Same Time, Next Year 

Same Time, Another Year

by Bernard Slade

Samuel French. 1975 / 1996.

I'm obsessed with a thirty-five year old play and I don't know why. Bernard Slade's 1975 Broadway success has been wildly successful, garnering international productions, a movie with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn, a musical and a sequel. I have no doubt it's Slade's "annuity play", meaning he probably make a comfortable living off the royalties - the show is a staple of community theatre and summer stock. And now, after catching the latest production here in Montreal, the play won't stop its ceaseless march through my brain.

An Improvised Life: A Memoir

by Alan Arkin

Da Capo Press, 201 pages.

Alan Arkin, if you believe his father, knew he was going to be an actor at the age of five, a fact which would seem to belie the title of his book: despite his claims, there's the distinct sense that his professional life went more or less according to plan. An award-winning actor and director, Arkin is best known today for playing old curmudgeons, such as in Little Miss Sunshine and The Change-Up (he also has a cameo in The Muppets). But he's appeared in over 80 films and has a theatrical track record that most actors would with envy. No doubt about it, Arkin's life doesn't truly seemed to have been improvised at all: he made a plan when he was five and stuck to it. Or at least that's how it seems in An Improvised Life, which skips over almost all of Arkin's personal struggles and focuses entirely on his philosophies on acting and a life in the arts. It's an enjoyable read if you're an artist; anyone else, I suspect, will find it (amazingly) lacks drama.

Cognition in the Globe: Attention and Memory in Shakespeare’s Theatre

by Evelyn B. Tribble

Palgrave MacMillian. New York, 2011. 200 pp.

Theatre practitioners accustomed to dramatic analysis of Shakespeare’s work – what does Macbeth want? how to stage the moving of Birnam Wood? – have a fascinating new viewpoint in Evelyn Tribble’s Cognition in the Globe, one of the more recent additions to Palgrave’s series Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance. In concerning herself with the question of how early theatre companies carried the mnemonic load associated with performing several new plays a month, Tribble has created a treatise that sheds light on the historic even as it provides new insights to those producing theatre today.

George Gershwin: His Life and Work

by Howard Pollack. University of California Press, 884 Pages (!!!)

Howard Pollack's enormous biography of American composer George Gershwin and his work might be better termed an encyclopedia: it not only dives into the composer's life, but also lists the history of his numerous songs, compositions and shows, complete with synopses, cast lists and four whole chapters (nearly 100 pages) devoted to the monumental Porgy and Bess. Having read almost every Gershwin biography to date, I can attest that Mr. Pollack's is both the most exhaustive and the least readable. It's a work of great significance and yet I would hardly recommend it to anyone but the most devoted Gershwin fan. Someone with a smattering of musicology would also be a plus, since Mr. Pollack isn't afraid to dive into the technical aspects of Gershwin's music, comparing individual pieces to other works in the Gershwin canon and Gershwin's contemporaries.

Bossypants

by Tina Fey, Reagan Arthur Books. 275 pages.

Like Kristi Koruna, the object of a ten year crush that lasted until I was 18, Tina Fey always manages to prompt a series of sweaty palms, giddiness and a complete inability to articulate my own thoughts. In Ms. Fey's case, however, this is a purely artistic crush. I usually respond to an episode of 30 Rock with the same sweaty-palmed uncertainty that happened whenever Kristi Koruna walked into the room: in other words, if my life was a summer camp social (and sometimes I think it is) Tina Fey's work is the girl I want to dance with to Stairway to Heaven. I probably won't ever get asked to write an episode of 30 Rock (mostly because I'd just screw it up), so I suspect that writing about Bossypants is as close as I'll ever come to dancing with Ms. Fey's talent.

The Memory of All That:

George Gershwin, Kay Swift and my Family's Legacy of Infidelities

by Katharine Weber

Crown Publishers, 270 pages.

An unusual memoir penned by novelist Katharine Weber, The Memory of All That is essentially two books in one: the first concerns Mrs. Weber's relationship with her enigmatic father, the inimitible Sydney Kaufman who disappeared from the house for months at a time, worked in the movies, was either loved or reviled by his contemporaries and has a FBI file that corresponds with the career of J. Edgar Hoover. The other is largely an anecdotal biography of Mrs. Weber's grandmother, Kay Swift, who is remembered either as the first woman to have a musical on Broadway or George Gershwin's longtime paramour (sadly few people, I've found, seem to remember her as both). Despite my own Gershwin-mania, it's the novel's first half that made for a much more invigorating read; although of academic interest, the second half was less focused. For a hundred pages, Mrs. Weber fights an intriguing battle to understand her peculiar father; but she was so close to her grandmother and much of the second half is, to use Kay Swift's own word, mumpsy.

The Cabin: Reminiscence and Diversions

by David Mamet. Vintage Press, 157 pages.

It is, I think, a glorious thing to read any essay by David Mamet, especially in a moment of disillusion. He has the ability to cut through the great chafe of life and, in a prose that is lean but never anorexic, reveal wisdom in all areas: art, lust, guns, even campaign buttons. I will probably forever remain undecided whether he is better served to be known for his plays and films or his essays: the former are more popular  and something has to be said for that. Then I read "The Cabin" for the twentieth time and I think "Hmmm...."

Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox

Audio Book, 5 1/2 hours (approx.) Read by the Author

If there is such a thing as the quintessential memoir, then it's Lucky Man. Putting aside Mr. Fox's great celebrity, Lucky Man is the story of a man's rise to greatness, his risk of destruction from hubris and his salvation through a newfound devotion to family and to the larger community. It is essentially a story of redemption, told by a man I did not think needed to be redeemed. For this reason, Lucky Man came as a pleasent surprise and ranks with the best celebrity memoirs, along with Katharine Hepburn's Me and Moss Hart's Act One.

Fine and Dandy: The Life and Works of Kay Swift

by Vicki Ohl, Yale University Press, 294 Pages

A rich melancholy pervades the pages of Ohl's extensive biography of Broadway's first female composer. For those fans of George Gershwin, Kay Swift's name is a popular one - she was his personal secretary / paramour and it's likely they might have married if he hadn't died of a brain tumor in 1937. But Kay Swift was also a multi-talented composer, lyricist and author who has the distinction of being the first female composer to have a musical comedy ("Fine and Dandy") on the Great White Way. 

Fred Astaire by Michael Freedland

W.H. Allen, 1976,  270 pages.

It can be easily said that in the life of Fred Astaire one can chart the evolution of entertainment in the 20th century. Mr. Astaire, one of the century's greatest entertainers, was born in May, 1899 and his career went from vaudeville to Broadway to Hollywood, with several memorable stops in radio and television. In every way he came to epitomize the transitory nature of the industry of entertainment: it changes in accordance with the times and woe to the entertainer who does not try to change with it. This was not Fred Astaire, as Michael Freedland easily demonstrates in his informative, if slightly pedantic, biography.

Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes 

by Stephen Sondheim

Knopf, 2010. 408 pages

The perfect gift for the rabid musical theatre fan in your life, "Finishing the Hat" is exactly what its title purports it to be: a collection of lyrics annotated by Mr. Sondheim's opinions and observations from a lifetime in the American theatre. It is these observations that give the book its value - the true aficionado, after all, will already know most of the lyrics by heart.