Alisha Keys and her songs form the latest jukebox musical

 

The songs are good and the performances first rate, but as with so many biographical jukebox musicals the book for Hell’s Kitchen (by Kristoffer Diaz) is weak, making for another disappointing show in this genre, this one at The Public Theater, which has given us great musicals such as Hair, A Chorus Line and, most recently, Hamilton.  The difference is that those three shows were original musicals.

Jukebox musicals by their nature are contrived.  Instead of starting with a fresh story and having composers and lyricists write songs to further it, jukeboxes start with familiar songs and build a story around them.  The latest, Hell’s Kitchen, directed by Michael Greif, uses Alicia Keys’ songs to tell her story of growing up in that Manhattan neighborhood on the western edge of the Theatre District.

This works in the first act, which is the oft-told story of a teenage girl longing to break away from home and be heard.  It’s nothing great but it’s cute.  Its power to entertain is in Maleah Joi Moon’s performance as Ali, portraying Keys growing up with a single white mother (Jersey, played by Shoshana Bean) and an absent Black father.  Her voice is strong and clear, her dancing natural and rhythmic and her acting holds such presence and timing that I was shocked to learn from the program that this is her first professional performance.  She is completely at home onstage and in that role as a restless teenager rebelling against her mother.  She is a joy to watch.

A nice scene has Ali heading out minutes after her mother has left for work after telling her to eat dinner and finish her homework.  A typical boy-crazy 17-year-old, Ali wants to be partying on the street with her friends and checking out the boys who play buckets as drums. 

Riding down in the elevator, she addresses the audience to explain that she and her mother live in “a one-bedroom apartment on the 42^nd floor of a 44-story building on 43^rd Street. . .  Manhattan Plaza is affordable housing for artists, which means almost everyone who lives here is an artist, which means you never know what you’re going to hear when these elevator doors open up.”

To prove this, she announces what will be happening on each floor before the doors open.  The onstage band plays out each scenario, starting with a jazz trumpet.  It’s fun.

“That’s Mr. Gordone playing his trumpet.  Thirty-second floor.”

The doors close and she descends.

“And, ooh, I hope the Piniero sisters’ dance class is going on on 27.”

The doors open to an up-tempo merengue.  “There they go.”

Doors close.  “You’re gonna love 17.  Seventeen’s always good.”

The doors open on an operatic duet.  “I got no idea who that is or what they’re saying but I think they’re in love.”

Doors close.  “And then 9 is the poets, 8 is the painters, we got a whole string section on 7, 6, 5 and 4.  And then you hit that ground floor.”

Act One pretty much plays out in this lighthearted way until the end when it turns unexpectedly serious.  Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis) who has been teaching Ali to play the piano in the building’s community room discloses in the song “Perfect Way to Die” that her son was gunned down while walking to the corner store and another dream was lost.  It’s a somber ending that seems to be inserting a contemporary Black Lives Matter moment into a play set in the 1990s.  Yes, young men were gunned down then too – Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean student shot 19 times by 41 rounds fired by police officers, comes to mind – but the sensibility is different now that there have been so many Amadous.  We’re more aware so it would fit better in a play set in the present.

Then there’s Act Two, which is more or less a mess.  Ali’s father, Davis (Brandon Victor Dixon), is suddenly in the plot, reminiscing about the good times he had with Jersey and Ali.  He and Jersey sing a duet of “Fallin’” that is followed by a duet of Davis and Ali singing “If I Ain’t Got You” and I thought, Where did that come from?  It’s sweet but appears to have been a manufactured way to use the songs.  There’s no indication in the first act that Jersey and Davis had a relationship beyond the night they met and “couldn’t put the brakes on,” resulting in Ali’s appearance nine months later.  I also had no inkling that Ali and her father had had a relationship.  I assumed that she never knew him and that he might never even have known he had a child.  Then suddenly warm memories of times together.

This is why these jukebox musicals are so lame.  The creators are determined to use good songs so the credibility or comprehensiveness of the story takes a back seat.

An Alisha Keys musical wouldn’t be complete without her biggest hit, “Empire State of Mind.”  Moon is the embodiment of Keys and presents a powerhouse finish, which unfortunately is spoiled by choreographer Camille A. Brown’s intrusive choice to send a troop of dancers to jump manically around the stage, taking away the focus on the song as an appropriate ending.

Keys has been developing this show for 12 years.  I wish she had had a better creative team.  She’s a gifted singer/songwriter.  She deserves a better reflection of her life and talent. 

Barry Manilow's 'Harmony' arrives on Broadway

 

When I left the Ethel Barrymore Theatre I felt touched by the story that had been presented and disappointed that it wasn’t better developed by book writer and lyricist Bruce Sussman.  Writing for Barry Manilow’s music, Sussman tells the little-known story of the Comedian Harmonists, an internationally successful singing group of six young men who were professionally obliterated during the Nazi’s reign of terror because three of them were Jewish.

Under the direction of Warren Carlyle (who also choreographs), the first act drags along until the final scenes as the threats of the new government become apparent.  You can always count on Nazi atrocities to liven up the action, which they do in the uneven second act as well.

What remains consistent are the lovely voices of the group – Bobby (Sean Bell), Rabbi (Danny Kornfeld), Harry (Zal Owen), Erich (Eric Peters), Chopin, his nickname because he’s the composer and pianist, (Blake Roman) and Lesh (Steven Telsey).

Originally known as the Harmonists, they were a diverse collection of young men -- a med student who can’t stand the sight of blood, a waiter, a rabbinical student until he left Poland -- whose love of singing brought them together in 1927 Germany and whose talent catapulted them to wealth and fame by 1934 when the Nazis seized all their recordings, movies and their passports, and froze their bank accounts, erasing them from history.

Their story is told by Rabbi, Chip Zien as the now elderly Rabbi who is the only remaining member of the group, living in California in 1988. 

Sharing the journey are the lovely voiced Sierra Boggess as Mary, a gentile who marries Rabbi, and Ruth (Julie Benko), a Jewish protestor against the new government, who marries non-Jewish Chopin.  I loved the number where the two women, in adjacent shabby hotel rooms with their husbands in 1935, sing “Where You Go,” drawing on the biblical Book of Ruth in which that Ruth pledges to go where her husband goes and take his family for her family.  It’s a moving scene.

I was sitting back in the theatre, not in my usual house seats, so I had trouble distinguishing the six young men, all dressed alike in tuxedos, from that distance since I couldn’t see their faces.  That made it difficult to follow at times.  I recommend avoiding tickets in the back or balcony. 

The musical numbers are easy to follow, though.  Toward the beginning I liked “This Is Our Time,” in which the singers display all the energy and hope of young people at the start of a new venture.

As the group catches on and starts getting bookings they add a lot of silliness to their act – too much silliness for me at times – and are then rechristened as the Comedian Harmonists. 

By the end of the first act they are starring at Carnegie Hall in December 1933.  Their fame and talent have brough two key figures into their lives, Josephine Baker (Allison Semmes) and Albert Einstein (Zien).  What they find out in the second act, when it is too late, is that they should have listened to both of these people.  Baker, who wanted them to remain in New York to perform with her, and Einstein, who visited them in their Carnegie Hall dressing room to congratulate them on their performance.  He tells them he is becoming an American.  They say they are considering returning to Germany, reassured by Ruth, who has called from Germany to tell them the situation there will blow over soon.  Eisenhower doesn’t share their optimism.

“After the current situation changes, I wonder if there will be a Germany,” he says.

They explain that they haven’t been home for more than a year because of their touring.

“Have you been reading,” he asks them incredulously before more gently telling them, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil but by those who watch them and do nothing.” 

They express their conflicted feelings in “Home.” “At home, where they know us . . . It’s our home . . . At home we can change it . . .”

Their song fades as they are overpowered by the elderly Rabbi, in a voice filled with anger and guilt, who addresses that ambiguity and decision to return.

“What were you thinking?  Wasn’t it clear?  Didn’t you know?  No!  Yes!  No! . . . It’s not home, fellas.  Home is not there.”

But then Act 2 opens with a lively samba number, “We’re Goin’ Loco!”, featuring some fabulous dancing by Semmes.  It’s the New Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 New York and you could think for a minute that the group changed its mind but the happy dream fades into the harsh reality of what home has become.

The second act is the now familiar accounting of life under the Nazis.  In Harmony it is lived by these people we have come to care about.

Two members of the creative team should be commended.  Beowulf Boritt’s minimalist sets allow the singers ample space to be the full focus of the production.  Linda Cho and Ricky Lurie have created costumes that nicely reflect the ups and downs of the performers’ fortunes.

Interestingly, Harmony, which has been in development for more than a decade, is the fulfillment of Manilow’s desire to write a Broadway musical.  Now 80, the creator of pop song after pop song in the 1970s and 80s has loved show music since he was a child growing up in Brooklyn.

It was Sussman who discovered the seed that would become that Broadway musical Manilow longed to create.  After seeing a documentary about the Harmonists in the early 1990s he left the theatre and called his friend and writing partner.  Manilow shared the enthusiasm and they got to work. 

Several productions were staged outside of New York over the last decade but the show never transferred to Broadway.  Then, during the pandemic with time to reconsider, the duo came up with the idea of including a narrator, one of the singers as an old man who could offer reflection and lead the audience through the various eras of the play.  That gave Harmony the focus it was lacking and proved to be their ticket to the Great White Way.

I hope it lasts for them.  I’m sure Manilow’s name will bring in tourists.  And, unfortunately, with the escalating anti-Semitism around the world the show is far more timely than it would have been 10 years ago. 

'Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground'

 

As Richard Hellesen's engaging one-man play, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, opens, the 34^th President is grumbling about his placement in a ranking by 75 historians of American Presidents just published in the New York Times magazine. He’s placed at 22nd out of 31 (some Presidents had two terms.)  Eisenhower, beautifully portrayed by Tony-winner John Rubinstein as witty, intelligent and a man of integrity, turns his rant into a reflection on his personal life, his career as a general and his presidency.  I don’t know whether it’s a history lesson clothed as a wonderful evening of theatre or vice versa but it worked for me on both counts.  After a successful run last summer Eisenhower was brought back for a second term this fall.

Rubinstein, under the direction of Peter Ellenstein, is a skillful storyteller as he holds the stage at the Theatre at St. Clement’s for nearly two hours, with an intermission.  It’s 1962 and Eisenhower is enjoying his post-presidency at his farm in Gettysburg.  The idea is that he’s recording his thoughts and experiences for a memoir.  But first he stews over those rankings, the only element of which he seems to agree is that Warren G. Harding is below him.

“President of the United States ought to at least have some dignity.  If you don’t respect the office, you deserve to be at the bottom.  But the rest of us – Rutherford B. Hayes, number 14.  What for?”

Hellesen drew from memoirs, speeches and letters.  It’s fascinating to hear Eisenhower’s thoughts on war, politics and the law, especially in how they contrast with the words and conduct of our most recent Republican President.

Michael Deegan’s set features a cozy room with some comfortable chairs, the former president’s desk off to the side and shelves with books and memorabilia.  A picture window the size of the room looks out on Eisenhower’s golf course, with hills in the distance.  At times the sky darkens and rain falls.  It’s a great setting for the story to unfold.

Eisenhower explains his philosophy, saying he’d like to get rid of the terms liberal and conservative and identify as what some people call middle of the road.  “You,” he says, addressing the Times article on the table, “prob’ly think that means you don’t stand for anything, which is nonsense because you’re going to get hit from both sides so you’d better stand twice as strong.  Besides, the middle of the road is the useable part of the road.  Steer too far to the right or left, you end up in a ditch.”

He’s also got an opinion on government spending.

“Worst of all is the military, and I bet you’re surprised to hear me say that, aren’t you?  Believe me, I understand defense.  I worked most of my life to be General, and that title means more to me than anything.  But our military is defending a way of life, not just territory.  And we can’t undermine that way of life out of debt and waste.  Hell’s fire, the cost of a single fighter jet is half a million bushels of wheat!  We pay for our destroyer with homes that could house 8,000 people! 

“But take on the fools who think war should be the first resort, not the last, and then add the fellas for whom bombs and guns are their paycheck, that military industrial complex will come down on you like a sledgehammer. . . and when every country in the world starts trying to keep up, well, that is just humanity hanging on a cross of iron.  And it’s got to stop.”

Many times I thought he could be talking about our present day, such as in his comments about Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

“Don’t think you’re going to hide our faults by hiding the evidence they ever existed!  Don’t join the book burners!  If you’re going to fight Communism, you need to know what it is, so you can fight it with something better. Always remember that the truth is the bulwark of freedom, and suppression of that is the weapon of dictators.  So don’t be afraid to go into your library and read every book!  And if some writers have ideas that are contrary to yours, well, they still have the right to say ‘em, or it isn’t America!  If we start believing that every individual or party that disagrees with us is somehow wicked, or treasonous, then we are near the end of freedom’s road.”

His reflections are also personal.  The hardest to hear about involved his first born, whose name was Doud but he was called Icky.  Eisenhower was a major and he, his wife, Mamie, and Icky had settled into a house in Fort Meade, MD.

Icky, who was nearly 3, loved the camp atmosphere, the parades and the soldiers.  The soldiers loved him, too, and bought him a little uniform and took him on drills, sitting him up in the tank.  A black and white photo of him in his uniform is precious. 

It was the first sense of settled family life they had known.  Eisenhower was making good money and decided to hire a maid.  Scarlet fever had hit the area and a local girl he interviewed had had it but said she was cured.

“But I didn’t bother to make sure.  And I hired her.  I hired her.  She brought it into our house. And, ah, Icky contracted it from her.  We weren’t even allowed into his hospital room at first.  But there was a porch, and I’d sit out there, look in, wave to him.  Well, they finally let us in.  He was gone in a week.  Died in my arms.”

Eisenhower lived a rich life and I was glad to get to know him in this way.  After all this wonderful dramatic narration Hellesen chose a delightful way to end the play.  The golf course backdrop fades, replaced by a projection displaying the title Presidential Rankings by Historians: Dwight D. Eisenhower.  The title remains while beneath it the following dissolves through:

1962:  #22

1982:  #11

2002:  10

2012:  #8

2022: #5

The audience loved it.  And so did I. 

 

 

 

A Lighthouse for the Arts

I want to share this exciting news. 

With all the chaos around us, a new Performing Arts Center has just opened on Cape Cod, MA - a beacon of hope for a bright future. Inspired by the four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water, the building is designed to foster creativity, inspiration, and exploration for artists both young and old. Built during the 2020 pandemic, this new innovative, green, multipurpose Performing Arts Center now stands complete, fulfilling a vision to provide a place to forge new paths and pursue excellence in the Arts for generations to come.

New community programs have begun for ALL lovers of the Arts including the Outer Cape Winds community wind ensemble for all ages and abilities, and an Arts & Entertainment Lecture Series, which delves into a diverse array of subjects presented by esteemed experts and enthusiasts. Each lecture is a gateway to expand your knowledge, ignite your imagination, and deepen your appreciation for the arts (You can also watch via livestream!).

Arts Empowering Life Ensembles will continue to perform at the new Center, as well as offer the annual Summer Performing Arts Camp for students Grades K-12, with workshops in theatre, percussion, strings, woodwinds, and brass.

Arts Empowering Life (AEL) is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to the pursuit of beauty, truth, and faith, in the Arts — sharing inspiration and education with people across many nationalities, cultures, and traditions. AEL incorporates both performing ensembles and visual artists who have toured to twenty-six countries and throughout the United States performing at the highest levels, leading workshops, and fostering cultural exchanges. AEL has a rich history of reaching out to America’s youth through the arts in the form of workshops, camps, and the Youth Performers Outreach Program. Performing ensembles of Arts Empowering Life include Gloriæ Dei Cantores, the founding ensemble, Elements Theatre Company, Organists of the St. Cecilia Organ at the Church of the Transfiguration, Gabriel V Brass Ensemble, the Wind Ensemble, Gaudete Baroque Ensemble, and Chara Percussion Ensemble.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

—Anne Frank

'Doris Day: My Secret Love'

 

I learned a great deal of the star’s biography in Doris Day, My Secret Love but Tiffan Borelli’s performance of her was lacking in the spirit and likability that were Day’s trademarks. The show, under the direction of Melissa Attebery, had been running at the Emerging Artists Theatre’s 28th Street space for more than six weeks when I saw it, yet it had the feel of an early preview.  

I felt this right from the start.  Playwright Paul Adams uses the device of a long out of the spotlight Doris appearing in a 1985 retrospective of her life to raise money for the Doris Day Animal Foundation.  She’s being reunited with her long-time accompanist and friend Les Brown (David Beck, who plays all the male characters as well as the piano.)  This is supposed to be a joyful reunion but their wooden embrace is more like a cautious COVID encounter than the warm hug of two people who have shared years performing together and haven’t seen each other for years.

From there the pay unfolds in a series of flashbacks prompted by black and white photos projected on a screen beside her.  Day’s life was a series of traumas, starting at 15 after she had won a contest and it seemed her dream of becoming a dancer was coming true.  As she and her mother prepared to move from Cincinnati to Hollywood Doris and her friends went for a drive following her farewell party.  They never saw the railroad crossing or the train headed their way.  The crash shattered Doris’ leg, leaving her with a double compound fracture and a steel pin, plus eight months of hospitalization.  Shortly after she was released from her “plaster prison,” she was “clowning around” her room pretending to dance and fell, re-fracturing the broken leg, leading to another eight-month recovery.  This is the first story in the play, and the first example of the poor judgment that guided the rest of her life.  She admits to deserving the nickname her brother gave her — Dodo. 

“You could say that train put on a new track,” she says sunnily.   

Borelli shows little emotion relating most of Day’s  tragedies, portraying a Doris whose attitude seems to reflect the philosophy of the song she’s most known for, “Que Sera Sera,” what will be will be.  She comes off as dim-witted, with little dimension.  Interestingly, it’s when Borelli gets to the point in the show where she actually sings this song that I got a glimpse of Doris Day.  And when she encouraged the mostly elderly audience in the sold-out house to sing along, they happily did.  It was one of the few times in the 85-minute show that she had Day’s kind of spirit. 

The new track Doris landed on was first as a singer traveling with a band and then as a Hollywood movie star.  Her first two marriages, at 19 and 23, were over in a heartbeat.  The third was to her controlling and manipulating manager, Marty Melcher, who “always had his hand firmly around my career.”  She signed away her rights as a performer to be exclusively under his employ.  He pushed her about her weight, hair, pitch, age and what movies she would do, sending into panic attacks that caused delays in filming.  The anxiety also kept her from singing “Secret Love” from a film she loved, “Calamity Jane,” at the Academy Awards.  She watched it become the first of her songs to win an Oscar, sung on the show by someone else.  (“Que Sera Sera was her second song to win an Oscar.) 

Her marriage to Marty lasted 17 miserable years and left her angry and nearly broke after he died. 

Her relationship with her son and only child, Terry, from her first marriage, was also problematic.  He was raised by Doris’ mother, Alma, while she was consumed with her career.  When she visits him in the hospital after he was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident he’s hostile, and rightly so.  He’s been hospitalized for several days before she finds the time to visit.

Borrelli’s voice is pleasant even if her acting is weak.  She did have her moments in singing the show’s 14 songs.  I liked her imagining Doris’ enthusiasm for her role in the movie of “Pajama Game.”  In singing “I’m Not At All in Love” she came close to Day’s star quality.  

She’s also convincing in portraying Doris as having two close relationships.  Doris says of her “Julie” costar Louis Jordan, with whom she had an affair while making the film under Marty domineering direction, that Jordan gave her “some tenderness I would never again find in my own husband.”  

Her relationship with Rock Hudson, with whom she made three movies, seems to have been her most loving.  She jokes that she spent more time in bed with him than her husband.  The two shared a deep friendship, really enjoying each other’s company as they worked together.  They used made-up names for each other, Clara and Ernie.  Her grief as she sits at his beside as he is in a coma dying of AIDS is moving. 

But then the play abruptly ends, which took me back to the feeling I had at the beginning, that I was seeing a preview performance.  The show doesn’t just need more from the actor and director.  It also needs some rewriting. 

Leslie Odom Jr. heads 'Purlie Victorious' on Broadway

 

Just before the start of Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, the revival of Ossie Davis’ 1961 play now at the Music Box Theatre, director Kenny Leon addresses the audience in a recorded message.  He says it’s taken 62 years for another commercial production and that “somewhere between rage and hope” it transformed from a satirical drama to a comedy.

I wish I had seen the original as a basis of comparison because as a broad comedy this production has way too much silliness for my liking.  Set in 1961 on a Georgia cotton plantation, the play presents an engaging Leslie Odom Jr. as the Rev. Purlie Victorious Judson who grew up on the plantation and has returned to lift his family out of their role as sharecroppers and get his recently deceased relative’s $500 inheritance out of the hands of the cruel white plantation owner, Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee (Jay O. Sanders).  His intention is to buy and restore the church where his grandfather used to preach and open it as an integrated church in the segregated town.

He brings along Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins (Kara Young)  who he has coached to portray the relative.  (In the original she was played by Ruby Dee, Davis’ wife.) 

“Some of the best pretending in the world is done in front of white folks,” Purlie says.

Not that this always goes smoothly.  I laughed at the scene when Lutiebelle messes up every description of the deceased about whom she’s making the claim.  The more subtle humor is that white men in the South couldn’t distinguish one Black woman from another.

Odom, who won a Tony for his portrayal of Aaron Burr in Hamilton, has said that this is the first time he is speaking the words of an African American writer on Broadway.  Davis, who originated the role of Purlie, would undoubted be pleased.  Others in standout roles are Billy Eugene Jones as his brother, Gitlow; Heather Alicia Simms as Gitlow’s wife, Missy; Vanessa Bell Calloway as Cotchipee’s cook, Idella Landy; and Noah Robbins as Cotchipee’s son, Charlie, who was played by Alan Alda in the original.  

Derek McLane has created simple, easily movable sets.  Designer Emilio Sosa shines, especially with the women’s costumes.  I loved Lutiebelle’s colorful dresses on Young’s model-thin body and the churchgoing ladies’ costumes at the end.

I wonder how Davis would react now to seeing the play he wrote to spotlight racism.  The early 60s were the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement and much progress was made as the decade progressed, including overturning laws supporting the kind of segregation Purlie wanted to overcome.  Davis couldn’t have envisioned how strongly racism would surface and be fueled by the Internet.  We don’t usually wish a play would seem dated or just a part of history.  That’s not a problem here.  With the undisguised hatred thriving in our day it’s unlikely this play will be dated any time soon.

My Fair Lady

 

A small Sutton Place park on the East River was transformed Tuesday as 16 dynamic singers and a 28-piece orchestra, conducted by Jarrett Winters Morley, brought a concert version of My Fair Lady to this genteel neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. 

Sutton Place Parks Conservancy presented the two performances, produced in conjunction with JWM: A Theatrical Company. The al fresco concerts of the entire musical were performed by three principal singers, 13 ensemble vocalists and the magnificent orchestra. 

I knew the concert would be outstanding because I experienced Jarrett’s giftedness and dedication in June at the benefit cabaret, “Being Present,” he produced and directed for the Alzheimer’sFoundation of America (AFA). He really knows how to cast and rehearse singers.  He once again made excellent choices in Evan Bertram as Eliza Doolittle, Maxwell Swangel as Henry Higgins and Kurt Perry as Colonel Pickering. 

The concept for yesterday’s concerts was initiated last year as an opportunity for seniors and those with ambulatory issues to continue to enjoy the essence of Broadway musicals near their residences. AFA also brings Broadway to those no longer able to attend the theatre through its free afternoons of live music and activities in its Manhattan headquarters in Chelsea.

Remembering Tina Howe

 

I was so sad to learn this morning of the death of Tina Howe.  I loved Tina and her plays.  She was by far my favorite contemporary playwright, and possibly my favorite ever.  I interviewed her many times, including for my second master's thesis, which was a study of her life and work.  I have wonderful memories of sitting in her West End Avenue apartment talking to her.  She was always generous with her time.

I first encountered her in the mid-1980s when I saw Painting Churches at Baltimore’s Center Stage.  That was the beginning of my love for Tina Howe plays.

A decade later I taught her plays one summer at Brooklyn College and my students, some of whom had never seen or read a play, fell in love with her too.  Although there wasn't a WASP among us -- and Tina was a WASP who wrote about that world -- they understood her plays because she frequently has characters talking at cross purposes in their frustration to be listened to.  My students, many of whom were immigrants, knew about that.  They even volunteered to take parts and read her plays out loud, which students are usually reluctant to do.  I can still hear their thick accents and laughter.

The course had been the dreaded but required English 2, the term paper.  The department chair had told me to mold it around something I liked so I chose four of Tina’s plays – Museum, The Art of Dining, Painting Churches and Coastal Disturbances.  I taught the students how to look for themes and make comparisons.  I sent them to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts for research, this being in the days before the Internet.  They had never been there and didn’t know where it was until I told them. 

I also required them to read the theatre stories each week in the Arts & Leisure section.  I had talked to them about how Tina loved to use absurdist humor, explaining what that was and getting them to identify it in her work.  One Sunday A&L featured a story on Samuel Beckett and one of the students excitedly said: “He’s like Tina.” Tina laughed when I told her that.  Beckett had been one of her idols since she discovered his work during her year living in Paris, with her best friend Jane Alexander, after college.  I told her she was the students’ point of reference as far as all theatre went.

Our classroom was on the fourth floor of Boylan Hall, right under the roof, making our hot, unairconditioned classroom even hotter.  On our final day as we were summing up I told the students they were now Tina Howe scholars.  They laughed as if I was kidding but I told them many people love Tina’s plays but they hadn’t studied them in depth and made comparisons.  I insisted they were, indeed, Tina Howe scholars.  I could see them sitting up straighter and smiling.  They probably hadn’t thought of themselves as scholars of much of anything, and certainly hadn’t expected to become one from a term paper course.

One of the students said she had been dreading the class but ended up loving it.  The others chimed in with their agreement.  I told them I felt the same way.  When I called Tina to tell her their reaction and how much they loved her plays, she humbly said, “I think it’s because they had a good teacher.”  No, the real reason was Tina and her plays. 

When I interviewed her for my thesis and told her how I adored her endings, she said she always went for an epiphany.  That was Tina, a shimmering light.  I have tears as I write this.  How blessed I was to have known her.  How blessed we all are with what she has left us.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/29/theater/tina-howe-dead.html