Politically Correct

My review of the Bread and Puppet Theater's new show is here.

A Spot of O'Neill

My review of the bracing, mostly excellent new Broadway production of A Touch of the Poet is here.

So This Is Why I'm Here

To review a show like this.

Onward and Upward

Well, it's official: Don Shirley will leave the LA Times as of Jan. 16, 2006. He tells me he's feeling "very upbeat" about the future. And Bob Dowling (pictured above), longtime Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, just announced his departure.

Don is a trusted colleague, fellow native Arizonan, and, dare I say it, something of a friend, and his body of knowledge about the L.A. theater culture (and the LA Times culture) will be missed at the town's paper of record. He could be prickly in print but he's always been unfailingly kind in person. Bob was a mentor to me at Back Stage West, which shared the floor with THR for its first five years, then merely the same building, and as the boss of my boss I felt he understood what I was doing, and what my little upstart team had built at BSW, better than anyone in the company.

These two don't have much in common except that they've loomed large in my professional life, and I wish them both all the best in the next chapter of their publishing careers.

Linney & Foote

Two new productions about which I'm admiring but lukewarm: Romulus Linney's play about poet Delmore Schwartz, and the Signature's so-so revival of Horton Foote's masterwork.

Two Helpings of Crow

So Britney will not give to Charity after all. (Nifty new BackStage site, by the way.)

And while I've heard nothing new on the Don Shirley front, one scribe who's taken the LA Times early buyout is none other than pop "music" critic Robert Hilburn (hat tip to LA Observed). I've been on the record deploring Hilburn's "criticism," though I've almost always found his reporting relatively astute and dogged (even if it, too, is generally overawed and studded with book-report prose). We look ahead to brighter days at L.A.'s beleaguered flagship daily.

Buttons Pushed

Though this article made me fear the worst, I must report that I pretty much loved it.