The Weekend Special

Pieces are given up to three Ellises (for fiction), McClellands (for essays), or Whitakers (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Ellis, McClelland, or Whitaker indicates a generally positive review.

⏰ Fiction

“My Balenciaga” by Han Ong. Two Ellises. Aunor, aunt, authenticate. The device at the center of this story – a test that will reveal whether a mother’s prized dress is a genuine article – could so easily feel contrived, and it’s not like Ong is afraid to state the themes and meanings of this story quite openly. Yet he’s a good enough writer to give these characters the spark of life, and to render their more-than-a-little-troublesome three-amigos bonhomie, and the ways it transforms across the story, genuinely moving. As Ong says in the interview, there’s barely any conflict here, and hardly a cross purpose; we’re granted access to plenty of interior tension, but because the speaker is largely reactive, the story doesn’t sink into rumination. She sees things, she responds. It would be hard to believe such a character hadn’t found love or much purpose outside her family system, except that there are so many cases I know – and I’m sure you do too – of exactly that sort of thing. Being aware of your own feelings and those of others makes it harder to put on a show. This story feels very brisk – I was totally shocked that Ong’s reading was fifty minutes long at a reasonable tempo – so the open resolution doesn’t frustrate too much, though it does seem a bit like Ong wrote himself into a corner and decided to act like he’d never been walking in that direction. As with any runway, confidence is key.

⏰ Weekend Essay

“What Went Wrong When Susan Sontag Met Thomas Mann?” by Alex Ross. Two McClellands. intrepid, interview, intimidation. Good nerdy fun; Mann’s proclamation, after learning that Sontag and friends read not Hemingway but “Joyce, Kafka, Tolstoy, Romain Rolland, and Jack London”, that they “‘must be very serious young people’” had me cracking up on the subway. This could easily be an expanded Takes, as it largely follows Ross fact-checking a Sontag short story and is only able to complicate its narrative in ways that are almost comically trivial. Gasp: There was a third friend not mentioned in the story, and his family was German and distant acquaintances of Mann! The intrigue depends entirely on the reader’s interest in its characters: Sontag and Rodin’s friendship (fleshed out quickly but sensitively) and Mann’s possible anxiety (whether at being misinterpreted, at being worshiped, or just at being bothered while he’s trying to write a speech). But even the unacquainted reader may find their interest sparked by these wunderkinds and their human God. Every pilgrim must have her progress…

⏰ Random Pick

“Blood Sport” (Letter from Europe) by Jane Kramer. (January 24 & 31, 2005). One Whitaker. clothes, cling, class. It is not faintly ridiculous but loudly ridiculous to write a long, irritable article defending foxhunting – or at least declaring its opponents intellectually dishonest – on the eve of its ban. But no matter how ridiculous, Kramer also makes it very fun. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the reason the fight to ban the hunt was so drawn-out is that it made a neat parallel for the British class system, one of those famously complicated things that is actually maybe not as complicated as the people who present it that way want you to think. Kramer saves for last what seems like the most obvious argument for the ban: Yes, it’s a symbolic move, as much or more than a moral one, to ban hunting, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it! It’s a symbol of codified upper-class power as a thin mask over blood-striped cruelty! There are plenty of those in England, but Kramer’s argument that the rich are already not in charge anymore was disingenuous in 2005 and is surely more obviously disingenuous after the combined decade of austerity from Eton lads David Cameron and Boris Johnson¹ resulted in the shredding of England’s social safety net. (And various other things.) It seems that after hunting was banned, posh Englanders started looking for other necks to drain.

⏰ Something Extra

For once, I caught something really superb at the beginning of its run! New American Ensemble is an experiment in bringing a year-round ensemble company to the city and allowing for substantial rehearsal of repertory. Judging by their mounting of Ivanov, that extra time and care is hugely worthwhile, because this ensemble was extraordinarily tight and vivid, bringing the humor and complex morality of this Chekhov play to life, to the point where one wondered why it isn’t generally thought of as matching any of his other classic works in quality. The modest but not showily minimal production, in the same UWS space where Bedlam puts stuff up, is a good match for the material; the cast is universally superb, but the especial standouts were semi-ringers Maude Mitchell – an artistic associate at Mabou Mines – as Avdotya, and the ever-employed Ilia Volok, showing how to be a deeply funny loser without being just a silly fool, as Shabelsky; plus the fresh-faced Maya Shoham as Sasha, who has the really difficult task of making us feel for and even perhaps side with a character whose idealism and insistence on trying to ‘fix’ her troublesome love could easily tilt into ridiculousness, and pulls it off with aplomb, especially in the second act, which she largely steals. The trick with this show generally is to make the audience understand a culture in which depression and illness were seen entirely as symptoms of societal woes (social isolation, lack of love) and not also, to a large extent, the causes of them – and yet also understand that such a world still had the same causes and effects as ours, whatever the differences in our interpretations. Not an easy thing to do, let alone as well and as subtly as these players manage. Through April 5th.

Tickets are now on sale for my favorite show of last year, Rheology, remounted at Playwrights Horizons in April and May. Not to be missed.

Sunday Song: