Liars and Saints

 Beyonce is not my favorite performer; I quickly grow bored with songs of empowerment. I prefer singers who are more openly messy. Bonnie Raitt, Amy Winehouse, Adele. That said, I acknowledge that Beyonce does what she does very well. I particularly like "Irreplaceable," which casts Bey as a kind of all-powerful God: So go ahead and get gone-- Call up that chick and see if she's home. Oops! I bet you thought that I didn't know. What did you think I was puttin' you out for? Because you was untrue-- Rollin' her round in that car I bought you. Baby, drop them keys. Hurry up before your taxi leaves. It's this song that "Six" seems to borrow from (via "No Way")--especially in the bridge section. Because the writers are witty, "Six" inverts the Beyonce theme: Catherine of Aragon is wielding power *not* to evict a man but to preserve her own queendom. Then the stutter of the chorus--"n-n-n-n-no way"--seems to recall "C...

  I think this will be my last post about "Hadestown." My admiration is really centered on Eurydice's "I Want" solo: I was alone so long-- I didn't even know that I was lonely. Out in the cold so long-- I didn't even know that I was cold. Turned my collar to the wind-- This is how it's always been. All I've ever known is how to hold my own-- But now I want to hold you, too. Is it possible to invent new twists in a love song? Here, the writers push us "on to" an exciting bridge by dropping the last syllable in the refrain: "Now I want to hold you, too." Now I want to hold you--NOW. I want to hold you--hold you CLOSE. I don't wanna ever let you go. Now I wanna hold you--hold you TIGHT. I don't wanna go back to the lonely life. The other part I admire is the odd discordant passage at the end. Eurydice demands that Orpheus make several promises. Orpheus immediately complies; he is naive, and he believes that the promises a...

  We took our child out of the YMCA camp. I'm not very interested in the specifics of the camp. Other people seem to have a good time there.   What I did notice was that the camp was frequently calling, mentioning moments of aggression, poop accidents, penis waving. The head of the camp was exceedingly nice and a bit passive, and instead of giving me instructions, she would murmur about her need to "locate Joshua's triggers." Finally, I asked her what she would do if she were in my shoes, and she said, "I can't answer that, but I can tell you that I worry about Josh at my camp. I worry every single day." There was no need to hear anything more.     The *new* camp is both more expensive *and* more demanding. They tell me to send a trained babysitter -- someone to monitor Josh *in addition* to the counselors who are paid to monitor him. A part of me resents this. Isn't the camp getting enough money to solve its own problems? On the other hand, I apprec...

  One gift of Alice McDermott's is to invent characters who are both weird and recognizable; you feel you've met these people. Theresa, a tenth grader on Long Island, is semi-aware that her little cousin might be dying. But Theresa is in a kind of hormonal haze--and the death of a child is too much to think about--so Theresa lies to herself. At the same time, she is drawn to an elderly local artist whose work may or may not be "immortal." It's interesting--and scary--to feel that you have power over a Great Man. Theresa starts showing off around the artist; she shares her thoughts about Shakespeare (and about his villain Macbeth). Theresa's parents have moved to Long Island, to a groundskeeper's cottage, because they think that Theresa's proximity to wealthy people is a good thing. They encourage her to mingle with rich neighbors; at the same time, they feel wary around her, because they know she will not remain close to home. (In this way, McDermott i...

 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...