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...
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...