Liars and Saints

 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...

 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...

 The Headlines: -Sondheim wrote "Into the Woods" while falling deeply in love with cocaine. This makes sense. "Woods" has always seemed overstuffed and sloppy. It's a show that may make you think, "Here, the writer was abusing cocaine...." -Many lyricists make grammatical errors. Tim Rice, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Steven Sater: These are all writers who have trouble with grammar. But Sondheim is an exception. So the following line always bothered me. "Nice is different than good." I now know that Sondheim *deliberately* made this error--he believed that Little Red would not say different from ....Sondheim insisted on the choice he had made even when others questioned the choice. -Daniel Okrent offers a smart reading of the song "Finishing the Hat." The money note occurs in the bridge--you get a startling jump from the bottom to the top of the scale. "And how you're *always* turning back too late from the grass or the stick or th...

  I have been hired to teach reading and writing to a student -- there is no ISEE, no SAT, attached. This sort of thing fills me with terror, because there is no built-in structure, no test date, no bubble sheet. I had a writing teacher in college who would enter class in a serene way, with chocolate-covered blueberries, and who would then just speak eloquently about Raymond Carver for ninety minutes. She did not have an advanced degree. She had bottomless depths of self-confidence; she was mesmerizing. My current student, a fifth grader, is working on her own newspaper. She interviews residents of her town and publishes her findings. Since Mother's Day is approaching, she has chosen to interview a mother -- and her thought process is straightforward, unimpeachable. "I chose K, three doors down from me, because she has three kids. No one else has *three* kids. So K must be the most interesting mother." My student and I ran through the standard soft-ball questions. "W...

  Laura Linney's career-defining role--in "You Can Count on Me"--requires her to be tightly wound, teetering, furious. It's like a "Laurie Metcalf" role. In one of my all-time favorite movie scenes, Linney has just one word--and she fits a world of hopefulness and terror into that word. (She has picked up a phone, and after a moment, she says her brother's name. "Terry.") "American Classic" allows Linney to revisit her famous role. The show is like a variation on a theme--for Linney. Once again, Linney is outwardly poised, impatient, well-meaning, somewhat ridiculous. Her character, Kristen, will not listen to her daughter's wish to say "no" to the University of Pennsylvania. Kristen is eager to sabotage herself; when her critics say she should resign from her office, she quickly decides that they are right. In certain funny, climactic moments, Kristen refuses to participate in the absurd "truth circle" that th...

 "Down Time"--by a writer I love, Andrew Martin--is a novel in which very little happens. It's almost shocking that something so "unresolved" still found a publisher. On the website "Book Marks," literary novels rarely earn a "pan" designation. But one magazine did actually "pan" this book. And yet I really liked "Down Time." The center is Aaron, a gifted writer of short stories who is drinking himself to death. "I think I might need to go back to a place," he says to his spouse, Cassandra, after having thrown himself into a bonfire at a party. But, in rehab, Aaron meets a troubled young man, Xavier, and discovers that he (Aaron) enjoys gay sex (first exclusively on the top, but ultimately in every possible position). In the months after rehab, Aaron continues to see Xavier but keeps this a secret from Cassandra. The disturbed marriage endures several months in a "pandemic pod" with Aaron's stepmoth...