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Patrick Ball: "The Pitt"

 Yesterday, I had a sitter who arrived quite late. This sitter is a teenager--she isn't amazing. Her lateness interfered with a client appointment I had; nothing annoys me more. Essentially all I ask of a sitter is that she will arrive when she says she will arrive. It's stunning to me how difficult this is for so many people--and now *I* am one of those people because I did not hire a notably professional sitter. This was a minor event, but it raised some questions: How kind can I be as an employer? What role does a "power differential" play? (It's easy to take out frustration on a teenager.) If I'm openly impatient, am I giving the impression that I myself have never screwed up at work? (This would be a false impression.) In Season One, the best move of "The Pitt" was to give us Dr. Langdon, a white, handsome, confident man. Langdon was challenged by a new hire, an abrasive, non-white, sometimes foolish woman. Here, "The Pitt" was playing...
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Ice Cream

 My husband sometimes meets celebrities, but really the only one who has excited him is Jeni, owner of Jeni's Ice Cream. Certain stories from this encounter have become a kind of Biblical text in my house. Each time I hear one of the stories, I act like I'm hearing it for the first time. This teenager was working at the counter, and he said, "If you come back tomorrow, be sure to note that we close at 8...." And Jeni gave him a deadpan look and said, "Who do you think *I* am?" Also: Jeni invented salted caramel. Before her, it truly did not exist. (I have some doubts about that factoid, but I keep quiet.) Also: Jeni is a close friend of Joe Biden's. Of course, one thing we know about Joe is this: The man loves his ice cream..... In my house, there is a partial ban on fruit-flavored ice creams; like the writer Anne Fadiman, I feel there shouldn't even be a hint of anything "healthy" in an ice-cream flavor. The only legitimate options are the...
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Joshua Henry: Bring Me to Light

 Joshua Henry's impending Tony win has me thinking about "Violet"--the one and only show to place Henry next to Sutton Foster. In "Violet," Henry plays Flick, a somewhat conflicted young sergeant traveling through North Carolina on a Greyhound bus. It's the 1960s; several people on the bus are praying. One hopes for domestic harmony; another wants a "successful" visit to a faith healer. By contrast, Flick *argues* with God. Too bad we don't see eye to eye, Lord-- We could pass the time of day. Flick befriends the titular character, who claims that her faith healer will repair her damaged face. (Violet has suffered a terrible accident involving an axe.) Flick--having grown up impoverished and Black in the 1950s--immediately understands Violet's anger. He offers advice (and we suspect that, on some level, he is really advising himself): My family never had too much-- Made the best of every day. Ate what's on our plate, you know-- Never th...
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Book Review

  Tom Perrotta is a name I'll always notice; among his novels, "The Wishbones," "Election," "The Leftovers," and "Joe College" are my favorites.  Perrotta's special skill is his ability to describe moments of mundane discomfort. We all live through these moments; we just don't commit them to the blank page. In the new novel, "Ghost Town," a young man, Jimmy, meets a stranger and bluntly concedes that his mother has just died. But then he thinks he sounds glib, so he offers a few sentences about his mourning. And he realizes that the sentences might be what they (in fact) are: nervous, meaningless throat-clearing. Life goes on. "Ghost Town" is set in Garwood (called "Creamwood"), NJ, in the 1970s. Everyone is white; everyone smokes cigarettes. A dispute might involve a schoolteacher and a hippie at the local McDonald's. "I understand your  flat feet  kept you out of Vietnam...." In this small...
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Things I Hate in Maplewood

 To feel more "involved" in my community, I've been listing the suburban quirks that I hate the most. See below. *The blowout toddler birthday parties. This is an entire industry--I'm guilty of participating. You pay four hundred dollars to a slovenly stranger, so that he can produce oddly shaped bubbles from a dirty vat. The *kids* don't need this--the kids are fully entertained by a stick and a cardboard box. Whom is the "bubble man" really for ? *Our bookstore is closed on Mondays. I find this so profoundly irritating. Imagine if "Three Lives," in Greenwich Village, suddenly, inexplicably, reduced its hours of operation by one-seventh. It's absurd. *I have a new nemesis. Let me explain. A few years ago, the actor Zachary Levi made a billion enemies by suggesting that Gavin Creel's death was linked with Creel's decision to get the Covid vaccine. And Laura Benanti said, "I always knew Levi was an obnoxious bully. He made every...
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NYT: Victoria Clark

 Over the weekend, the NYT named Victoria Clark one of the actors you have to see. In other words, if Clark's name is in the ad, you just buy the ticket. I can't argue with that. The mini-essay claims that Clark acts *through* the notes, not on top of them. I think I know what this means. Here are three examples: *"Before I Go." Clark sings, "Maybe you'll see me while I'm still here. I'm still here." By the end of the line, she is running out of breath--the fight to get to the last word conveys a sense of exhaustion and exasperation. It's not that Clark doesn't understand breath control; she could easily "reengineer" her delivery so that every note is fully supported. But the choice she makes tells us something about her character. This is deliberate. *"Yes, you can." The climax of "The Light in the Piazza." Clara is fretting that she cannot steer herself through the adult world. Clark's Margaret cuts thr...
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Renee Elise Goldsberry: The Movie

 Before "Hamilton," I saw Renee Elise Goldsberry in "Two Gentlemen of Verona," "Good People," "The Color Purple," and "Rent." This wasn't by design. She just kept popping up. She was consistently a standout--she earned an Outer Critics Circle nomination for "Good People." But--if she had stopped--no one would have cared. That's what fascinates me about the arts. You really need a will of steel. After Sondheim flopped with "Merrily We Roll Along," he considered quitting. And his agent said, "Sure. Stop writing--literally no one will lose sleep over that." The new film about Goldsberry--"Satisfied"--isn't very good. At times, Goldsberry is so goopy-celestial that she seems to be doing self-parody; she seems to be playing Wickie from "Girls5eva." The documentary does that annoying thing where the star is asked to "recreate" a pivotal moment, and we're all forced to...
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