Haines His Way

-Btw, I do think that Billy Porter has a nice voice, but I do wish I didn't find myself constantly wishing he would just pull it back sometimes... all the time.

RE: LADY IN THE DARK - I'm not all that familiar with the show, but I did have to wonder about the production that was done in Philadelphia a few years ago with Andrea Marcovicci.  Talk about transposing the songs down a few keys!  -And I'm also one of those who just doesn't "get" Ms. Marcovicci's vocal color, style or supposed "beauty".  I've always thought labelling oneself's a "chanteuse" meant that you couldn't sing on pitch.  

George, before we moved out of our bedroom again I checked if the DVD of SAMANTHA worked, and it does.  Thank you.  Not Keith’s sort of movie.  I will watch it some afternoon by myself.

 

Another Shaffer play I'd like to see is GIFT OF THE GORGON, which played London in '94 and, to my knowledge, hasn't been revived since.  It is the single greatest play I've read in the last dozen years.

The combatants here are playwright Edward Damson and his wife/muse Helen; the play opens with the former’s coffin being carried from their Greek villa. His son Philip (the abandoned product of a two-week fling) turns up and persuades his stepmother to feed him the material for a biography of the dead dramatist. She agrees, but warns he will hate what he hears.
 
Their turbulent life together is enacted as Helen recalls it, with Philip scribbling furiously in the background. Initially they exist on a diet of sex and Shakespeare, but eventually a completed script is required to pay the rent
…
The acting is first rate and draining. As Edward, an impulsive, dogmatic, extravagant ‘wastrel’, Michael Pennington is variously splattered in blood, water and red wine. He hollers, pleads and dances, but for all the exasperating characteristics of the role, Pennington is compulsive viewing. Helen is another of Judi Dench’s sensible women trying to stay in control, and she mixes it with hurt and stony fury impeccably. Jeremy Northam is suitably on-edge as Philip, shifting from one foot to the other with nervous anticipation. There’s also an eccentric cameo from Michael Poole as Edward’s racist Russian father, chattering away about the “real McCoy-ski” and the “nigg-skis” upstairs.
 
Peter Hall directs this meaty RSC production like a dog shaking a squeaky toy, enticing every ounce of energy out of the actors and the stark space of The Pit. Whether Shaffer is arguing that revenge or reason is right, or whether he’s not so sure that it’s a black-and-white choice, the audience was hotly philosophising all the way out. And that has to be success enough.

I saw this play many years ago when it first opened in London & was completely blown away by it (didn't hurt to have 2 fabulous actors playing the leads - Judi Dench for one). I subsequently bought the book & it reads just as well. I am only sorry that because of difficulties with Actors equity it hasn't yet been performed in New York.
The themes of love and revenge are dealt with in ways both tender and terrible. It gets you in the gut.

Mickey Rooney--there's your Marryin' Sam!

Thanks, George.  Gifthorse time:  if you feel like sending me 1776, I'll trade something to be determined at a later date.  Am I still on the What If list?

And I love Blythe Danner.  I always have.