And Another Thing....

Isaiah Washington Wrongly Fired

I still can't get over the fact that higher-ups in ABC fired Isiah Washington at the end of last season.

I'm a Grey's Anatomy fan. I'm also gay. Isaiah's use of the word "fag"--twice--offended me.

But hey, he did everything humanly possible to make amends. He said he was sorry. He said he was wrong. He filmed a commercial for GLAAD.

At that point, there should have been forgiveness. There should have been redemption.

Gays and lesbians didn't call for his firing --it was an economic decision based on his volatility. But it can only hurt us, and sour our tentative relationship with straight African-Americans who see themselves as being punished by this.

Yes, words have consequences. And they should. But this punishment is so out-sized compared to the crime that there is bound to be a backlash.

Kevin Spacey has chops

I saw Moon for the Misbegotten Wednesday night. And sure, Eve Best - up for a Tony - did just fine.

But Kevin Spacey was revolutionary, taking Eugene O'Neill's alcoholic rich boy and making him a complex bundle of nerves and  subterranean passion. He brightened up the stage. I know he's not what people usually think of in that role; but he brought new light to it.

Afterwards, I did something I never do: waited by the stage door. All three stars kindly, patiently signed autographs. When Spacey had my playbill, I said, "You really showed your chops tonight."

And he paused, looked me in the eye, and said seriously, "Thank you."

It reminded me how much we want that from celebrities - to be seen.

Coram Boy

Coram Boy is a miracle of a play. Heartbreaking, surprising, it is a Dickensian knot of mistaken identities, children lost and then found, betrayal, murder, and the redemption of angels. There is a cast of 50, a wrenching underwater scene with floating actors, and a curtain call that features no less than a full-throated Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. It shouldn't work. But it does.

Coram Boy closes on the 27th. If you live in or near NY, see it. Find a ticket however you can; pay whatever you have to. It is extraordinary. It is the play Broadway was meant for.

The Rookie

I just watched The Rookie again, the baseball movie staring Dennis Quaid. It's a true story about a guy who, at 35, kind of magically became a major league baseball player---his dream since he was three.

I cried through the whole thing. It's a happy movie---it's Disney, for crissake. But there's something about his story, about how he was  astonished by his own luck, how his family and his community came out to support him---it makes me happy every time. And I think especially now, when I feel like the risk I took last year paid off, that I'm actually in the place I should be.

It really is astonishing. That we can unexpectedly stumble on our dreams no matter what age we are--it's astonishing. And wonderful. And very, very lucky.

On Criticism

    I just finished Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and it so puzzled me that I've just spent the last hour reading other people's reviews. Most of them saw what I saw--it is quintessential colloquial Murakami, being about an Everyman who happens to wander into the ever-shifting dreamscape of internal mind and memory. But it is also structurally a mess.

    Then I read one review from a woman who said she couldn't stop thinking about it, that it was inhabiting her. And I thought--yes, I see what she means. Three years ago, when I was living in the era I like to call The Dark Times, I would have lived in this Murakami work, too. It's unsteady probing into death and deterioration would have resonated with me.

    In my theater critic days, I believed that, more or less, all critics saw the same thing. My colleagues and I often agreed on plays. But now I am coming to believe that critics can only properly evaluate the arts on the narrowest of levels. That is, we can say how GOOD something is.

    What do I mean by good? I mean that critics, who have consumed vast amounts of their chosen art form (often more than the practitioners) can quickly evaluate if a piece of theater or literature is well structured, well-written, cohesive. We can judge the production values and the talent of the players. We can say whether a writer or director has achieved their stated vision. That is, we can tell you how well something is executed.

    What we can't do, though, is tell you how a piece of art will make you feel. We can tell you how it made US feel--but art is so personal, and its impact and resonance will depend on how old we are and of what gender; what class we are and of what ethnicity; how depressed, how optimistic, whether we've just broken up with the love of our lives or whether we have just found her or whether we have stopped looking.

    I think that this is why people get so angry with critics. We want them to see what we see in a piece, if we loved it. We want them to hate it the way we do, if it turned our stomachs. But critics can't do this. We can't see with the million eyes of their readers. We can only see with our own two eyes, in whatever place we happen to be at the time. And like Murakami's work, that place is always shifting, so that the next day, we may look back on our work and feel like someone else has written it, that that doppelganger has moved on, and we may see her again only in memory.