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

“Constellation” by Andrea Bajani. No Ellises. father, fall, failure. A style I associate closely with Europe (Bajani is Houston-based, but Italian), the spare, almost therapeutic memory monologue here feels a bit like desiccated Proust. I appreciate that this style allows the politics of the personal to appear on the page without too much signifying of heroes and villains, but I often find it dramatically inert; in the context of a novel, this might serve ably as a setup, but removed and placed on its own, it’s hard not to feel like the whole story is setup; the reader never stops anticipating the present tense, when things will start to happen now. I actually think the interview with the author is more interesting than the story; the narrator’s male “credulity” and “fear” are visible in the story, but hearing about their purpose in the wider novel makes clear that the speaker is meant to be “caught up in a process of rewriting every story he has inherited, including the version of himself that he has invented over the years” – a very therapeutic exercise indeed. And it’s fascinating to hear that Bajani feels like the English translation is “the original”, the story written “with American readers partly in mind”. Surprising, to me, because the story feels so deeply Italian… but I suppose American pizza feels Italian to me, too.

⏰ Weekend Essay

“When Should You Say Goodbye to a Pet?” by Sunita Puri. No McClellands. hospice, howling, home. A piece that can’t quite decide whether it’s about pet hospice as an industry and practice or a more directly informative piece about the titular question. And I’m not sure I buy that caring so deeply about one’s pets is actually anything new; it may just be that the gig-work professionalization of solutions for our anxieties is now more acceptable. (That, of course, is a complex issue; in pet care I think better results are probably happening today than before such things were commonplace.) Puri’s writing is just okay; end-of-life care is a fascinating subject, and I wish she’d trust the reader to hear more of the theory, and less fairly predictable anecdotes about sick pets. I’m just not sure anyone who’s had to put down a pet in the last five or so years (as I have; rest in peace to my rescue yorkie-pointer-dachsund-poodle Junie) will find anything new here, and I doubt anyone else will care.

⏰ Random Pick

“Letter from Venice” by Alan Moorehead. (October 15, 1949). No Whitakers. stay, stage, stagnation. Prints the Mann-ian cliché with regards to the city; perhaps that’s accurate, but it doesn’t need to be reiterated, and Moorehead doesn’t find much to point out in terms of actual events to go along with his never-especially-engaging description of the vibes.

⏰ Something Extra

TONS to get to! Twelve shows seen since last I updated y’all, and four of those will make my best-of-the-year list. Those are:

Schmigadoon, mentioned previously; a dialed-in delight.

Indian Princesses, yet another entry in what I’m calling the Wolveslike genre; in other words: A group of teenage or (in this case) tweenage girls, played by slightly older actresses, each growing up with and against one another, amid an unvarnished and spiky portrayal of their psyches. This entry is especially similar to the concurrently mounted Dad Don’t Read This, mirroring its interest in daughter-father relationships, its mystical edge, its eerie time-collapse aesthetic, and the use of a starry backdrop at a key moment… this show is more overtly political, but also less outré, and ultimately it does feel ‘stock’ in certain respects… but its pacing and performances are so spot-on, and it did move me to tears, so it wouldn’t be fair to give it less than a rave. It’s a very, very good show. It’s easy enough to draw conclusions about our pre-adolescent moment from this trend in what is written and staged, and it’ll be interesting to see how these shows age and what their legacy becomes.

Becky Shaw was basically impeccable; hilarious, prescient, finely drawn. Up for a few more days.

The most interesting smash, though, was the two-day free outdoors double bill at Domino Park of the genius clown DeliaDelia the Flat Chested Witch, who did their usual routine which I won’t (and couldn’t) spoil, and the main event, PussyPaws Puppetry’s That Paradise Place, an extraordinary and indescribable show made of skits on sexuality written by artists with disabilities and staged in a radically handcrafted madcap puppet fantasia. Wild tonal pivots came with the territory, all amateur brilliance on full display.

Also very good: Derangements, the second Clubbed Thumb show of the year and narrowly the best of the five Summerworks shows I’ve seen, a wildly funny absurdist free-associative descent into a 1980s that is not the 1980s, Our Bad Sexual Politics, and the freedom of going mad. Already sold out, hope they remount.

The Story of a Sudden Butterfly, Tom Thayer’s very short puppet-performance one night only at PS1, is hard to describe in a way that doesn’t make it sound like ass: there aren’t really even puppets, just sculptures he moves from place to place; mostly he’s making noise music with various weird instruments; the screens with the most movement on them are very small and not centrally located… yet as a vibe, a moving multi-part artwork with a low-res sheen, it’s extraordinary. There is no one making work like his; keep an eye out.

Maho Ogawa’s site-specific dance amidst the skateboarders of Gotham Park, Nothing to Watch, was lovely and soul-nourishing.

Alvin Ailey at BAM danced the hell out of a mixed bag of material.

Die Cute at The Brick was more of a set of ideas and projects than a show, but it was a totally charming and delightful way to spend an hour. Honestly, the cake and refreshments alone justified the price of admission.

And one thing that didn’t work: El Ultima Sueno de Frida y Diego is a bizarre mess of an opera, the libretto poorly modulated and zany, its new staging perversely enjoyable for how garish and bizarro it is, but not successful in any traditional way. The music, though, by recent Pulitzer winner Gabriela Lena Frank (for a different piece, thank goodness), is very strong, especially in the first act, where her exuberant vocal lines suggest a genuine magic the rest of the show can only pretend toward.

If you’re good at counting, you’ll note that’s eleven, and it doesn’t include the worst thing I saw lately… but I’m not going to call out that show, which was fairly small-scale, well-meaning, and, most importantly, now-closed.

Went 20/24 with the Tonys; I’ll take it!

Sunday Song: