"Falsettos" is about the catastrophe of sex. How sex disrupts a life. The writer--William Finn--sits on a knife's edge. He is somewhere between compassion and disdain. His shifting attitude toward his own characters is a part of the drama. The song "This Had Better Come to a Stop" describes a collective emotional breakdown. Marvin has left his wife, Trina, and moved in with a young man, Whizzer. Marvin expects Whizzer to behave as a housewife: make the dinner, check the little boy's face for acne. Whizzer resents the new set of expectations--and he voices his discomfort in a passive-aggressive way, by being routinely late. Meanwhile, Trina is caught in the past; she continues to litigate old disputes, even as her new partner encourages her to "move on" (whatever that may mean). Sometimes, writers (particularly musical-theater writers) feel that they need to spoon-feed an audience. The writer has arrived at some simplistic conclusions--and the job...
Lisa Hanawalt's astonishing memoir has a simple premise: Hanawalt feels that she is "bad" at both horse-riding and sex. But she keeps returning to both activities. That's the story. Hanawalt purchases a horse because she suspects she is not going to have a child. Her friends say, "Go for it! Get the horse. It's self-care." Around the same time, Hanawalt begins to ask questions about her romance of two decades. She and her partner start sharing details about their "crushes." The arrangement becomes an open relationship (though she is oddly reluctant w/r/t using this term). Then--you guessed it--Hanawalt finds herself officially unattached. As Hanawalt wanders through her dating odyssey, she makes a confession. She really likes fat men. Fat, middle-aged. And she enjoys the "reverse cowgirl" option. She wishes that her friends would stop buying her tee shirts that say the following: "My Other Horse Is a Prius." Then again, sh...