2011 in review: Books

Asterisk indicates a reread; bold indicates books I particularly enjoyed. 

Broadway Musicals: The Biggest Hit and Biggest Flop of the Season, 1959-2009 (Filichia)
*Bright Lights, Big Ass (Lancaster)
Wolf Hall (Mantel) (Did Not Finish--p. 277)
*The Lives of Christopher Chant (Wynne Jones)
*Charmed Life (Wynne Jones)
*Witch Week (Wynne Jones)
Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the International Hunt for His Assassin (Sides)
The Stranger Beside Me (Rule)
*Bridget Jones's Diary (Fielding)
*Dogsbody (Wynne Jones)
Fool (Moore) (Audio)
Model Home (Puchner)
Reduced Shakespeare: The Complete Guide for the Attention-Impaired [abridged] (Martin & Tichenor)
Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl (Sturrock)
*The BFG (Dahl)
James and the Giant Peach (Dahl)
*The Twits (Dahl)
*Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl)
*Matilda (Dahl)
Hotel du Lac (Brookner)
The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (Batuman)
*The Eyre Affair (Fforde)
*Lost in a Good Book (Fforde)
*The Well of Lost Plots (Fforde)
*Something Rotten (Fforde)
23 Minutes in Hell (Wiese)
Women, Food, and God (Roth) (DNF--p. 111)
The Assassin's Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln (Larson)
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (Kidder)
Henry and Clara (Mallon)
Bottom of the 33rd: Hope, Redemption, & Baseball's Longest Game (Barry)
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot)
Intuition (Goodman)
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels (Fforde)
There's Cake In My Future (Gruenenfelder)
A Rather Lovely Inheritance (Belmond)
Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All (Fry)
Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence (James)
My Fair Lazy (Lancaster)
Thirteen Reasons Why (Asher)
Five Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth (The Oatmeal)
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals (Gill)
Suddenly You (Kleypas)
The Amazing Story of The Fantasticks: American's Longest-Running Play (Farber & Viagas)
Pygmalion (Shaw)
A Rather Curious Engagement (Belmond)
The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga (Perry & Pleshakov)
Airhead (Cabot)
Franklin and Eleanor: An Extraordinary Marriage (Rowley)
The Archivist (Cooley)
Being Nikki (Cabot)
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (Roach)
Runaway (Cabot)
In the Shadow of No Towers (Spiegelman)
Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung? Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties (Brahm)
Spoiled (Cocks & Morgan)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Barbery)
If You Were Here (Lancaster)
Rockville Pike (Coll)
The Inconvenient Duchess (Merrill)
In the President's Secret Service (Kessler) (Audio; DNF)
Dispatches From a Public Librarian (Douglas)
The Boy Detective Fails (Meno)
Super Sad True Love Story (Shteyngart)
At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Bryson)
How Did You Get This Number? (Crosley)
Maphead: Charting the Whole Weird World of Geography Wonks (Jennings)
*The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Shaffer & Barrows)
And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank (Oney)
Semi-Sweet: A Novel of Love and Cupcakes (Meaney)
The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches (Hample)
Bossypants (Fey)
A Yank Back to England: The Prodigal Tourist Returns (Lipman)
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) (Kaling)
Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) (Sondheim)
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife (Prose)

Week of Theater (addendum): Much Ado About Nothing

I wound up getting a ticket to Much Ado About Nothing at the Shakespeare Theatre for a bit after my week of theater, but "Barb's Month of Theater" didn't seem quite right. Anyway, I love Much Ado. It was actually the first Shakespeare that I saw when not forced to in a classroom. A friend and I randomly rented the Emma Thompson/Kenneth Branagh movie back in high school, and I just fell in love.


Director Ethan McSweeny decided to set the show in 1930s Cuba. I always kind of side-eye updates of Shakespeare; no matter how much the setting might work thematically, the actors are still speaking Shakespeare's language, which is not really how people in Nazi Germany (or wherever) sounded. But I really felt like it worked. Maybe it's that the language of the play itself is more prose-y than a lot of Shakespeare's other plays. The set was gorgeous and the costumes fab. Loved all of it.

My main problems were with the play itself, not any of the acting choices or direction or performance. If you're not familiar with the plot, it tells the story of two couples--Beatrice and Benedick, whose relationship is all about the banter, and Hero and Claudio, the young lovers (i.e., they don't actually talk, just decide that they're in love). Everyone knows that Beatrice and Benedick would be perfect for each other, so their friends convince the couple that the other is in love with the other. Meanwhile, the villain of the piece for no actual reason endeavors to break up Claudio and Hero by having Claudio see a girl who looks like Hero get it on with one of the villain's friends.

I just can't get over how big a jerkhole Claudio is. He immediately believes that it's Hero (although, in fairness, he barely knows her). Instead of confronting her immediately, he decides to wait until the wedding ceremony to publicly shame her. And man, does he! He just goes on and on about how she's a whore. And then he's all joking around later! He totally sucks. And Leonato, Hero's father, isn't much better. After Claudio denounces her (backed up, in fairness, by Don Pedro, a prince), Leonato doesn't believe Hero's protests and joins in the speeches about how Hero is a total slut and has shamed him. Seriously, you just want to get up and smack them around. If I were Hero, after this, I wouldn't want Claudio. Why would I marry a guy so quick to believe the worst of me?

My other problem is the clown of the piece, Dogberry. He's the local constable, who overhears the villain's henchmen discussing the set-up of Hero. I just find him incredibly tiresome. He's the key to resolving the plot, so it's not like you can just cut his scenes; and people do really seem to find them funny. But...I don't know. I could live without the annoying interrogation scene.

That being said, I really enjoyed it. The scene when Benedick overhears Claudio, Leonato, and Don Pedro discuss how much Beatrice loves Benedick was hilarious. Incredibly well-staged, fantastic acting from everyone...just perfect. I honestly couldn't ask for more from that scene.

In close-up pictures, Derek Smith and Kathryn Meisle look a bit older than how I picture Benedick and Beatrice, but I was in the nosebleeds, so it wasn't an issue. But across the board, the acting was great, and the feel of the piece was exactly right.

I confess that I spent a lot of the show wanting to see the David Tennant/Catherine Tate version...and then I found out that I can download it! YAY!!!! And so now I want to watch it, even though I just watched a live production.

Good thing it's such a good play.

Week of Theater: A Christmas Carol

A few caveats. First, I actually saw this the first time the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Second, I've seen this production before--a few times each the past couple of years. Ford's Theatre does A Christmas Carol every year, and usually does the same production of it for 3 years. Third, I volunteer at Ford's, in the museum and ushering. I can't really be terribly objective about it, because I'm friends with people involved. So.

It's an incredibly enjoyable production. It moves quickly, it blends traditional Christmas songs fairly seamlessly, and uses a lot of Dickens's language. (My favorite line, by far, is "There's more of gravy than of grave about you.") Edward Gero plays a fantastic Scrooge; he's legit threatening to people who ask him for money or wish him merry Christmas. (My other favorite exchange, between a man soliciting donations and Scrooge: "What shall we put you down for?" "Nothing." "You wish to remain anonymous?" "I wish to be left alone.") He manages to balance that well with his more comedic moments.

My main problem with the show is that it's a bit heavy-handed; I think that in it, Scrooge starts to change far too quickly--we see him start to regret things in the beginning of the very first "flashback" of The Ghost of Christmas Past (Felicia Curry, whom I adore). There's also a fairly lengthy dance sequence at Fezziwig's; I'd complain, except that it's fun, and they do need to pad the show a bit; the run time is a touch under 2 hours.

Otherwise...enjoy the cast, enjoy the show. My dad loved it. It's really a can't-miss for entertainment this time of year.

(Which is good. I'm scheduled to usher twice more this month.)

Week of Theater: Pride & Prejudice

My Pemberley. Not the estate in Derbyshire.

My cats are named Colin and Pemberley. Obviously I love Pride and Prejudice. I'm at the point where I find it incredibly odd when I hear other people say "Pemberley." On the other hand, most people don't refer to Mr. Darcy's estate as "Pem Pem," which is what I usually call my cat. Who is adorable. (See left.)

Anyway, my third show this week was  Pride and Prejudice at Round House. The actors playing Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, Kate Cook and Michael Brusasco, recently played the roles for the same director at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Cook was a fantastic Lizzy; honestly, she was all I could hope for in the part. She had the right balance of wit and wisdom, though at times I did feel like she was smiling perhaps a bit too much.

Brusasco...I don't know. I thought he was great in the first act, which ended with--of course--the proposal. I had issues with him in the second act, during which he went from "aloof" to "comically exaggerated." After seeing the show, I read an interview (second article down) in which Brusasco said "I think there's something laughable - laugh-at-able - about Darcy, in a live performance. . . . The audience is given the chance to laugh at his social awkwardness, at his inability to communicate. Some of the things he says, they're just cringe-worthy."

There are certainly times when Darcy's awkwardness can be amusing, but doing a comic take that came straight out of some slapstick bit when Darcy runs into Elizabeth and the Gardiners at Pemberley (...hee) is not right. Darcy is not someone who makes faces or is overtly comical. He might say awkward things; people might say things that are funny about him. But Darcy should never make faces that I expect to see a comic actor making.

Otherwise, the adaptation worked well. The second act felt a bit rushed; we definitely didn't get to spend enough time seeing Elizabeth soften toward Darcy, and everything about the Lydia/Wickham subplot happened far too quickly. (And yet we get a scene with the Gardiners making jokes about the name Lambton? Really?) The show also had a tendency to try to foreshadow things that weren't really necessary. But in general, the flow of the show went very well.

The supporting cast were quite good. Heather Haney, who played Jane, reminded me of Rachel McAdams and had the right qualities of beauty and sweetness. James Konicek is a favorite of mine, and his Mr. Collins was reminiscent of his Benedict Arnold in Liberty Smith. In an amusing way. (He's the comic relief, Michael Brusasco.) Danny Gavigan seemed to try to do some sort of lower class accent for Mr. Wickham, but had the right combination of good lucks and sleaziness.

I usually don't comment much on the set, but this was an interesting one. In the middle of the stage was a square piece that rotated and had doors that opened and could be used to indicate various rooms. But because this piece was so bulky, it required that almost all of the action had to take place front stage, center to be seen. It worked better in theory than in practice, I think, though I can't complain about the location of the action--I was sitting in the second row in the center section.

One is always pickiest about things he or she loves, and so it is with me and P&P. It's a very well-done show, and I can't complain too much about a show in which both Darcy and Lizzy were brought to tears in the second proposal scene. So sweet.

I also want to credit Round House, which focuses on adaptations of literature. It's a fascinating concept. For all that it's hard to adapt books to movies, it's that much harder to adapt books to plays.

Week of Theater: You, Nero

My second trip to the theater this week brought me to Ancient Rome, under the reign of Nero. You, Nero tells the story of Scribonius (a real name from Roman times, apparently, and played by Jeff McCarthy, whose bio tells us that he is the voice of Michigan J. Frog), a playwright who is commissioned by Nero (Danny Scheie) to write a play about his life. Scribonious decides to use the opportunity to try to turn Nero's life around--stop the random killings, etc.

It's a new comedy from Amy Freed, who was a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama (for Freedomland) and is now Arena Stage's playwright in residence. And we're talking broad comedy (e.g., "...eschew." "Gesundheit!"). It was very funny, but it also seemed that at times it didn't quite know what it was going for. The actors frequently addressed the audience directly and a couple of times it seemed like they were encouraging audience participation, but it never quite felt right.

And the end. Oh, the end. Freed admits that she used the play to compare the fall of Rome to our own times and that it's a commentary on how people don't appreciate theater and there isn't any serious entertainment anymore, etc., etc. Which...OK, I get that there are some stupid reality shows out there (do we really need to bring back Fear Factor?), and there certainly a lot of issues going on around the world, but a direct comparison seems a bit heavy-handed. We're not quite at the point of killing each other for sport, no matter what dystopian literature would have us believe. And there's a fair amount of good drama out there--if not on the stage (and I can't comment on that; I pay more attention to musical theater than straight plays), then at least on cable television.

In the lead roles, McCarthy and Scheie were quite good. McCarthy apparently only just stepped into the role last week; he was still on-book for chunks of the play, but for the most part, it wasn't an issue. (There were a few moments in the second act where he had to check his lines and it hurt the flow a touch, but honestly, he did a fab job.) Scheie was excellent as Nero; he portrayed the emperor as both very threatening, but managed to show other facets to his personality. He's also the most comic of the parts. My only quibble is that Nero died at the age of 30; Scheie does not look 30. Or in his 30s. Freed credits Scheie as being her muse, but it would be interesting to see the role played by an age-appropriate actor. There was a sizable ensemble who, for the most part, seemed somewhat superfluous, particularly seeing how a couple actors had multiple roles. The cast didn't need to be as large as it was, though far be it for me to say that fewer actors should be working.

In the end, the show was an enjoyable couple of hours. The show could use some work, but I don't regret spending the money to see it.

Week of Theater: A Second Chance

As the first of four shows I'm seeing in the next week (and then another on December 17!), I saw A Second Chance at Signature. It's a new musical, the first from writer/lyricist Ted Shen, and tells the story of Dan, a widower, and Jenna, a divorcee. (The couple is played by Brian and Diane Sutherland, married in real life. Always so cute when that happens!) They meet at a party. The piece follows their relationship over the next 7 months.

The show is perfect for the Ark Theatre at Signature, the small, black box space. It's a quiet, intimate piece. The story is an emotional journey, and there aren't any crazy obstacles thrown in the path of their relationship--just the emotional baggage that two middle-aged adults have. Jenna seems perhaps a bit overly reluctant at first, and Diane Sutherland at times acts by way of gestures a bit much, but those are my only qualms with the show.

The show is sung-through, and the songs have a Sondheim quality--and Sondheim himself gets a shout-out at Dan and Jenna's first date, a trip to the Met. However, it was one of those shows where because the music reminded me of something else, I wound up with the music from Merrily We Roll Along in my head, not A Second Chance. I did find myself wishing there was more straight dialogue...but then wondering what the dialogue would be. This is a show of introspection, and that's something that comes from an internal monologue--song. The show doesn't need dialogue, but I found myself missing it. Maybe just to give the two actors a break, though they both had fantastic voices.

I also noticed the same technique that I picked up on in Parade--at the end of a song, the music bled into the next, leaving little opportunity. This happened for the first few songs, and then did allow for applause. But it almost felt intrusive to applaud; in such a small space, it was almost like that would be the illusion.

A Second Chance is a quiet, emotional piece and made for an enjoyable evening. Will it take the theatre world by storm? No. But it's great to see such a good show about a topic that's so rarely explored.