Last Week's New Yorker Review: 🥐 The Weekend Special (June 30)
The Weekend Special
Pieces are given up to three Knapps (for fiction), Downeys (for essays), or Fords (for random picks). As with restaurant stars, even one Knapp, Downey, or Ford indicates a generally positive review.
It’s been six months since the last switchup, which means: A new emoji (if you’re wondering, I say kʁwa.sɑ̃) and new namesakes! In honor of the anniversary, these are all contributors to the magazine’s first-ever issue.
🥐 Fiction
“Happy Days” by Han Ong. No Knapps. support, success, sundering. I generally adore Ong, and the idea of him writing a tribute to the scrappy NYC small-theater world sounds like a sure bet. But I found this disappointingly saccharine and low-energy, spinning its wheels for a very long time without really developing a plot, and focused so intently on providing a heartfelt tribute to an aging scene that it forgets to have any tension or even friction. In theory the conflict is with the famously persnickety Beckett estate, who don’t allow gender swaps, but this never feels relevant, and fizzles out in the end. Estates are annoying, but annoyance is not actually conflict.
Also: Do the mechanics of this story make any actual sense? Would an Off-Off company, which, however scrappy, still has an actual theater in actual Manhattan, take such a risk? Really, what even is this company supposed to be? Most of the theater companies that resemble the one in this story are far more interested in new work. (La MaMa, Hoi Polloi, the late lamented New Ohio.) Is there even a 99-seat theater in the East Village? I guess Frigid is doing stuff at Under St. Marks, but it's less Beckett and more shows about emojis and multiverses – and their company is very, very young. The Irish Rep is putting on weird Beckett compilations, meanwhile; they're awesome but they're also probably the most straightlaced Off-broadway house. I know the point of the story is not necessarily verisimilitude, but Han Ong is a theater person, and it's weird that a story which obviously wants to gesture toward being heartfelt about the punishing forces of time in theater is also occluding, or blind to, the real story of those forces. Branden Jacobs-Jenkins cowrote a show with Carmelita Tropicana, David Greenspan did a show about how great David Greenspan is; theater people are still poor but this era is far from hostile to its experimental elders. On the other hand, while there’s certainly nothing wrong with gender-swapping or gender-blind casting, Broadway is doing it all over the place (to great and questionable effect), and it has been thoroughly captured by the mainstream – maybe these off-off icons could push the envelope a bit further. Ong's view of theater is meant to be achingly nostalgic but ends up gloomy and a bit reactionary; you'd think, reading this, that only revivals had been mounted for the past fifty years.
I really don't mean to sound like CinemaSins for theater nerds, pointlessly nitpicking. But these flaws feed back into the characterization, rendering it muddled and difficult to map onto the real world. Ong is right to tell us that it matters a great deal how these people get by, but he never actually tells us about that very thing. How much money does Matthew make? How does he make rent? How is Aira paying for her doctors’ appointments? What’s the weekly production cost of Happy Days? How big is the crew? Is the props supervisor also a scrappy legend, or are they a twenty-five-year-old transplant commuting from central Harlem with their own ideas about what shows should be mounted, and how, and starring whom? Who owns the building where the show’s going up – and why aren’t they doing something more remunerative with the space (as landlords tend to)? How much are tickets??! The story could use less weepy reminiscing – and more hard numbers.
🥐 Weekend Essay
“Why I Wear the Turban” by Manvir Singh. Two Downeys. culture, cultivation, cut. Not a lot to say about this heartfelt, straightforward essay about the importance of religious symbology – for Singh, the turban has more to do with “valor and nobility” than “piety and cultural parochialism.” His lovely writing elevates the piece; it skirts close to a point about cultural appropriation which remains valid but has been thoroughly articulated, but – at least until the final paragraph – remains more about the burden of expressing any identity, as Singh views it. He’s a carrier of an especially noticeable marker; there’s no such thing as a stealth turban. I do wish he’d say more about the experience of not being bullied, and how that’s colored his feeling of protectiveness toward other turban-wearers. But unlike Singh’s hair, this is short and not so twisty. That’s a wrap!
🥐 Random Pick
“Youth Serves the Harvard Club – Narrow but Still Too Wide – Some Promise for the Future” by A.D. (Dec 15, 1928). No Fords. squash, school, stocky. Rote, mostly voiceless sports coverage from the magazine’s very early days; because it’s Squash, the Harvard Club dominates, so these are children of privilege. The star player, Jay Iselin, was directly related to a founding father; he went on to own cotton mills and died in a plane crash, which I know because his son was longtime president of WNET, and after that the Cooper Union, and got a nice Times obit. The internet rabbit hole was more interesting than the piece, but is it not always such?
🥐 Something Extra
I went to this at Roulette and goddamn was it good, especially the Clare Chase piece. Worth putting on. (At the beginning of that video you can see me, bottom far left, swiping on my phone.)
Sunday Song:
this is not from the recent past like my picks usually are but I just love Ravyn Lenae and I’m pretty excited she has a bona fide pop-charts hit. And it is an unbelievably good song.