Liars and Saints

  I first saw "Spring Awakening" while I was in my early twenties; I had endured a Catholic education in which my teacher, a deacon, made a point of observing that homosexual intercourse was a problem. "Two men can have a close friendship, but all articles of clothing must remain in place...." With "Awakening," it was immediately clear that something seismic had occurred.  There is the band on the stage, and blackboards, and several members of the audience. Lea Michele appears in a white gown and recites a kind of prayer: Mama, who bore me-- Mama, who gave me-- No way to handle things-- Who made me so sad. Mama, the weeping-- Mama, the angels-- No sleep in Heaven... Or Bethlehem... What is she talking about? Having lived through her own Christian education, Lea Michele's Wendla feels chaotic, unnerved. She seems to identify with Mary, exhausted, wandering through Bethlehem, visiting unfriendly innkeepers at overpacked inns. (Later, the unwed Wendla wil...

 Harlan Coben was not a voracious reader at Amherst College. (His classmates included David Foster Wallace and the future superstar Dan Brown.) Coben was not "groomed" to be a writer; his parents liked books, but they didn't push an agenda. When Coben tries to explain the source of his ambition, he recalls a high-school classmate who was murdered. The apparent killer--another teenager--simply disappeared. Coben also recalls that he lived near a site for the storage of nuclear missiles. (This was close to the Livingston Mall.) And one of Coben's neighbors was a wealthy mafia kingpin--a man responsible for several murders. These bits of data floated around in Coben's head. And he became a writer. Coben offers life advice--as well as writing advice--and he sometimes offers advice that seems to fall into *both* buckets. Don't whine. Be curious about the world. Don't hesitate to make things up. Bad writing often seems like throat-clearing. There is a tendency t...

 A couple seems to have some pedestrian problems. The man and woman have recently relocated from Chicago to London; the new house has issues with its wiring. The man complains to a friend about British customer service reps: "They're not rude, but they're not NOT rude, you know? No one is going the extra mile." One source of tension at home is that the young woman believes in ghosts while the young man does not. Then--in one of the most startling scenes I've ever witnessed in a theater--the young man begins a new conversation with the young woman. And the young woman suddenly evaporates. She does not leave the room; she does not drop through a trapdoor. She evaporates. "She" had been an otherworldly imposter. It's time to call in the Barbara Hershey neighbor. (I refer to this person as the Barbara Hershey neighbor, because she is in every scary movie, and she is sometimes played by Barbara Hershey. She is the PhD who has to recite a nonsense speech a...

  With "Hacks," Jean Smart was consistently better than her material. She made the show seem smarter than it was. I have no objections to her Emmy win.  I do have objections to the "Hacks" finale. Let's revisit this. DV, having heard she has a more-or-less terminal illness, tells Ava that she will be linking up with Dignitas. It's time to die. As others have noted, DV makes no mention of her daughter or grandchild. This is implausible, but it's *also* a slap in the face to Kaitlin Olson, who has done beautiful work as "Junior" throughout the series. Ava first rejects DV's invitation to Europe. She won't participate. Then, she recants. Oh, fine. A pivotal scene occurs at the Louvre. Ava suggests that the "Mona Lisa" is middlebrow. "I mean, it's prettier than anything *I* could do, but....meh." DV says the painting is the most beguiling image in Europe. Ava immediately responds: "Lady, what BEGUILES me would m...

 My daughter has an elaborate fantasy life, and she has minimal interest in the actual, tangible world. She writes lengthy ballads about personal crises and personal growth. But she cannot be bothered to hold a can of seltzer--the seltzer immediately slips from her hands and spills all over the floor. Over and over again. I increasingly feel like I'm watching an X-ray image of myself--and I even have memories of obtuse adults scolding me about spilled liquids. (These are memories from my childhood.) I'm *now* in the role of the obtuse adult. The other side of Susie's personality is a tendency toward harsh self-criticism. What happens is that she cannot tolerate constructive criticism from another person--because she feels fragile and she needs to believe she has a continuous stream of every adult's unstinting understanding and approval. I see this so clearly. Yesterday, we watched the "new" version of "Moana." It's not as bad as the reviews. But ...

  You can't buy "A Woggle of Witches" on Amazon--unless you're willing to pay an absurd amount of money. But it's on YouTube. It's the story of a coven; the witches wake up on Halloween night and have an adventure. There are four stages: the wakeup routine, the feast, the journey, and the return to land. Adrienne Adams has fun with the details. The witches sleep in pods during daylight hours; they are high in the trees. Their feast involves "cobweb bread" and "bat stew." To travel, they fly on brooms; their destination is the surface of the moon. Then, in a moment of situational irony, the witches contend with terror; they are frightened to notice a group of tiny trick-or-treaters back on Earth. The figure who steals the show is the Moon Man. He is visibly irritated when the witches--like little ants--gather close to his eyeball. But he can't retaliate. This makes me think of an acquaintance of mine who violates the local parking rule w...

 The greatest musical is "Gypsy"; this has entered "beyond debate" territory.  If you look at Broadway's musical offerings right now, they are generally bad. It's hard to find a musical with a smart book, high stakes, an original story,  and  a soaring, intelligent score. "And Juliet" can't give you all of that. "The Lost Boys" can't give you all of that. It's not clear to me that "Schmigadoon" has high stakes. And, though "Two Strangers" makes more of an effort than almost any other show currently on Broadway, the score and the book leave something to be desired. Among other things, "Gypsy" touches on the destruction of a family, the debasement of women in America, the idea of emotional abuse, and the gap between truth and perception. And it's a musical! "Gypsy" does almost everything extraordinarily well, but its really sublime moment is (at least for me) the end of Act One. This i...