemporary clothing, and her image "avoids pathos and languid sensuality."  Caravaggio's earthiness makes me think of Sondheim: You can pull all the stops out Till they call the cops out-- Grind your behind till you're banned... But you gotta get a GIMMICK... If you want to get a hand... There are cur...

  Gregg Araki's "I Want Your Sex" is not history's most original movie, but it's nice to see writers and actors having fun. Olivia Wilde works as a conceptual artist in a noisy, cavernous studio. The noise is a recording of Wilde in the act of masturbating. She believes that the sound is inspirational.  Wilde hires young people to chew gum and stick the sugary detritus on a sketch of Wilde's private parts--this is a work-to-be-auctioned. When interviewed about her art, Wilde says, "I think this entire world is ridiculous, and my reason for working is just that I like money." Wilde hires Philip Seymour Hoffman's son. Hoffman has a vague desire to start a podcast about art--but he feels blocked. (His girlfriend, neurologist Charli XCX, sees art as frivolous--but Hoffman chooses *not* to worry that this is a major problem.) Hoffman occasionally wonders if his world might expand after anal sex; specifically, he might find some philosophical/cosmic ...

  The heavy-hitters who have played Dot: Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters, Annaleigh Ashford, Melissa Errico, Ashley Park, Maryann Plunkett, Carmen Cusack, Andrea Burns, Maria Friedman, Talia Suskauer, Jenna Russell. Heather Headley and Michaela Diamond have done portions of the show in concert.  These are big names! One thing that people tend to miss about "Move On." Sondheim was always talking about the marriage of content and form. HOW it's said matters more than WHAT it is. Sondheim's duets were unlike other duets; SS did things beyond the "you sing a verse, I'll sing a verse" format. In Sondheim, voices overlap and become dissonant and then harmonious and then dissonant again. "Move On" begins with an argument. We're used to this. Dot and George cannot see eye to eye. "I've nothing to say." "You have MANY things." But something shifts. D and G begin to articulate thoughts that *complement* one another. From Dot...

  Very early in life, my daughter began calling me Mom. Or Mama. Or Mommy. Her brother picked up the habit. The behaviorist who comes to our house finds this troubling. She always issues corrections. Papa. That's Papa. And I'm reminded of a colleague from an elementary school. This colleague would always demand that children use realistic colors in coloring assignments. Flesh could never be green or hot pink. Hair could never be tangerine-colored. I found this tyrannical--and I think I did not make much of an effort to disguise the rolling of my eyes. My daughter seems (at times) to want a world in which everyone is slightly more flexible about gender--and I'm on board. I believe I have persuaded her to wear a dress that advertises prime numbers. A break from the unicorns and princesses. The dress is called "Prime Twins," and it "celebrates" certain pairs. 11 and 13. 41 and 43. Pairs of primes that are separated by exactly one composite number. When my d...