Archive for May 2013

A Half Day

And there in the sunroom I stood, one afternoon shortly after my father had died and we had moved into a new house and my life was all jumbled up beyond recall, with the light of the dying day filtering in through the tree outside, tears welling up as I honked through a requiem for my father with the instrument I knew best how to play.

Parenthood on the Hoof

By the afternoon I was holding my son in my arms. I left his mother to sleep for a while, drove home and – went for a run. I’m the father of three, and I know there’s no accounting for anything in the feelings of parents. But whatever the reasons, this was the most euphoric I ever was over the arrival of a child. I felt – I don’t know – limitless, transcendent, as if I were floating rather than running.

An Actorly Spring Awakening at Towson

During the Broadway run and the professional tours, Spring Awakening tended to be too expensive for young audiences. I wondered how this show about and for youth would affect young audiences. I finally found out.

Knocking the Songs Out of the Park: Chess

A first-rate production of a second-rate show. The astonishing cast delivers song after song that sails out of the park.

The Torture Report: We Need Names and Consequences

Is the ingenuity of our judges and lawyers so trifling we cannot establish that linkage without revealing things that are truly secret? (Establish waterboarding, for instance, without going into what questions the torturers were asking? Or conduct certain proceedings in camera?) Is it beyond all possibility to chart a judicial path to consequences for the people who did these things?