Leapy New Year

To close out this extraordinary year of upheaval, setback, and possibility, I can think of (or rather, find) nothing better than this lo-fi video of one of Matt Walker's clowning classes at USC. (Yes, this Matt Walker.)

Here's to a fearless (yet similarly cushioned) jump into 2009.

Merry Merry Etc.

Today is basically the end of my workday year, not counting a few straggling days in late December. That doesn't mean I won't be posting here again in '08, and I certainly won't be able to stay away from updating and tweaking Isaac's and my new baby, but I will be in Indiana and California for Christmas next week, ostensibly relaxing with family.

And though I've already watched my favorite holiday special twice this season--and I half-wish I could schlep out to Connectictut to check out the stage version--I'm likely to pop old Emmet in the DVD player at least once again before the turkey is carved.

So, at the end of tumultuous yet oft-blessed year, I leave you with my best wishes, and one of Paul Williams' lyrics, steeped in his signature blend of syrup and spirit:

Like a flower that has blossomed
In the dry and barren sand
We are born and born again most gracefully
Thus the winds of time shall take us
With a sure and steady hand
When the river meets the sea

Pal Joey: Not Everyone Hates It!

Performing its important corrective function, Critic-O-Meter today reports that Broadway's new Pal Joey, despite the negative advance buzz and a slam from the NY Times' Ben Brantley, actually has a number of full-hearted (and some half-hearted) admirers, and that even most of the show's detractors are not as down on it as Ben. In other recent news, just about everyone loves Red Bull's Women Beware Women and were lukewarmly welcoming to Shrek.

Oh, and I'm happy to note that the site's birth has reached the Guardian and Utne Reader.

Piven, Struck Through

I have nothing to add to the reports of Jeremy Piven's sudden withdrawal from Speed-the-Plow, which, for the record, I enjoyed, if with a tad less relish than many of my peers. But I couldn't help noticing that this Times item on his withdrawal contains what seems like a first: an entire paragraph with a line through it (NOTE from Friday, 12/19/08: the strike-through graph has been removed so that the piece makes little sense; I saved the original page here). It's still entirely readable under the cross-out line, of course, and I'm wondering why this tidbit merited the chopping block:

At a recent matinee of the play, Mr. Piven was visibly perturbed with two theatergoers who arrived late for the performance, staring at his watch and tapping his foot while the latecomers took their seats.

Still more confusingly, this struck-through paragraph contains a hyperlink to a previous Times piece about Piven's co-star Raul Esparza singing on demand for theatergoers. Distinctly odd. Is this perhaps a case of the Times becoming ever more blog-like, or a mere error that gives us a backstage peek into the Gray Lady's editing process?

UPDATE: The Mamet mafia calls in not one but two new Bobby Goulds: William H. Macy and Norbert Leo Butz.

Zadie Didion?

I've got a confession, dear readers: Though I'm an avid reader of various things (increasingly online), I don't get through all that many proper books (certainly not as many as my Critic-O-Meter colleague), which means I'm hopeless when someone starts talking about new fiction, which writers are good, etc. Hopeless.

So I hadn't read a word of Zadie Smith until this recent New Yorker piece about her family of British "comedy nerds." The rap on Smith, according to people I trust, is that her first novel, White Teeth, was incredibly overhyped, her second, On Beauty, is "supposed to be" better. After reading her extraordinarly apt and moving personal history, "Dead Man Laughing," I'm inspired to decide for myself about her fiction. Ostensibly a tribute to her frustrated late father, Harvey, the essay ranges over themes of family, time, mortality, class, and race with the surprise and suspense and thrill of the best fiction.

Along the way, Smith proves that novelists can be devastating and illuminating critics of the lively arts. While I was struck by her envious comparison of standup comics and novelists, by the way she traces the sense of dashed class aspirations that links generations of despairing British comedy right up to David Brent, by her term "comedy nausea," I think my favorite excerpt is her offhanded precis of a sketch act she sees as an opening act for her brother, a budding standup comic, in a pub theater. Brace yourself:

Two men and two women performed a mildewed sketch show of unmistakable Oxbridge vintage, circa 1994. A certain brittle poshness informed their exaggerated portraits of high-strung secretaries, neurotic piano teachers, absent-minded professors. They put on mustaches and wigs and walked in and out of imaginary scenarios where fewer and fewer funny things occurred. It was the comedy of things past. The girls, though dressed as girls, were no longer girls, and the boys had paunches and bald spots; the faintest trace of ancient intracomedy-troupe love affairs clung to them sadly; all the promising meetings with the BBC had come and gone. This was being done out of pure friendship now, or the memory of friendship.

Every bit of the essay is that good, and better. It put me in mind of Steve Martin's "In the Birdcage," a beautiful culling from his excellent memoir, Born Standing Up, that's actually better than the book. And its incision, clarity, and transparency put me in mind of Joan Didion's best work. Yes, I think I will be checking out White Teeth and On Beauty.

The Secret Isn't Secret Anymore

From a recent benefit for Chris Wells' brilliant Secret City, which I wrote about for this month's American Theatre.

Camus' Caius

I'm really glad I saw Horizon Theatre Rep's production of Camus' brilliant Caligula, in a crackling translation by David Greig, even if director Rafael De Mussa (pictured above) made one hugely significant misstep.