Our Town
(Westport)
PBS
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Gentle reader, you know
everything. You buy a theater ticket if you can afford one. You see Neil
Simon off-Broadway where they can afford him, and you hear Arthur Miller say
drama’s nearly as dead as opera. You go to the opera where if they
can’t act they can sure sing, anyway. At the Westport Country
Playhouse, they can’t act and they sure can’t sing (or rather,
they can’t speak... the choir singing is passable). The laws of artistic
economy are such that, in the event, Paul Newman comes out at the end after
Emily bungles her scene (which is apparently addressed to a plush toy named
Toto), Paul Newman as the Stage Manager stands and says the lines which give
the play thus transmogrified its meaning, a profound one: “No living
beings up there” among the stars, only “chalk and fire. Just
this one, straining to make something of itself”, the rest sleeping. You will not be surprised
to hear that the Westport Country Playhouse is raising funds for a new
project. A drama school? Building renovation. Paul Newman ought to have directed
it, but there you are... |
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