My Life in the Theater: SOME AMERICANS ABROAD

Saw this one in 1999 at the Hilberry Theater as Wayne State. I have absolutely no memory of it but that doesn't mean it wasn't a fine play. I have to begin to wonder if the amount of money I spent in theaters was perhaps excessive given my memory. Ah, well. Someone has to support the theater.

My Life in the Theater: DETROIT

It was exciting to see a contemporary play last week that was recently a success in Chicago and New York. Lisa D'Amout's play treads the line between comedy and tragedy adeptly. You laugh--but uneasily. And I can't imagine a more dramatic almost ending. I say almost because a bit of an afterword almost undoes what was a fine play. Two couples in a suburb find commonalities up to a point. See it.

My Life in the Theater: George Gershwin Alone

This has pretty much been playing nonstop since 2001. We saw it in 2003 in Ford's Theater in Washington D.C. How can any play with Gershwin's music not be wonderful. And it was. Hershey Felder does a great job with the character and the music. You can probably catch this one somewhere right now.

My Life in the Theater: FAR WEST

We saw this one in 1991 at the Hilberry Theater, the repertory theater at Wayne State University.
The playwright was John Murrell, an American born Canadian writer. My program tells me it was set in Canada in 1886-1890. I cannot remember a single thing about it, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a fine play.

My Life in the Theater: DANCING AT LUGHNASA

From the film, of course. If I have a particular weakness, it is for Irish plays and the reason why is that the characters in them tell stories. We saw this Brian Friel play probably in the early nineties at the Attic Theater, when it was briefly in Pontiac, Michigan. It was a lovely production, directed by Patricia Ansuini. Miss the Attic Theater but luckily its shining light, Lavinia Moyer still directs plays in the area.

My Life in the Theater" MAN OF LA MANCHA

This was the very first Broadway musical I ever saw-and probably the first professional play of any kind. We took the train up to New York from New Brunswick and I think returned after it. It was fabulous and Richard Kiley was terrific in his Tony-award winning role.

My Life in the Theater: TAKING LEAVE

We saw TAKING LEAVE by Nagle Jackson at the Performance Network in Ann Arbor in 2001. It is a comic treatment of KING LEAR. In this production, he has dementia--maybe one of the first plays we saw about Alzheimers. I remember it as a very fine evening. Of course, the real Lear often seems to be suffering from this sort of break too.