Helpful but frequently cringey advice for those of us who suck at mingling

⭐⭐⭐  

An interesting-enough read. In this new, fourth edition of The Art of Mingling, author Jeanne Martinet immediately identified my type of social awkwardness; like others, I'm pretty good in small groups (and can handle myself well enough in situations where the conversation topics are clear, like when I'm working a booth at a conference or volunteering at a historic site), but my mind goes completely blank if I'm at a larger party where I only know a person or two. Or even at a networking reception where I theoretically have things in common with people.

Martinet also identifies that in-person socializing is a good, healthy thing for people and that we're damaged by doing all of our socializing online. I'm part of a number of online communities--heck, I met my husband through one--so it's not that I don't appreciate them. But there are times that it's good to get out and actually talk to people. In person. Even people you don't know.

Martinet gives advice for various aspects of mingling, most of which could work at either social parties or business functions. She describes techniques to join conversations, how to get out of conversations, how to build yourself up to start mingling. what to do if you make a faux pas. Late in the book, she has a whole chapter about dealing with politics in conversation (mostly about avoiding politics in conversation).

A lot of the general concepts are helpful and, like many other self-help books, though I may not fully buy all of her advice, it's helpful for getting into the right headspace. And there are legitimately some helpful tips for how to handle parties and mingling.

However.

A lot of the actual lines and examples Martinet gives are extremely cringe. I would never say them. Someone saying many, many of her lines would be just incredibly awkward. She frequently provides five or six sample lines to use in a given situation, and of those, there's usually one I would consider an actual option to use in real life.

I'd recommend this book as a general guide to help give you some general ideas about how to handle social situations. I'd just avoid a lot of the specifics.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read an advance copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Christmas magic, but make it messy

⭐⭐⭐ 

I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about Pining for You by Stef Ferrari. Bennie is a high school senior who works at...some sort of Christmas tree-type emporium in Connecticut. She encounters Eve, who lives in Brooklyn, and she and her friends decide to go into the city to try to find her so Bennie can capitalize on Christmas magic and have her first kiss.

That description makes it sound a lot lighter than it is. Bennie and her friends are pretty much all dealing with fairly weighty issues--as is Eve. It's pretty much all family issues, but Bennie and her friends are also facing down the end of high school and all of the change that comes with that. It's a hard, transitional time of life, to be sure. But that's all heavier than the Hallmark Christmas movie description makes it out to be.

The story itself is pretty cute, and I enjoyed Bennie's group of friends and how much they were there for each other. (I didn't need as much explicit "We're a found family, yay!" exposition as there was, but this is YA, so I should probably give it a pass.) Bennie herself could be a bit annoying at times, though in a way that was fairly realistic for a teenager from Connecticut. She wants to go to film school and so keeps recording on a Camcorder as the group traipses about New York, but doesn't realize that not everyone wants to be recorded and is hurt when she's told so. I could also very much relate to her frustration at not being able to participate in a number of her normal Christmas traditions--because this is a Hallmark-esque story (Bennie's goal is to make queer Christmas rom-coms), Bennie is all about the magic of Christmas, and throughout the book has to confront that not everything is magical, that Christmas can be hard for people. She also finds Christmas magic in unexpected places and moments, so it does even out.

Also, Bennie and Eve's relationship is great (though the third act crisis seemed...off). As someone who also had my first kiss later than many others (though my friends were never this invested in making sure I got it), I could relate to Bennie's feelings about it.

Unfortunately, I wasn't particularly enamored of Ferrari's writing; I'm not sure whether it was trying to sound Zoomer or what, but it was a bit cringe-inducing to me, a Xennial. At times, it was a bit of a slog, oddly enough, and there were chunks I wound up skipping--particularly at the end, where there was a multi-page speech spelling out the lessons of the book. Good for Bennie for learning them, and I guess theoretically young people reading the book might need them spelled out, but it felt a bit like it was underestimating the audience.

Still, would 100% watch the tv movie adaptation. And as such, I'll include my Hallmark movie checklists.

Trope(s):
    Royalty
    Alternate reality
    Small town ✔
    Fake relationship
    Family business getting sold/going bankrupt 
    Enemies-to-lovers
    Best friends-to-lovers
    Second chance
    Stranded ✔

Meet Cute: 
Eve and her Christmas Carol-obsessed younger brother show up at the Christmas place in Connecticut where Bennie works. Bennie's trying to get a tree to surprise her mother with, but is entranced enough to spend some time getting to know Eve. But she gets called off before getting Eve's contact info; she's just left with a few snippets of information and some cookies from Eve's family's bakery.

Rundown:
    Dead parents ✔
    Montage(s)
    Christmas-related name(s) ✔
    Animals
    Returns to hometown
    Is Santa a character? 
        Secretly or overtly?
    Cookie baking 
    Tree decorating ✔
    Somebody hates Christmas
    Christmas festival in a small town ✔
    A literal competition 
    Child plays matchmaker
    All work, no romance/life 
    Kiss before the end of the movie ✔
    Interrupted kiss ✔
    Flashback to childhood
    The leads literally run into each other
    Gratuitous shirtless scene
    Big Secret
    Wacky misunderstanding
    Just. Talk. To. Each. Other. ✔
    Someone pushing the leads together ✔
    Real family = chaos / bad families = cold and not chaotic
    Learns the meaning of Christmas
    Stranded by snowstorm ✔
    Hot chocolate ✔
    Ice skating 
    D-list celebrity
    Enemy-to-friend storyline
    The love interest is an ex
    Career change
    Lying to each other
    Tries to apologize, but keeps getting cut off
    Christmas pageant 
    End with a flash-forward

Thank you to Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.  

Baseball is dumb, but I can't help but love it

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

 

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, writers for Baseball Prospectus, got the opportunity to help run an unaffiliated baseball team (basically three levels below even the lowest affiliated minor league team), trying to test whether they could use analytics to help propel the team to greatness.

As an Orioles fan in the year of our Lord 2026, there were times that reading this was positively cathartic. I've read so many rants on fan sites/comments about how bad analytics are and how using computers has messed with baseball and something something fundamentals blah blah old man yelling at the sky. (Ignoring things like how Earl Weaver was essentially using analytics when he set up his famous platoons, but because it didn't come from computers, it's different. Because reasons.) So reading about Ben and Sam sparring with the team's manager(s) about tweaking the lineup was just incredibly relatable. So you get exchanges like

"That's what I'm saying: You can't just go off numbers," [manager] Feh counters. "You're saying he hasn't pitched good, but he might not have been put in a position to get a chance to do what he's capable of." (p. 38)

and messages from the manager like

I hear what you're saying but it's never a good idea to make changes just because a few games don't go our way. The message it sends are that I am panicking, and I am not because I know there are stretches where things go your way, and there are stretches where they don't. You can't give up on a guy cause he has a rough week. Maybe a little later.

with the rumination "If you can't make changes when you're winning or when you're losing, when is it safe to make them?" (p. 200).

Ben and Sam never try to hit the players over the head with the numbers; instead, they wanted everyone to know that they had information (more information than most even minor league players had at the time, as they used their connections to have pitch tracking installed and had volunteers scouting the three other teams in the league): "We wanted to win them over, not overwhelm them or argue them into submission" (p. 244).

It was interesting reading about the issues of trying to create an analytics-based team from the beginning. Because the team is so far down the pipeline from the majors, most decent players weren't available. It's hard to find players who can play for basically nothing, but the lure of playing professional baseball--even at that level--is a strong one.

Can a creative, incisive use of numbers really sharpen the performance of players who've never been able to fulfill their major league dreams? Can we become as proficient at analyzing players' personalities as we are at analyzing their stats? Or will the game's human elements build barriers that we'll be too out of our element to break down? (p. 28)

Ben and Sam delve into the intricacies of clubhouse politics and how fault lines can divide: old vs. young, players who speak different languages, rich vs. players making league minimum. One of their challenges building the roster where they did is that players came on the recommendations of other players, creating additional cliques on the team. Which is something hard to control for when looking at a spreadsheet.

At the end of the day, particularly after a frustrating loss, sentiments like "All of the things are dumb" (p. 348) are just completely relatable. And sometimes it's nice to read about that in a book. Also, this: "'I like all these guys,' I say. 'I'm a sucker. I want to hug them all. I want all their dreams to come true. They all have problems and they're all great.'" (p. 102) That's honestly how I feel about the Orioles. I am definitely a sucker who just wants them to be happy and do well.

Ben and Sam do a good job arguing for the benefits of analytics-based team management. They got to do some fun stuff with shifts (RIP shifts), they had to fight their managers about bullpen usage, they speculated about using a randomizer to pick pitches (while acknowledging it could never actually work). It was frustrating reading about their roadblocks, but was a great look into low-level professional baseball. 

Sometimes they go into a bit too much detail when recounting games, and it's very hard to keep all the players straight. But there are some players who stick with you and you, like the authors, can't help but love these guys. And you can tell that Ben and Sam come from writing backgrounds, as the prose itself is entertaining throughout. So I'll say I recommend this for baseball fans and end with some summation quotes from the book:

The other guy lives in a big house, too. Not all failure corresponds to a lack of effort. Or a lack of desire. Or a lack of preparation. Or a lack of skill. We lose, sometimes, because the other guy is also really good. (p. 301) 

We haven't lost our belief that data can help people build better baseball teams. We've just gained a greater appreciation for how hard it can be to collect and communicate. (p. 350)

ultimately the last stage of every decision--even data-driven decisions--is the gut. Our data could get us only so far, and even we knew that to get from a spreadsheet to the decision on the field meant weighing the situation and taking a leap. Ben and I could look at the same data and come to two different conclusions; so, too, could [manager] Yoshi. Our guts diverged. (p. 359)

And if the stats insist that someone can play, we won't rule him out based on body type, facial structure, or fastball speed. We're the Ellis Island of the indy leagues. Give us your small, your soft-throwing, your huddled middle infielders yearning to play for (almost) free. (p. 70) 

A night with Sutton

I'm not totally sure when I first became aware of Sutton Foster. (It was not when I saw her in the ensemble of The Scarlet Pimpernel on Broadway in 1997.) I remember a friend raving about Thoroughly Modern Millie, the show that brought Sutton Foster to the limelight (and for which she won her first Tony). By the time Anything Goes was on Broadway, I was aware enough to gush to my father about her when he told me had snagged tickets to the show. He hadn't heard of her, but the next day, after seeing the performance, he called me to rave.

And, of course, I watched Bunheads (and it's worth going down the YouTube rabbit hole of dances from that show) and Younger (which had the added bonus of being about people working in publishing and was completely bonkers).

So I was delighted when I saw that Olney Theatre brought her in to do a concert as part of their recent celebrations (they opened some new spaces on their campus) and that tickets weren't crazy expensive. And they were 100% worth the price of admission, just to see her do "Anything Goes" with a handful of local performers. I had no expectation of her doing this, since it is a big number. But this is a performance that I routinely watch on YouTube--the version from the Tonys (below), the version from rehearsal before the show opened, the version of Jonathan Groff doing the choreo. 

Before the show, I was listening to the woman sitting next to me talking to her tween daughter. "She'll probably sing some songs you know, and some songs you don't know," the mom said, and she was right. Besides "Anything Goes," the moment that most delighted me was probably when Foster was talking about her 9-year-old daughter and then started singing "It's Raining Tacos" and the tween was audibly thrilled at this development.

I'm not sure what exactly I expected Sutton Foster to sing; primarily showtunes, probably. And she certainly did her share of those, but I was intrigued by the mashups she did--"Singin' in the Rain" with "If I Were a Bell", "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" with "Three Little Birds" (the Bob Marley "Don't worry about a thing/'Cause every little thing gonna be alright" song). They were really fun! She also brought on some younger local actresses to do a song from Shrek the Musical, which was endearing--particularly with her digressions about how anti-feminist traditional fairy tales are. 

Ultimately, Sutton Foster was as endearing as I wanted her to be, with a nod to her relationship with Hugh Jackman in "Love Somebody" ("I love somebody/And I do/I love somebody/And his name is --" /winks/) and comments about her tap shoes being more comfortable than her Louboutins. And her voice, of course, was amazing.

I'm still bummed I didn't get to see her in The Music Man or Sweeney Todd, but am so happy I got to go out and see her perform in such an intimate setting.

Hallmark Movie Roundup: Absolutely Devoted to You

Title: Absolutely Devoted to You (2026)

Actor(s) You Know: 
Jesse Metcalfe (Desperate Housewives, John Tucker Must Die, Hallmark movies and tv shows), Kimberly Sustad (many Hallmark movies, of which The Nine Lives of Christmas is one), Barry W. Levy (various things; totally a Hey! It's That Guy! guy)

Plot:
Kaitlin is a segment producer for a NY morning show. Her boss tells her that Kaitlin can get 90s one-hit wonder Absolutely Yeah to perform on their end-of-the-summer show, Kaitlin will become the executive producer. Three of the four members of Absolutely Yeah are all-in, but Derrick is now working at a community center on Long Island and doesn't want to be back in the spotlight again. Meanwhile, the community center is putting on a variety show to pay for the next year's programming, because that's completely how that kind of facility gets funding. (Well, maybe now it is. /sobs/)

Trope(s):
    Royalty
    Alternate reality
    Small town 
    Fake relationship
    Family business getting sold/going bankrupt ✔ (Kind of; the community center will go out of business if the variety show doesn't do well)
    Enemies-to-lovers
    Best friends-to-lovers
    Second chance
    Stranded

Meet Cute: 
Kaitlin tracks down Derrick in the community center, with help from his former bandmates. Kudos to her, she never tries to hide who she is or what she's doing, and she gets Derrick to say that if she helps make the variety show a hit, he'll participate in the reunion.

Rundown:
    Dead parents
    Montage(s)
    Christmas-related name(s) 
    Animals
    Returns to hometown
    Is Santa a character? 
        Secretly or overtly?
    Cookie baking 
    Tree decorating
    Somebody hates Christmas
    Christmas festival in a small town 
    A literal competition
    Child plays matchmaker
    All work, no romance/life
    Kiss before the end of the movie
    Interrupted kiss 
    Flashback to childhood
    The leads literally run into each other
    Gratuitous shirtless scene
    Big Secret
    Wacky misunderstanding
    Just. Talk. To. Each. Other.
    Someone pushing the leads together ✔
    Real family = chaos / bad families = cold and not chaotic
    Learns the meaning of Christmas
    Stranded by snowstorm
    Hot chocolate 
    Ice skating
    D-list celebrity
    Enemy-to-friend storyline
    The love interest is an ex
    Career change
    Lying to each other
    Tries to apologize, but keeps getting cut off
    Christmas pageant 
    End with a flash-forward

Did I actually like/root for the heroine? How do the lead(s) annoy me?
I will always root for Kimberly Sustad. They had a good balance with Kaitlin; she's ambitious and good at her job, but still vulnerable. And, of course, connects with everyone. Derrick is harder to accept. He doesn't want the attention of being a celebrity, but I wanted more of a backstory, more of his motivations.

Is it in any way not completely generic? 
I mean, he works at a community center trying to raise money via talent show. No.

Is the BFF actually the best? Do they need their own movie?
I 100% would watch the sequel about Sara, the morning show's costume person, who winds up dating one of the other boy band members. She and the boy band member both seem fabulous and I want to spend more time with them.

How is the romantic alternative wrong for the heroine? 
N/A. No romantic alternatives for anyone.

Thoughts/Other Notes:
First of all, why did they even MAKE this movie if they weren't going to include the original 90s music video for their song (which was, I admit, a bit of a bop)? I spent the whole movie waiting for the flashback and it never came. So here's the video of "PoP Goes My Heart" from Music & Lyrics:

Anyway. The movie is fine. Sustad and Metcalfe had basically no romantic chemistry. I did like the other boy band members and the group of teenage boys Derrick works with were a good bunch. I always appreciate when characters are good at their jobs. I'm just a bit disappointed, because I felt that this movie had potential that it just didn't meet.

Rating:
🧀🧀

It IS the American way, I guess

I usher at Ford's Theatre, where they--like many other theaters around the country--put on A Christmas Carol every year. I've ushered since 2009, and taking out 2020, and considering that I saw it at least two times each season...[insert math]...I've seen it dozens of times. Particularly when you add in watching A Muppet Christmas Carol every year.

One year, I decided to read the Dickens. Just triangulating the two versions, I could identify a good amount of what must've been from the original. (Including one of my favorite exchanges, when the charity collectors ask for a donation:

“What shall I put you down for?” 
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.
“You wish to be anonymous?”
“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge.

A Christmas Carol is funnier than you think it is!) And from my viewing of various adaptations, there are parts of the story you're always going to see and some parts you're not going to see (we actually get another glimpse of Belle after she ends the engagement) and some that show up sometimes (the children Ignorance and Want).

We need to accept there are a million adaptations and there will be a million more (though, again, with Muppet Christmas Carol existing, we certainly don't need any more because that one is perfect). And now there's...this.

From just the most basic point of view, getting a backstory on Ebenezer Scrooge is not "the story we don't know." It's very much in the source material. The entire Ghost of Christmas Past sequence is Scrooge's backstory! Which is not to say that there's nothing to explore; A Christmas Carol is a novella; it's short enough that Dickens toured it and I know that FDR, for example, would read it to his family on Christmas Eve. There are definitely opportunities to go more into Ebenezer's childhood, and what changed for Ebenezer after he and Belle got engaged.

But.

This characterization, as shown in the trailer, is doing nothing for me. They're touting the return of Johnny Depp as "the master of misfits," which is not who Ebenezer Scrooge is in any way. Sticking out his tongue? Throwing snowballs? The whole "Humbug" in the window scene? Hard, hard pass. It just indicates to me a lack of comprehension about who Scrooge is.

He's not a misfit. He's not wacky or zany.

Anyway, a definitely pass from me. I'll continue with Craig Wallace as Scrooge at Ford's and Michael Caine on my tv.
 

Writing elevates this book club pick. Also excellent literature references.

⭐⭐⭐⭐  

I quite enjoyed The Wedding People by Alison Espach, though it was definitely not what I thought it was going to be. I probably should've paid more attention to the part of the book jacket that read that our lead character Phoebe is "at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself" and less to the part where she's the only one at a hotel in Newport, Rhode Island not there for Lila and Gary's wedding. Which is to say that the first chunk of the book is a bit difficult and full of things there should be trigger warnings for--suicidal ideation and infertility, particularly.

I couldn't give this the full 5 stars because I feel like people who have depression might have issues with the depiction of Phoebe; not her depression itself, so much, which felt to me pretty realistic, but rather at her somewhat miraculous bounce back from feeling suicidal (though she'll undoubtedly snap out of it, so...I don't know). I also don't know that we needed the scene when Phoebe's ex-husband shows up and begs to take her back and I have mixed feelings about whether everything was really just too neat. Of course Lila doesn't want to marry Gary, making Phoebe's feelings less of a problem...because of course Lila and Jim have feelings for each other. And of course Phoebe gets along great with Gary's daughter Juice, and of course a fabulous fantasy job opportunity in Newport appears. Life usually doesn't work out quite that well, but also, I do read books for escapism.

All that said, I really liked this. As an English major, I enjoyed the references to Victorian literature and I loved the setting--Newport is on my list of places I want to visit. I enjoyed how because Phoebe wasn't actually invested in any of the wedding people, she could be honest while also getting to know everyone without any preconceptions. The description of Phoebe's marriage falling apart, and the gradual realization that it probably wasn't ever as good as she may have thought. The looks at Phoebe's childhood and how they made Phoebe into who she was...and Phoebe taking this moment to change.

I liked her journey of trying to figure out her own life, past, present, and future, and I appreciated that the ending was left fairly open. Also, I quite liked Espach's writing:

Nat and Suz are excited to hear the story, and Phoebe imagines they could probably listen to it a thousand times the way her father could watch Vietnam War movies over and over again. Bridesmaids need the same kinds of stories soldiers do, stories that justify why they do what they do. Why they are willing to sacrifice who they are and a good night's sleep for the noble cause of defending democracy and Lila and Gary's love. (p. 112)

Under [her dead mother's] gaze, Phoebe was careful never to make any mistakes. Phoebe was quiet and obedient, never talking too fast or too loudly, because she never wanted to be a burden to her father. She had felt this way in her marriage, too--careful never to cry too hard or tell meandering sties at dinner. Careful always to wear nice pajamas to bed. Careful never to lose control. (p. 66)

But Phoebe is starting to understand that on some nights, Lila is probably the loneliest girl in the world, just like Phoebe. And maybe they are all lonely. Maybe this is just what it means to be a person. To constantly reckon with being a single being in one body. Maybe everybody sits up at night and creates arguments in their head for why they are the loneliest person in the world. (p. 151)

Recommend.

A night out with Carla Hall (but sadly no biscuits for the audience)

I admittedly only really know Carla Hall from her appearances on some of the Food Network's baking competitions (their Holiday & Halloween Baking Championships, mostly); I've never watched Top Chef. But I knew she had some interest in theater from her involvement with the musical Grace at Ford's Theatre back in 2022. But I was intrigued when I saw that she'd be doing a one-woman show at Olney Theatre: Please Underestimate Me. (The title, too, caught my attention.)

The show is framed around a segment about making biscuits on a fictional talk show, though as the performance progresses, it's not even really trying to hide that it's The Chew, which she co-hosted. (Also, sadly, the audience does not get to eat the biscuits, which was upsetting for me. I adore biscuits.)

Carla Hall in Please Underestimate Me. Photo by Teresa Castracane Photography.

It's a show that manages to be a lot of fun while also being moving and frustrating as you watch Carla's journey. I loved Carla's depiction of her time at theater camp as a child and her life pre-chef is unexpected--accounting! Modeling! Going to Howard with Kamala Harris!

She discovers cooking and winds up on Top Chef and The Chew, where the audience groans as the producers give her notes about how to behave and look and tamp down her personality. But we also get to see Carla grow and learn to stand up for herself in a way that empowers the audience (with whom she has some fun interactions--and she definitely has thoughts about how much audience members, even ones pulled from the crowd, should be able to improvise with her). It's an intimate show and you really feel like you get to know Carla. She tells her story in a way that makes it both incredibly personal but also universal. Most people will be able to relate to at least some of what she's gone through.

The set designed by Lauren M. Nichols is truly a delight, and Kelly Colburn's projections help flesh out the look, as well as delight the audience with pictures of Carla through the years. Young Carla wanted to be Carol Burnett, and you can see the influence in her performance. It's a very fun night out, and it does make one wish we all had Auntie Carla to call to give things to us straight. She's earned her wisdom.

Word nerds, unite

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

A really enjoyable read, particularly for me as an English major who works in publishing. (Thinking about this, I'd say someone should write a similar book about The Chicago Manual of Style, but it doesn't have quite the same appeal or universality as a dictionary. But I would love it!) Author Stefan Fatsis is a sports journalist, but I remember him for Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players. In Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary, he embeds himself at Merriam-Webster, tries to get some words added to the dictionary, and immerses himself in dictionary culture.

It's a fascinating book. Fatsis focuses mostly on Merriam-Webster and American dictionaries, but naturally Samuel Johnson's dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary come up quite a bit. Fatsis goes through the history of Merriam-Webster and the process for creating entries, some of which I was familiar with from having read multiple books (both fiction and nonfiction!) about the creation of the OED. The books is recent enough that Fatsis goes into depth about not only the effect of the Internet in general on dictionaries, but also AI and how it's progressed over the years and how dictionary publishers use social media to make money now that the sales of print dictionaries aren't what they were.

The book is also unabashedly political, which is interesting for a book about a dictionary. Fatsis goes into pronouns, including a lengthy discussion of the attempts and challenges to make gender-neutral pronouns happen (and, of course, the history of "they"). He writes about slurs and swears and the debate about how to include them in the dictionary, and how the definitions change over time. He discusses how politics affects language and evolution of words like "woke." 

There's also descriptions of dictionary collections and the groups who choose the word of the year and conferences for professionals and enthusiasts. Fatsis's description of the world of dictionaries is well-done, all around. Recommend for word nerds.

(Side note: I was consistently blown away every time Fatsis mentioned how much it cost to produce these things. There are times I hyperventilate a bit over the production costs of the books I work on [Don't pirate books, people! We spend a bunch of money to make them!]; the amount it takes to make an unabridged dictionary is...mind-boggling, though actually understandable. Clearly these companies are doing it for the greater good, and God bless them for it.)

June theater roundup: Pippin, Suffs, Othello

Pippin

When I was in high school, the guy I had a crush on--we were in a production of Mame together--told me I should get the cast recording of Pippin when I told him I got a CD player. So naturally I did. I quite enjoyed the music and it wasn't until years later that I learned what the show was about and, indeed, that the songs aren't necessarily what they seem to be. 

Candice Hatakeyama, Cedric Neal, and Emily Steinhardt. Photo by Daniel Rader.

It's a show where a director has a lot of room to play, and Matthew Gardiner at Signature Theatre clearly had a blast with it. Pippin is nominally the story of Charlemagne's son; he's finished college and spends the show trying to figure out who he is--he goes to war, he sleeps around, he's briefly king, he finds a widow with a son and hangs around her farm. It's relatable, other than the Leading Player (it's a play-within-a-play concept) ominously hanging around, sabotaging him, and promising (threatening?) the big finale of the show.

It's a strange show. There's some very cool choreography (the original production was directed by Bob Fosse and you can see his influence in the above picture) and a fun ensemble. 

The cast, of course, is incredible; I don't think I've seen a show at Signature that I haven't thought that. Cedric Neal's Leading Player was the perfect balance of cool and menace; I've only seen Pippin a couple of times before this (and one was more of a concert performance), but I felt scared of the Leading Player more in this performance than I had before. Eric Hissom's Charlemagne is probably my other standout, just due to his reaction faces.

The show lends itself to being weird, and again, that's Signature's wheelhouse. I enjoyed this production, but it's not pulling me to see it again the way that, say, Fiddler did. 

(Also, side note, I can no longer handle "Corner of the Sky" after seeing the complete perfect parody of it in Season 2 of Schmigadoon.) 

Suffs 

Suffs felt like it was written for me--a middle-aged, white, liberal woman. (And indeed, some of the criticism I've seen of the show is like, "It's written for white, middle-aged liberal women," while noting that Hillary Clinton is one of the show's producers.)

The musical is the story of Alice Paul, one of the younger generation of suffragists, pushing back against Carrie Chapman Catt and the old guard who are trying to cajole the nation into giving women the right to vote without antagonizing people too much ("Let mother vote, we raised you after all/Won't you thank the lady you have loved since you were small?/We reared you, cheered you, helped you when you fell/With your blessing, we could help America as well"). She organizes a march on DC, goes on a hunger strike, and helps move the cause forward.

Suffs company. Photo by Joan Marcus.

What I really liked about the show is that it shows that neither Paul nor Catt were wrong in how they approached their activism; the two approaches combined provoked and allowed President Woodrow Wilson (the actual bad guy in the show) to support suffrage. (I read a book about Jeannette Rankin, the first woman in Congress and an activist in the suffrage movement, and this matches what I remember from that book.)

The tension with Mary Church Terrell and Ida B. Wells was also, I thought, well done. There's the echoes of the Catt/Paul tension between generations and the frustration at having to choose between promoting women's rights or promoting Black rights. That Paul and her cohort didn't do enough is brought up repeatedly, particularly at the end in a scene I found fascinating, when a women comes to talk to Paul in the 1970s. Generation after generation, we criticize those who came before us for not doing enough. It makes me think of this exchange in 1776 regarding the inclusion of a passage on slavery in the Declaration of Independence:

John Adams: Mark me, Franklin... if we give in on this issue, posterity will never forgive us.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin: That's probably true, but we won't hear a thing, we'll be long gone. Besides, what would posterity think we were? Demi-gods? We're men, no more no less, trying to get a nation started against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. First things first, John. Independence; America. If we don't secure that, what difference will the rest make?

I will say that perhaps the music doesn't quite stick in my head the way music from other shows does, but I am tempted to get the cast recording, because I did enjoy the songs during the show itself and remember thinking that I would enjoy listening to it again. I know a lot of people weren't too moved by the choice for the Tonys performance--"Keep Marching," the finale.

That performance got to me, though, and is only more relevant today. The show's end is something of a hopeful downer--it's all about the need to continue working toward a better future, even knowing that what we might not come and it almost certainly won't come as quickly as we'd like (or need). But it's a call to action and one that's vital in 2025:

Make peace with our incomplete power and use it for good
‘Cause there’s so much to do
The gains will feel small and the losses too large
Keep marching, keep marching
You’ll rarely agree with whoever’s in charge
Keep marching, keep marching
‘Cause your ancestors are all the proof you need
That progress is possible, not guaranteed
It will only be made if we keep marching 

(Also, the original Broadway cast performance is streaming on PBS and YouTube through the end of July.) (And also, you can visit the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument in DC, run by the National Park Service!)

Othello

Honestly, when I think of Othello, I always get the Reduced Shakespeare Company's "Othello Rap" stuck in my head ("It was a moan-a/a groan-a/He left her alone-a/He didn't writer a letter and he didn't telephone-a"). 

I kept thinking during the production how it reminded me a bit of Jesus Christ Superstar (and yes, obviously I know Othello came first) in that the antagonist (Iago [Ben Turner]) gets a lot of focus, moreso than the title character. There's debate about Iago's motives for what he does, but the dude really does talk a lot; certainly a lot more than Othello. And if you're lucky enough to sit in one of the seats adjacent to the thrust stage and Ben Turner directs his gaze at you...it's incredibly intimidating.

Olivia Cygan (Desdemona) and Wendell Pierce (Othello). Photo by Teresa Castracane.

Particular to this production was how fun Othello (Wendell Pierce) was (at least early in the play). It makes sense--the guy just got married, even if it was under slightly sus circumstances. But he smiles a lot, he's joking around, bantering with his guys. You could see how Desdemona could fall in love with him.

I also really liked Melanie Field's Emelia (wife of Iago). I don't believe she has actual lines until late in the play (the Othello Rap reports that we meet her in Act Four), but director Simon Godwin has her on stage from the very start of the play. Watching her interact with Iago and Desdemona is something of a gut punch; she clearly is very into her husband and wants to help him, to the point where I was trying to remember how complicit she was in his schemes. 

Again, of course the acting was excellent, but Godwin's staging is overall fantastic. Othello's soldiers are very present throughout the show, and I loved their choreography. I also think I enjoy the relative lack of side plots in the play.