more reviews tomorrow...today am too tired

Have seen three shows in under 24 hours and so cannot write about any of them yet in depth.  I can say this, though:

Facebook Me, which is a show created by junior high-school and high-school aged girls about That social networking site is quite fascinating and creepy - in a good way.  The acting is generally pretty strong and the subject matter is about as uncomfortable as you can imagine.  Brave stuff from young girls.  More on nytheatre.com tomorrow.  They got a standing ovation from their sold out audience.  This gives me yet more reasons, as if I needed any more, as to why I am NOT on Facebook.  Scary stuff.

American Vaudeville Theatre (truth in advertising: I know some of the people involved quite well, so this is not entirely objective) is a lot of fun especially if you have nostalgia for old-fashioned vaudeville with a modern twist, especially enforced rhyming with sanctions for lack of rhyming, lip-synching with sock puppets (more weirdly affecting that one would imagine) and juggling toilet seats and plungers in jockey shorts.  Plus bad jokes and puns.  Hooray!

The Town of No One is good, solid Brechtian-sorta theater, that is not my personal favorite, but the sold-out audience liked a great deal.  I do like Brecht, but not Brechtian-like with a 4th wall.  However, potent political message, etc.

I watched two of these shows with people I've met in the past week, which is kind of amazing really, including one woman, Rochelle, who I met on the plane coming to NYC.  Amazing.

I have gotten really interesting feedback both on the blog and by email on the reviews and am glad of that.

The conversation about irony in the comments on the post a couple days ago is worth a read.  My step-father Tom wrote in with this quotation from David Foster Wallace, which is worth quoting in this post, as it may shed some more light on the subject:

"As far as I can tell, for my generation and maybe the kids younger than us, there are different things that we’re afraid of. We’re afraid of being trite, we’re afraid of being sentimental, we’re afraid of being mawkish, we’re afraid of being stale and formulaic — unless we’re stale and formulaic in a way that pokes fun at its stale, formulaic quality. I mean, we have been taught, so much, both by the lessons of television and the saturation of television, what are the things to be afraid of. And one of the big reasons why irony — and it’s been kind of the mode of discourse in the culture — has really ceased to be palliative or helpful, is that irony is this marvelous carapace, that I can use to shield myself from seeming to you to be naive, or sentimental, or to buy the lush banalities that television gives. If I show you that I believe that we’re both bastards, and that there’s no point to anything and that I was last naive at about age 6, then I protect myself from your judgment of the worst possible flaw in me: sentimentality and naivete, the way a proper appearance of decorum would shield me from your judgment of me as deviant or offensive 30 or 40 years ago."
—
David Foster Wallace, replayed in BBC Radio 3’s 2011 documentary 

DFW, for anyone does not know, was a brilliant writer, whose book Infinite Jest is in my not so humble opinion a masterpiece.  Some folks like his essays (which are also brilliant) better.  It's all good.  What sucks is that he killed himself in 2008, and that was a horrendously sad thing, as he's the kind of person you want to see get older, even wiser and read the book he wrote when he was 80.  Tragically, this will not happen and when I think about that it makes me cry.

So, pace where you may be, David Foster Wallace, you are one of my all-time heros.

And with that, I am over and out for tonight, more reviews tomorrow and perhaps something a little more coherent.