A Web gem

When I was scouring the Internet 18 months ago looking for information about A Moon for the Misbegotten, Steve on Broadway was the first theater blog I found. I knew right away he was pretty special, so I'm thrilled that Graydon Royce, who covers theater for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, has picked Steve on Broadway as a Web Gem.

Here's what Royce has to say about SOB:

"His name is Steve Loucks, and he lists his location as United States, but we all know him by his Internet nom de plume. SOB is a terrific theater compendium of critical capsules, expanded commentary, background and news (lots of sources reported London's Olivier winners; Loucks listed all the nominees with his post). He's also unselfish enough to steer us to a number of other blogs and theater news sites. His chatty and intelligent style - terribly well informed - draws great contributions."

Terrific, unselfish, chatty, intelligent, terribly well informed. It sounds like SOB to me! Steve, if it weren't for your encouragement and support, I wouldn't be writing a blog today. And now that I've been at it for a few months, I know how time-consuming it is for you to assemble those critics capsules. You do a great job.

Steve is a pretty modest person and I know he doesn't like to toot his own horn. But since he's so generous at giving shoutouts his fellow bloggers, I hope he won't mind if I do the same for him. Congratulations to Steve on Broadway on some very well-deserved recognition!

The songs of San Francisco

Add me to the list of theater fans excited by the prospect of a musical version of Armistead Maupin's 1978 novel Tales of the City.

While I've only read the first book in the series, I really enjoyed it. And unlike some ideas for musicals that have me wondering exactly how they'll do it, I can actually picture this one. The elements just seem so inherently musical, like you could write songs about them and it wouldn't be a stretch.

First, I think the story - about Mary Ann Singleton, a naive young woman who leaves her home in Cleveland for a new life, new adventures and new friends in San Francisco - is so appealing. There's just something about journeys of self-discovery that get to me.

Plus, I've been to San Francisco twice, and it's one of my favorite cities. (Yes, I admit I could ride the cable cars all day.) While there have been movies and a television show set in the city, I don't know if it's ever been the subject of a musical. So it's about time. (Ok, I just remembered Flower Drum Song. But what else?)

I have to admit, I don't know anything about Jake Shears (Jason Sellards) of the Scissor Sisters, who's writing the music with bandmate John Garden. While I've heard of the group, I don't think I've ever heard any of their songs.

In January, Shears talked a little about the project to Spinner.com. He said his friend Jeff Whitty, the Tony-winning book writer of Avenue Q, sent him a note a year ago asking what he thought of the Tales series. (I have to admit, I've never seen Avenue Q either).

"I'm crazy about 'Tales!' I grew up on the books," Shears enthuses. "They were a big part of my teenager-hood. They're just great, great books with amazing characters and I love the era. My heart just started racing. I got very excited about it."

Shears told Spinner that he's been working on the project for nearly a year and has written 15 numbers. "It's poppy and since there's no arrangement yet, all of our writing is just piano and my voice," he explains. "As it take shape, it's gonna even take on more of a style."

The stories first appeared in serial form in the San Francisco Chronicle. Steven Winn, the paper's arts and culture critic, writes that Whitty had been looking for a new project for three years. "I have such nostalgia for that period in San Francisco," he said, "even though I didn't live through it. It feels more real to me than the life I'm living now. I'd love to see the country get back to the place we were back then."

In the same article, Maupin said, "I had seen 'Avenue Q' and knew that they (the show's creators) had a marvelous sharp wit as a well as a real humanity. Doing 'Tales' needs both of those things." He said there's been talk of a musical for 20 years. "This is the first one that felt right."

And coproducer Jeffrey Seller says it's premature to speculate about a possible San Francisco tryout for the musical, which is supposed to arrive in New York during the 2009-10 Broadway season. But that's clearly where Whitty's heart is. "That's absolutely my plan,'' he told the Chronicle. "The only place to open is San Francisco."

Can the kid carry a tune?

When I threw some love Dan Savage's way on Monday, there was one item I missed. Apparently a musical version of his book The Kid is in the works. It was reported by Michael Musto in The Village voice last fall. Musto said that Scott Elliott, who directed the Roundabout Theatre Company's 2006 revival of The Threepenny Opera, was involved with the project.

Now, after a year of regular theatergoing, I'm no longer a complete neophyte, but I'm still starry-eyed. And I still get excited when there's talk of turning a book or movie that I love into a musical. I'm excited even if it's something I never would have thought of in a gazillion years. (And why doesn't anyone ever talk of turning a book or movie into a play? Why is it always a musical?)

I'd probably put The Kid into that far-fetched category. I loved the story, about the attempt by Savage and his partner, Terry Miller, to adopt a baby. Savage is a terrific writer and The Kid is funny and poignant. There's a lot of drama as you follow them through the adoption process, not knowing until the very end how things will turn out.

But while there's a lot of humor, there are also some very serious elements to The Kid. For example, the mother of the baby Savage and Miller are adopting is a street punk who drank and used drugs during part of her pregnancy. One chapter deals with Savage's research into fetal alcohol syndrome. Not the stuff of light pop tunes.

On the other hand, I can't carry a tune, so what do I know? And the story of Dan and Terry's journey to fatherhood is very compelling. (Although turning the story into a musical is kind of ironic, since Dan and Terry don't quite share each other's tastes in tunes. Terry loves dance music and Dan can't stand it.)

I haven't read anything about the project except for that one short item, so who knows, it might already have been abandoned. But I hope not. No matter how far-fetched some of these proposed musicals seem, I'm always curious to see how they turn out. And if it's a book or movie I loved, I always keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

I haven't found much to watch on HBO since The Sopranos ended last June. I'm not very interested in the newer series. Two of my favorites, Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm, have gotten a little bit tired and repetitive. The characters that I used to find funny I now just find kind of annoying.

But here's something that just might keep me from pulling the plug: HBO is picking up a series based on Alexander McCall Smith's mystery novels set in the African nation of Botswana, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

I've always been a big fan of mystery novels, ever since I started reading The Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown as a kid. I especially loved The Bobbsey Twins, because their adventures always took place in exotic (to me) locations.

I like all kinds of mysteries - political thrillers, legal thrillers, espionage tales, hardboiled detective stories, or stories as quaint and sweet as teatime in an English village. While I've kind of gotten away from reading them - I find myself picking up more contemporary fiction these days - I still enjoy a good one. One of the best I've read in the past year is The Havana Room, by Colin Harrison.

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency falls into the quaint category. The mysteries aren't usually very mysterious. But the characters are great, and Alexander McCall Smith, a former professor at the University of Edinburgh who grew up in Africa, writes about the continent and its people with obvious affection.

According to Variety, the series will star Grammy-winning singer and actress Jill Scott, as Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of Botswana's only female-run detective agency, and Tony-winner Anika Noni Rose, currently on Broadway in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, as her quirky secretary.

Anthony Minghella, director of the Oscar-winning film The English Patient, has completed a two-hour pilot, filmed in Africa, and HBO has ordered up 13 episodes. Variety says HBO plans to launch the show by the first quarter of 2009.

Years after I put down my last Bobbsey Twins book, I still like to pick up stories that take me to places I've never been. That's one of the reasons I'm looking forward to this series. In the Variety article, Minghella says filming the pilot in Botswana was amazing. "It was a privilege to be working on a film which celebrates what we can learn from Africa, and not what we think we can teach it."

Update March 18: I was shocked and saddened to learn that Anthony Minghella passed away today in London of a hemorrhage following surgery. He was 54. My thoughts go out to his friends and family.

Family man

I've really enjoyed Dan Savage's appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher. His reports from the presidential campaign trail have been funny and brimming with insight. Savage, who is editorial director for the Seattle weekly The Stranger, also has a syndicated sex-advice column, called Savage Love. And he's written several books, so I thought I'd check them out.

I started with The Kid, Savage's account of trying to adopt a baby with his boyfriend, Terry Miller. (Boyfriend is his word, not mine. Savage doesn't like the the term partner. "It's just so ... genderless,'' he says). Then I moved to The Commitment, in which Savage uses the occasion of his and Terry's 10th anniversary to ruminate on love and marriage and relationships.

They're both great reads. Savage is a terrific writer - just as witty and sharp as he is on Bill Maher's show. He's especially adept at skewering the hatemongers, deftly pointing out the disconnects in their bigoted attitudes toward gay families and relationships. He has a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor and writes with incredible warmth and honesty.

I liked The Kid a bit more than The Commitment, although I recommend both of them. They're the kind of books you want to read quickly because they're so good, but you don't want to read quickly because you don't want them to end.

The Kid is more of a straightforward, linear story, as we follow Dan and Terry through the adoption process. Whether you're gay or straight, it's a journey riddled with frustration and anxiety. Savage handles it with a great deal of humor, compassion and poignancy.

For example, he wonders what the other, heterosexual couples must be thinking when Savage and his boyfriend walk into the conference room for a seminar held by the agency they've chosen. They're the last to arrive. "We were also the youngest, the malest, and the gayest."

Savage discusses the difficulty in knowing who exactly does hate you these days, when many people are more careful about hiding their bigotry. It would be much easier he writes, if all the bigots were blue. "We'd know whom we had to fight, and when we had to fight, and, more important, we'd know when we could finally relax."

They've chosen an agency that deals with open adoption, which means the birth mother picks them and maintains some contact with the child. To Savage's amazement, they get picked fairly quickly, by a teenage street punk named Melissa, who'd been turned down by other couples because she'd kept drinking and using drugs during the early stages of her pregnancy.

After some qualms about whether the baby would be healthy, they decide to go ahead with it. The book charts their progress, including their evolving relationship with Melissa, their fear that she'll change her mind about giving up the baby, and their reluctance to tell friends and family for fear of jinxing things. (Savage is the first to admit that he's very superstitious).

The Commitment picks up the story when their son, D.J., is a healthy, active, curious 6-year-old. He clearly loves his dads and they're clearly devoted to him. The three of them are the very picture of a happy, contented family.

There's one passage in particular, when D.J. has an earache in the middle of the night, that really got to me. Savage gets up to give him some medicine and writes about the joy of holding your child in your lap: "the way your child's hand feels resting in your own, the trusting, contented weight of your child sitting on your lap while you read or watch tv."

During the debate over gay marriage in Massachusetts, I had a conversation with a parent who recoiled at having to explain the issue to his young child. When D.J. asks Savage whether he can be gay when he grows up, Savage, who's pretty sure his son is straight, tells him: "It's not a decision you get to make. It's not a decision I got to make. It's a decision your heart makes. ... One day your heart will let you know whether you're going to be the kind of man who falls in love with a woman or a man." Beautiful, succinct, and not at all difficult to explain.

I didn't find The Commitment quite as satisfying because Savage goes off on some philosophical tangents about the meaning of love and the ancient Greeks. Those topics really didn't interest me as much as the story of Savage and his family, and they got a bit tedious. Whereas while I was reading The Kid, I don't think it dragged for a single paragraph.

Perhaps there's simply much more tension with The Kid, as you wonder whether whether Dan and Terry will get a baby, will the baby be healthy, will the birth mother go through with the adoption? (I'd imagine this would be a great book for any prospective parents who are considering open adoption).

But there's still a good, compelling story in The Commitment, as Savage and Terry decide what kind of party to have to celebrate their 10th anniversary, and whether, prodded by Savage's mother, they should go to Canada to get married. (Terry would be satisfied if they each got tattoos, and their son is at first adamantly opposed to their getting married, although if there's cake, he definitely wants a piece).

In The Commitment, Savage writes about his experiences growing up in an Irish Catholic family in Chicago, about the marriages of his parents and grandparents, and about the choices his siblings make. He spends a lot of time discussing gay and straight relationships, monogamy, the wedding industry, the history of putting bride and groom figurines on top of the wedding cake, the opposition to same-sex marriage, and whether gay people who have marriage ceremonies are "acting straight."

When I was reading The Kid, I felt very uncomfortable that Savage used the f-word so freely. Even though he normally employs the slur to describe homophobic attitudes, I didn't like it any more than I would reading a book by an African-American who constantly used the n-word. I'm aware of the argument that when members of minority groups use those slurs they rob the words of their sting. Sorry, I don't buy it. Those words still sting. In The Commitment, Savage seems to use the f-word less frequently, and he still gets his point across.

At their anniversary party, Savage describes the group of friends and relatives, gay and straight, who have gathered to help them celebrate. The scene reminds him of something Andrew Sullivan once said, about social conservatives wanting to devalue the lives of gay people and denigrate their relationships. That strategy, Sullivan said, worked only so long as gay people cooperated, "by staying in the closet, keeping their heads down, playing the euphemism game."

With straight friends and relatives outnumbering gays 5 to 1, Savage realizes that it's not only gay people who refuse to cooperate anymore. "Our straight friends and family members don't want us living in cultural and social limbo anymore either."

Savage is right - we certainly don't want our gay friends and family members living in social and cultural limbo. I wish the part of America that thinks it doesn't know any gay people would read these two books, and maybe begin to understand why.

Some Frank talk

Don't get me wrong, I like Frank Rich. I really enjoyed Ghost Light, the poignant memoir he wrote about growing up in Washington, D.C. I read his column on the op-ed page of The New York Times every Sunday. But I have to respectfully take issue with a comment he made in the Times' discussion of August: Osage County.

Rich was responding to another panelist, playwright Marsha Norman, who said that critics need to be public advocates for the theater.

He agreed with her, but added that as much as critics might love a play, they don't really have much power to persuade people to go see it. Rich says: "If the critics have as much power as Marsha says, why do they have no power to get audiences to buy tickets to “The Seafarer” or to stop audiences from flocking to, say, “Young Frankenstein?"

Then he noted the range of information available on the Internet, where potential ticket buyers have access to to any number of reviews of movies, plays and musicals 24 hours a day. Once something makes it onto the Internet, it's there forever, available to far more people than would ever see it on the printed page.

Now this is the remark that got me a little steamed. Rich adds, almost as an afterthought, "By the way, many of the most vicious reviews are written on theater blogs, and they can’t be stopped either."

I think that line is really unfair and it tells me that Frank Rich needs to start reading more theater blogs. I'm not sure whether he's referring to someone in particular. I guess there could be some vicious theater bloggers out there, people who take delight in tearing someone's work to shreds, but I've never come across them.

I've read more than a few blogs over the past few years on a wide range of subjects. I read movie, pop culture and literary blogs in addition to theater blogs. While I normally hate to make generalizations, here's one I'm fairly comfortable with: people who blog about the arts generally do so because they're passionate about that particular art form. They don't do it to be rude or vicious or to tear anyone down. (I've also read a few political blogs, and they're a completely different animal).

I'm sure there are exceptions, but people who write about the theater or movies or books or music do so because they love theater, movies, books or music. And they're very knowledgeable about the subject, even though it may be far removed from their day job. Their reviews are every bit as thoughtful, discerning, well written and professional as any you'd find from a "professional critic" in a newspaper or magazine. (And I'm not anywhere near that level yet).

Reading bloggers certainly fueled my growing interest in going to the theater. Far from being vicious, it was the exact opposite: their enthusiasm and love for the art form made me enthusiastic and excited. Now that I have my own corner of the blogosphere, I hope I'm doing the same.

Even my little blog gets quite a few queries about Broadway shows, about touring productions, about local theater I've attended. I think we complement traditional media. When people get excited about something, they want to read and hear as much as possible. And I'm someone who believes the more information, the more voices, the better it is for the theater. Frank, I hope you agree.

Ok, I've vented. I feel much better now.

To listen or not to listen

By nature, I'm an information gatherer. It's instinctive, innate, in my genes, in my blood, in my bones, or something. Whatever it is, I can't be any other way.

So it's taking every ounce of willpower I can muster, which normally isn't much, to stay away from video clips and audio clips and stories and reviews of the Broadway musicals I'm seeing in just a few short weeks - In the Heights, Cry-Baby, South Pacific and Gypsy.

I don't really want to unplug my computer, pretend Al Gore never invented the Internet, cover my eyes and ears and relocate to a cave for the rest of the month. But it's tough, because I'm torn between competing desires.

I'm excited about my upcoming trip, so I want to read and hear and see everything I can beforehand. At the same time, I want to maintain a sense of surprise and anticipation that will stay with me until I'm in my seat, listening to the music and watching the story unfold right before my eyes.

Actually, I'm giving myself a free pass on Gypsy, since I saw it at City Center over the summer, and a reduced pass on South Pacific, since I've seen the movie and the concert version on DVD. Because they won't be total surprises, I'm allowing myself to read reviews of Gypsy and listen to the scores of both musicals. (See, I told you I don't have much willpower!)

But I'm trying my best to hold firm on In the Heights and Cry-Baby. Let me tell you, it's not easy with all that temptation at my fingertips.

First, within a half-hour of the end of the first preview, or sometimes even the end of the final dress rehearsal, someone on the Broadway World or Talkin' Broadway message board posts a review. Yeah, I admit I'm a little bit addicted to those boards, even if they do tend to get kind of repetitive after awhile.

Obviously, it's impossible to remain completely in the dark. I mean, it's not like I could take a monthlong vacation from all things Broadway and theater-related. I'm too far gone for that. If you pay attention to the theater, you can't help but read about a show months or years beforehand - during workshops or out of town or off-Broadway.

So I know the basic story of In the Heights and Cry-Baby. But I'm doing my best to stay away from audio and video clips and interviews with the cast and creative team. That's difficult to do, especially in the case of Cry-Baby, since the music starts playing when you click on the Web site.

Last year, I think there were some shows I knew way too much about before I saw them. I loved Spring Awakening, but I really wish I hadn't watched the cast perform "The Bitch of Living" on The Late Show or read so many spoiler-filled reviews.

Also, I wish I hadn't read A Moon for the Misbegotten before I saw the play. My only defense is, I read the play when Kevin Spacey was still doing it in London, and at that time I had no idea I'd be seeing it on Broadway. I'm staying away from his current play, Speed-the-Plow, just in case there's a Broadway transfer.

I just think back to how hard I laughed at the finale of Curtains, how surprised I was to find out whodunit. I did an especially good job of maintaining a healthy sense of ignorance on that one, thank-you very much!

I know that some theatergoers like listening to the score of a musical before they see a show. If you're trying to decide whether or not to buy a ticket, of course that makes sense. But I'm glad I saw Curtains months before the Broadway cast CD came out.

I'd only heard the briefest of snippets of the songs from Wicked before I saw the musical. I don't think "For Good" would have hit me quite so hard if I'd been listening to it every day for the previous three months. I've mentioned before that as soon as I heard the song, I started to cry. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.