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Weekend Butler: At last, a Broadway play worth seeing! Preview: “Lessons in Chemistry.” Streaming: “The Diplomat.” Why the wise walk. Salad Season. Sharpen your memory. And more.
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Published: Apr 26, 2023
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Weekend
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THIS WEEK IN BUTLER: A Face in the Crowd. The Lost Wife. Miranda Lambert: Y’all Eat Yet?: Welcome to the Pretty B*tchin’ Kitchen
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AT LAST! A PLAY WORTH SEEING! GOOOOOOO!
I know a headhunter who makes her clients meet briefly with her for a pump-‘em-up-and-send-‘em-out-revving-high session before interviews for big jobs. One morning a client rang her bell, in tears. Her boyfriend had broken up with her, her dog had died — life had just handed her a shit sandwich. The headhunter was unsympathetic. “They call it ‘livelihood,’” she said. “Well, get lively!”
One of the reasons I almost never go to the theater now is because the plays on and off Broadway make me want to shake producers and directors and ask them, “What business do you think you’re in? From here, it doesn’t look like show business — that is, the enterprise of entertaining audiences. It seems like you think your purpose is to present diverse casts in “woke” plays that are more lectures than theater — and, as rapidly as possible, go out of business.”
Today I saw something amazing: a real play. There was plenty of laughter in ‘Summer, 1976,” many right-angle turns in the plot, an unanticipated life crisis, and when it was over, I wasn’t the only one standing and weeping. Stagecraft? Zero. Just Laura Linney and Jessica Hecht, (photo, above), sitting at a table on a nothingburger of a set, talking. It’s the summer of 1976, they’re mothers with daughters the same age, and although they have nothing more than that in common, they start hanging out. They don’t exactly become friends. They become more than that: soul-sharers, lovers in every way but one.
If I say more, I might spoil the experience for you. Let me just link to a Times feature about the actresses, which also doesn’t make you feel you’ve already seen the play. It just opened. It was scheduled to close soon. Now it’s been extended to June 10. Which should tell you this is not just your emotional Butler off on a jag. Click for tickets here.
PREVIEW: “LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY”
Think it will be a hit? I’d say: can’t miss. Watch a preview.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR MEMORY SHARP: READ MORE NOVELS
From the New York Times:
One early indicator of memory issues, according to Dr. Restak, is giving up on fiction. “People, when they begin to have memory difficulties, tend to switch to reading nonfiction,” he said.
Over his decades of treating patients, Dr. Restak has noticed that fiction requires active engagement with the text, starting at the beginning and working through to the end. “You have to remember what the character did on Page 3 by the time you get to Page 11,” he said.
STREAMING: “THE DIPLOMAT”
My mail filled with demands that I watch Season 1 of this streaming series, so I surrendered. “The Diplomat” stars two excellent actors, Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell, but it was so dense with ever-changing priorities that I almost wished the idiot Brit Prime Minister would provoke the Russians to use nukes and start a World War. The series is a heavy-handed argument for an easy idea: men screw diplomacy up, women save the day. Roger Ebert.com: “It’s an extremely talky show, built on a foundation of discussions and disagreements about foreign policy more than anything else, and a show this dense with dialogue can be a tough sell to people looking for something to casually watch while doing something else on their phone. Luckily, the creators hired an ensemble of performers to make this kind of intellectual discourse genuine.” More criticism here. The Netflix link here.
WHY THE WISE WALK
Soren Kierkegaard: “I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
Charles Dickens: “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just explode and perish.”
Thomas Mann: “Thoughts come clearly while one walks.”
J.K. Rowling: “There is nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas.”
Henry David Thoreau: “I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.”
Friedrich Nietzsche: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”
Rousseau: “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.”
WEEKEND RECIPE: SALAD SEASON BEGINS
A recipe from Canal House: Cook Something: Recipes to Rely On
LEMON-ANCHOVY VINAIGRETTE
serves 4–6
2 lemons
4 anchovy filets packed in oil, drained and finely chopped
1⁄2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1⁄4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper
Using a sharp knife, cut off and discard all the peel and white pith from the lemons. Working over a medium bowl, cut lemons along sides of membranes to release the segments into the bowl. Squeeze the juice from the membranes into the bowl, and discard the membranes.
Stir in the anchovies, oil, and red pepper flakes, breaking up the lemon segments against the side of the bowl with a spoon. Season with salt and pepper to taste
WEEKEND POEM
From “Digest,” by Greg Pardlo.
“Problema 3”
The Fulton St. Foodtown is playing Motown and I’m surprised
at how quickly my daughter picks up the tune. And soon
the two of us, plowing rows of goods steeped in fructose
under light thick as corn oil, are singing Baby,
I need your lovin, unconscious of the lyrics’ foreboding.
My happy child riding high in the shopping cart as if she’s
cruising the polished aisles on a tractor laden with imperishable
foodstuffs. Her cornball father enthusiastically prompting
with spins and flourishes and the double-barrel fingers
of the gunslinger’s pose. But we hear it as we round the rice
and Goya aisle, that other music, the familiar exchange of anger,
the war drums of parent and child. The boy wants, what, to be
carried? to eat the snacks right from his mother’s basket?
What does it matter, he is making a scene. With no self-interest
beyond the pleasure of replacing wonder with wonder, my daughter
asks me to name the boy’s offense. I offer to buy her ice cream.
How can I admit recognizing the portrait of fear the mother’s face
performs, the inherited terror of non-conformity frosted with the fear
of being thought disrespected by, or lacking the will to discipline
one’s child? How can I account for both the cultural and the inter-
cultural? The boy’s cries rising like hosannas as the mother’s purse
falls from her shoulder. Her missed step from the ledge
of one of her stilted heels, passion loosed with each displaced
hairpin. His little jacket bunched at the collar where she has worked
the marionette. Later, when I’m placing groceries on the conveyor
belt and it is clear I’ve forgotten the ice cream, my daughter
tries her hand at this new algorithm of love, each word
punctuated by her little fist: boy, she commands, didn’t I tell you?
