I just stopped one day, and that was it.  Some things wear out quicker than others.  I used to collect stamps, you know, and I don't do that anymore.

Elvis Costello
The New Yorker
November 8, 2010

Next to Normal @ Edwin Booth Theatre

Next to Normal is a largely sung-through musical about the affect that Diana's inability to get over the death of her 8 month old son has on her and her family.  When the show starts, she is starting the day, interacting with her husband, daughter, and son, trying to make love, serve breakfast, and make lunches, with increasingly little success.  It's only later that we find out that her son, now 17, exists only for her.  She's working with a psychiatrist to control her condition, diagnosed as bipolar, through talking and drugs.  The drugs are doing what these types of drugs usually do, and Diana and her son flush them down the toilet.  This leads to supermom, for at time, but things get worse.  Natalie, the daughter, is lost, seeing herself as the lesser part of Superboy and the Invisible Girl.  Dianna, pressed by Dan and her doctor to get rid of the things that remind her of Gabe, her son, attemps suicide. 

Diana's new doctor presses ECT, shock therapy, as a way of getting rid of the memories that are haunting her.  She gives in, after a struggle between Dan and Gabe, but losses all memories of her family and Gabe  is gone.  Things start to come back, the strongest memory being of her teenage son, who returns to his mother.  The doctor urges more electric shock,  but Diana refuses.

Diana and Natalie talk, perhaps for the  first  time,  and connect.  They agree that normal is not something that is possible, but that they can try for next to normal.  Diana leaves Dan to seek her own way.  Gabe stays with Dan who, freed from dealing with Diana's grief, can now confront his own. Dan and Natalie together, and Dianna at her parents, but without Gabe, can look forward with some hope. 

This is the first musical I can recall that uses current rock music without making a point of the music:  Spring Awakenings was a rock musical set in German history.  Next to Normal is simply a musical, using the music of this time.

The set was all black and white and steel, with very pixelated images, particulary the large woman's eyes  on the second level, that fold in and out.  There are three levels connected by ladders, the first two are the two stories of the family's house.  The third level is open only to Gabe, the level he  appears on is frequently related to how present he is to Dianna and Dan. 

A very emotional role for Alice Ripley.   She never goes over the top, no matter how her character is  feeling. Some off-tune singing, perhaps due to the emotion and/or the placement of the  conductor and band, on the third level of the set, visible to the audience but not to the singers.

A major theme, in addition to the impact of grief, is the limits of medicine.  Drugs, shock therapy, talk therapy, are all just guesses in the dark.  We just don't know enough about the mind and the heart and maybe the soul.

Orchestra left, row J, started out on the far left side of the house, moved  to the aisle midway through the first act when the rest of the row was empty.  Great view and sound.

Dinner after the show at Thalia's:  burger (10oz prime new york sirloin, gruyere, bacon), seasoned fries.

Hair The Americal Tribal Love Rock Musical @ Al Hirschfeld Theatre

An amazing production of Hair, hard to call it a revival, with many different or differently arranged songs.  Sounds like Jimi Hendrix was the music director. The production owes much to Spring Awakenings in its rhythms and feelings.  What could have been an amusement park version of the 60s was alive, capturing the feeling of what times were and/or should have been.  Berger's treatment of  Shelia was typical of the male left.  Very erotic and sensual, or lewd or crude depending on taste.  Was the love  among men completely atypical of the time? Were the feelings more subjugated then?  The friendship between Berger and Claude was callous at times, beautiful at other times, particularly as they rolled around  together just before Claude conforms.

The second act hallucination/bad trip that shows Claude's future in Vietnam was very powerful, with Grant and  Lincoln and Booth and Custer and Washington and Clark Gable and Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the execution of the captured Viet Cong and parachuting into the jungle and much more.

There were a lot of cast changes, including all three  leads.  Claude and Sheila were very good, Berger was not the dominant presence that he should have been, Gail thought he was nervous and trying too hard.  Heard later that changes had been announced, but don't know if what we saw is the new permanent line-up or an interim cast.  Found out later that an open  casting call was scheduled in the theatre the day after we saw the show. 

High points: Black Boys/White Boys, What a Piece of Work Is Man, the reprise of Ain't Got No as Claude/Jesus dies.   The last scene before Let the Sun Shine In, with Claude, in uniform, stretched out dead, with snow falling.

After 40 years, it's hard not to look at the tribe and know that there's no future for their vision of love and peace. 

Set was great, industrial brick warehouse type building with wooden scaffolding, an old truck, the band on stage above center and right.  Wonderful lighting, a rainbow, and a blackout.

Seats: orchestra, row O, center, next to texting woman

God of Carnage, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre

Another "watch the thin veneer of civilization, imposed by ball-breaking women, be stripped off as inhibitions  disappear".  A  comic "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf", as Gail suggests.  Lots of very funny bits, but disappointing in total, given the hype.  The second cast (Ken Stott, Christine Lahti, Jimmy Smits, and Annie Potts) all had good moments, but I didn't think all fit.  Hard to picture James Gandolfini in place of Ken Stott with his strong Irish brogue.  Christine  Lahti was very good when controlled, as the phony intellectual, in-touch-with-her feelings, writer-cook-mother but over the top during a lot of the see-what-she's-really-like scenes.  Annie Potts throwing the flowers over her shoulder was very funny.  Jimmy Smits body language, at the beginning of the show and after his cell phone was drowned was wonderful,  something about his too-correct pronunciations didn't fit the character. 

Wonderful set, blood red carpet and painted floors and walls around the box.  Too many books stacked, very neatly, on top of and underneath the table and on racks in the corner. 

African drum-inspired music at beginning and end, is the God of Carnage from Darfur, the setting of Veronica's forthcoming book? 

Seating in mezzanine, row G, just behind an aisle, very good seats, hard to hear,  given Stott's accent, very fast line delivery, talking on top of each other, and much shouting and shrieking. 

Dinner at Queen of Sheba, meat and vegetarian sampler plates, Ethiopian coffee, baklava and creme caramel. 

A Little Night Music @ Walter Kerr Theatre

A fine performance of A Little Night Music, Sondheim's show about mis-matched  couples in Sweden at the turn of the 20th century, based on a film by Bergman.  Catherine Zeta-Jones did well, although perhaps too young and lacking some depth.  She  nailed Send in the Clowns.  Angela Landsbury was wonderful as the elderly, wise, cynincal grandmother.  Much of the rest of the cast were over the top, particularly Ramona Mallory as Anne.  The other musical highlight was A Weekend in the Country that closes the second set and places all the couples and rivals in the same house for the second act.  The Miller's Son, sung by Leigh Ann Larkin playing Petra, was also very strong.

Beautiful set, glass doors  and windows, with glass partially frosted, along three  sides, framing an inlaid wood floor in an octagonal pattern. 

Seats: mezzanine, seven rows up, in the center, very good view due to  the steep rake and short people in front.

Dinner at Crave: bbq chicken pizza and chicken soup, margheritta pizza and roasted shrimp and  corn soup, cannolis after the show

NEWSical the Musical @ 47th Street Theatre

NEWSical is a humorous but not hilarious attempt to continue the Forbidden Broadway tradition, making jokes about politics, TV, and music rather than musical theatre.  Too bad the material is not up to the cast, including the fabulous Christina Bianco, who was the highlight of the last FB show.  Michael West, Christine Perdi, and Rory O'Malley, in that order, are talented and funny.

Highlights include Christina doing Sarah Palin, Celine Dion, and Dora the Explorer (she was the first Dora in the national tour) asking advice from Suzy Ormand.  Other great numbers spoofed Hilary Clinton, the Obama party crashers,  and Michael West's imitations of Bill Clinton and others.

Capitol City does the  topical humor better and Forbidden Broadway got to twist the original music into something weird and wonderful.

A good high energy show to see right after getting off the plane, but not one to see every year.  Bring back FB!

Seats: 3rd row, second and third seats off the aisle.

Dinner at the Edison, chicken salad club, chopped liver

Favorite non-fiction books, an unranked, unexhausitve list.

The Power Broker, Robert Caro.  Biography of Robert Moses, architect of modern New York City who made every important decision about the city's infrastructure for decades.   Moses did enormous damage to the city and its people.  Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a counterpoint to Moses' ideas of what a city should be like.  Caro's controversial books on Lyndon Johnson are also captivating.

Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson.   Much more than another recounting of battles and generals.  McPherson places the war in its economic, social, and political context in American history.

Slavery by Another Name, The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon.   I can't overstate how fundamentally this book changed my understanding of American history.  Throughout the South, blacks were systematically arrested for little or no reason and either sentenced or sold to plantation, mines, factories, and other white businesses and forced to work for years until dead or useless.  In many ways this was worse than slavery, since slavers at least had some incentive to maintain their property.  Convict slavery continued until changing economics made the system less profitable and Franklin Roosevelt's administration determined it undermined American propaganda against the Nazis and Japanese. 

Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, Jared Diamond   The first book presents a non-racial explanation for differing patterns of development throughout the world, identifying the distribution of resources as the key factor.  The second book traces the failure of different societies with frightening parallels to the 20th century.

W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of A Race 1868-1919 and The Fight for Equality and the American Century, David Levering Lewis 

Health care in American: proof of the problem

The Cost Conundrum: what a Texas town can teach us about health care.

Atul Gawande
The New Yorker
June 1, 2009

It is spring in McAllen, Texas. The morning sun is warm. The streets are lined with palm trees and pickup trucks. McAllen is in Hidalgo County, which has the lowest household income in the country, but it’s a border town, and a thriving foreign-trade zone has kept the unemployment rate below ten per cent. McAllen calls itself the Square Dance Capital of the World. “Lonesome Dove” was set around here.

McAllen has another distinction, too: it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country. Only Miami—which has much higher labor and living costs—spends more per person on health care. In 2006, Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per enrollee here, almost twice the national average. The income per capita is twelve thousand dollars. In other words, Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.

The explosive trend in American medical costs seems to have occurred here in an especially intense form. Our country’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world. In Washington, the aim of health-care reform is not just to extend medical coverage to everybody but also to bring costs under control. Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance. It’s also devouring our government. “The greatest threat to America’s fiscal health is not Social Security,” President Barack Obama said in a March speech at the White House. “It’s not the investments that we’ve made to rescue our economy during this crisis. By a wide margin, the biggest threat to our nation’s balance sheet is the skyrocketing cost of health care. It’s not even close.”

The question we’re now frantically grappling with is how this came to be, and what can be done about it. McAllen, Texas, the most expensive town in the most expensive country for health care in the world, seemed a good place to look for some answers.

continue at:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande

Health care in America: the problem.

The key difference [between foreign and American health insurance] is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

T.R. Reid
The Washington Post
August 23, 2009

Ka is a wheel

"There is a bitter little pill of a joke, currently circulating among infectious disease experts. It is short...

The 19th century was followed by the 20th century, which was followed by the... 19th century."

Alfred W. Crosby
American's Forgotten Academic

And it's still true

"...it was 1879 when the newspaper columnist Lafcadio Hearn took note of New Orleans' chronic states of decay, insolvency, lawlessness and prurience, yet still proclaimed: "It is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio."

Chris Rose
The Times-Picayune
August 29, 2009

"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." M.L. King Jr.

Over the Hedge, March 29, 2009, by Michael Fry & T Lewis