Got my flu shot at the MinuteClinic

There are now two things you can do in Massachusetts that you can't do in Rhode Island: marry your same-sex partner and get a flu shot. Two reasons why the Bay State has it all over the Ocean State.

This morning, I took a half-hour drive to lovely Fall River, Mass., to get a seasonal flu shot at a MinuteClinic in a CVS pharmacy. I just filled out a form with my insurance information and another form with some basic medical information and I was out of there in about an hour.

I thought I could get a flu shot from my primary-care physician in Rhode Island, as I do every year. I prefer it that way. Unfortunately, the vaccine is in short supply here. My physician's office ran out and suggested I call drugstores to see whether any of them were offering flu-shot clinics.

It's ironic that the doctor's office would direct me to a drugstore for medical care and that I ultimately ended up getting my flu shot at a MinuteClinic, because the Rhode Island Medical Society has opposed allowing them in the state.

Dr. Frederic V. Christian, formerly head of the RIMS, said “To the extent that MinuteClinic has the effect of diverting patients from primary care, MinuteClinic will become a disruptive player in Rhode Island, potentially undermining doctor-patient relationships, and contributing to the fragmentation and ill-coordination of health care services.”

I understand the need to develop a relationship with a primary-care physician and I have a good one. But what happens when your doctor can't provide the health-care service you need - and the MinuteClinic can? (And how does CVS obtain the flu vaccine that Rhode Island can't get?)

Thank goodness I live near another state that's more forward-thinking and I have the ability to get in my car and drive there. What happens to people who don't have that ability?

Bravo, Noah Robbins

I know, it's time to say goodbye to Brighton Beach Memoirs and let this wonderfully funny, poignant revival pass into history with its final performance today.

Before the curtain comes down, here's a clip of the delightful Noah Robbins making his Broadway debut as playwright Neil Simon's alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome:



It's so sad when a show you love closes suddenly and much, much too soon. To the cast and creative team, thank-you for an evening of theatre that I'll always cherish.

Oy, they were Jewish enough!

Before the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's play Brighton Beach Memoirs sadly closes tomorrow, there's something else I have to say. One aspect of the discussion about this terrific production disturbs me. It's shown up on the Broadway message boards and in at least one of the reviews.

Here's an example from All That Chat:

"I also happen to think David Cromer put together one of the most goyish casts I could imagine for a Jewish family. Accents were spotty, and I never felt these actors were a real family."

Critic John Simon mentioned the same thing in his review for Bloomberg News:

"What the evening sorely lacks is aromatic Jewish-American inflection and idiomatic gesticulation, somewhat deficient even in the original production, presumably from fear of being mistaken for patronizing caricature, instead of recognized as leavening authenticity."

Well, I find this argument offensive and bewildering. You don't think they were a real family? Fine. But don't base your opinion on a stereotype.

It's entirely possible to be Jewish without a thick Yiddish accent or wildly moving your arms around when you talk or having everyone yell at each other at the dinner table. Even in the 1930s, when Brighton Beach Memoirs takes place.

Trust me on this. I grew up with two Depression-era Jewish parents. And when I lived in Israel for a year, I learned that there's no "one way" to be Jewish.

What Cromer has done so effectively in directing the play is to strip away the excess - and I don't remember any exaggerated New England accents in his production of Our Town either. As Chris Jones says in his Chicago Tribune review, Cromer "rediscovers the actual, vulnerable Americans underneath."

As Kate Jerome, Laurie Metcalf isn't a stereotypical Jewish mother one generation removed from Eastern Europe - but that's the enormous strength of her performance.

When Eugene asks his mother why she doesn't buy a half-pound of butter instead of a quarter-pound at the store, she responds: "And suppose the house burned down this afternoon? Why do I need an extra quarter pound of butter?"

Yes, that's funny. But the way Metcalf says those lines it's not a joke. I understood that behind the quip was the very real insecurity of a Depression-era family struggling to make ends meet.

When Kate expresses her wariness of the Murphys across the street, I have to admit she reminded me a bit of my mother, who would always ask me before I brought a friend home from school whether they were Jewish. (A line of questioning that infuriated me!)

But when Kate tells her sister Blanche: "How many times have Stanely and Gene come home from school black and blue from the beatings they took from those Irish hooligans," I understood the real fear behind her wariness.

The same goes for Dennis Boutsikaris, who I think is terrific as family patriarch Jack Jerome.

Near the end of the play, he says about his son Stanley, "I want him to go to shul with me on Saturday. They stop going for three or four weeks, they forget their religion altogether." He acted and sounded authentically Jewish to me without stooping to caricature.

In fact, the original text, which doesn't contain any Yiddish at all, has Jack saying "temple," not "shul." Whoever made the change - Simon or Cromer - it's a brilliant touch that works perfectly. It's exactly the word Jack would have used and Boutsikaris nails it.

The issue of who should play which roles has come up a couple of times in the past few weeks regarding able-bodied actors taking on disabled characters.

The deaf community is upset that a hearing actor - Henry Stram - has been cast in the role of a deaf character in Carson McCullers' The Heart is A Lonely Hunter. And some advocates for the disabled expressed disappointment that a deaf/blind child wasn't picked over Abigail Breslin for the role of Helen Keller in the upcoming Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker.

To me, only criteria is whether or not an actor is believable in the role. The family onstage at Brighton Beach Memoirs seemed totally believable, regardless of the actual religious or ethnic background of the actors.

Despite the title of this blog post, there's not an oy or a vey in Brighton Beach Memoirs - and that's fine. A Jewish family - absolutely. But not one drowning in schmaltz. I'm just sad that more theatergoers won't have a chance to see them.

Where have all the Neil Simon fans gone?

I can't believe it. I saw the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs a week ago tonight and now, a provisional closing notice has been posted for Sunday. Its companion, Broadway Bound, which I was so looking forward to seeing, has been canceled. I feel like crying.

Why can't a play with so much humor and heart, with a terrific cast, find an audience? I mean, newcomer Noah Robbins is hilarious and sweet as Simon's teenage alter ego, Eugene Morris Jerome. And Laurie Metcalf exudes so much strength in a memorable performance as his mother, Kate.

Last week, Brighton Beach Memoirs could fill just 61 percent of the 1,200 seats at the Nederlander Theatre, with an average paid admission of only $21. 32. With lackluster ticket sales, the producers simply couldn't justify spending any more money, a source told The New York Times.

The original production opened in 1983 and ran for three years, making a star out of Matthew Broderick, who garnered a Tony award. What happened this time?

Are fans of Neil Simon simply dying out and not being replaced, as David Edelstein implies in New York magazine? Edelstein admits that Simon's plays "connected with their audience on a level that theater almost never does anymore" but questions whether they can be made to seem fresh or new.

I disagree. I think director David Cromer brought a level of depth and understanding to Brighton Beach Memoirs that I wasn't expecting. The story of a struggling Jewish family during the Depression seemed so relevant. It wasn't at all an exercise in nostalgia. (And as I said in my review, you didn't have to be Jewish to relate.)

According to the most recent statistics from the League of American Theatre Producers, tourists purchased about 65 percent of the nearly 12.3 million tickets sold to Broadway shows. And foreign tourists comprised more than 15 percent of attendees.

That's great for the New York City economy but not so good for those of us who love plays and don't care whether or not there's a famous face in the cast.

President and Mrs. Obama's trip to see Joe Turner's Come and Gone in the spring is the exception to the rule - it seems like most people come to Broadway these days to see a musical or someone they recognize from movies or television.

I guess the issue is closer to what producer David Richenthal told The New York Times earlier in the week about casting Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in a Broadway revival of The Miracle Worker:

“It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.”

Hey, I'm not knocking it. Those tourists pay salaries and keep thousands of small businesses afloat. I love seeing musicals and big stars, too. But we're pretty close to the point where Broadway consists of musicals and limited runs of plays with celebrities.

As a fan of 20th century American drama who always hopes to discover a great performance by an actor who's unknown to me, that makes me sad.

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

Way back on July 4, 2008, I wrote a blog post wishing Neil Simon a happy birthday and bemoaning the fact that while I'd seen most of the movie versions of his plays, I'd never seen one on stage.

Well, the theatre gods heard my prayers.

When it was announced that not one but two Simon revivals would open on Broadway this fall, with Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound playing in repertory, I was beside myself with anticipation.

Then I started to worry. Would the plays be too Jewish? Would they be Jewish enough? Would they seem outdated? Would Noah Robbins as Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome be as good as I imagined Matthew Broderick was in his Tony-winning performance in the original Brighton Beach Memoirs?

I'm happy to report that all of my anxiety was for naught.

Brighton Beach Memoirs, set in the late 1930s, is a semi-autobiographical account of the playwright's Brooklyn childhood. The Jerome family - Eugene, his older brother Stan, and parents Jack and Kate, share their home with Kate's widowed sister Blanche and her daughters, Laurie and Nora.

Just as director David Cromer did with Our Town off-Broadway, he brilliantly strips this play down to its essence: a warm, humorous portrait of a family scraping to get by during the Great Depression. They're absolutely Jewish but you don't have to be to appreciate their struggles, their humor and their hopes and fears.

Robbins is remarkable as the 15-year-old Eugene, obsessed with baseball and discovering girls, taking careful notes about his family in his journal for the play he hopes to write someday - if he doesn't play for the Yankees. He makes Simon's quips sound so natural. What a confident, winning performance from a 19-year-old in his Broadway debut.

Dennis Boutsikaris is wonderful as Jack Jerome, a gentle, understanding man who's in danger of wearing himself out providing for the seven people living under his roof.

And I loved Laurie Metcalf as Kate, who's not spouting one-liners but getting at the real emotion contained in those lines. She is an awesome Jewish mother. It's a role that would be so easy to overplay but Metcalf gets to the strength behind the stereotype.

As Blanche, Jessica Hecht has her hands full raising her two daughters, the rebellious teenager Nora, played by Alexandra Socha, and the sweet but sickly Laurie, played by Grace Bea Lawrence, while trying not to be a burden on her sister's family.

Some of my favorite scenes take place in the tiny second-floor bedroom Eugene shares with Santino Fontana's Stanley. They argue and confide in each other and clearly love each other. Listening to Stanley explain a thing or two about the facts of life to his little brother - and watching Eugene's reaction - is hysterical.

But as funny as this play is, it's also quite serious and moving at times. We know war is looming and everything that means for a Jewish family one generation removed from the old country. Under Cromer's direction, the talented cast adjusts seamlessly as emotions change.

Designer John Lee Beatty crams a lot into his set. I sat in the left orchestra, a few rows from the stage, which is a great vantage point for Eugene and Stanley's bedroom and the front door. While the dining room table is stage right, the cast did a good enough job of projecting that I didn't feel left out during the dinner scene.

Now, I'm even more excited to see Broadway Bound, which takes place a decade later. The cast includes Boutsikaris, Metcalf, Fontana and Hecht but with Josh Grisetti as the adult Eugene. Previews begin Nov. 18 and this time, I'm not nervous at all because I know it's in great hands.

Superior Donuts

Gratuitous Violins rating: **** out of ****

If August: Osage County examined the tangled relationships among family members then Tracy Letts' new Broadway play, Superior Donuts, tackles an equally complex subject - how we relate to each other as a community, as individuals, as Americans.

Like its Tony and Pulitzer-winning predecessor, Superior Donuts arrives in New York from the Steppenwolf Theatre Company with a superb Chicago cast. It has Letts' clever, razor-sharp dialogue along with a great deal of tenderness and wit and some very insightful social commentary.

Yes, this is a small-scale character study but oh, what characters!

There's a scene near the beginning of the play when Franco Wicks, who's just been hired to work at a downscale Chicago coffee shop, pulls out of his knapsack a stack of notebooks and legal pads that comprise his Great American Novel.

Until that point, I'd been laughing hard at the banter between Jon Michael Hill's Franco and Michael McKean's Arthur Przbyszewski, the ponytailed Vietnam-era draft evader who owns Superior Donuts, the shop started by his Polish immigrant parents.

But when this earnest young black man shows Arthur his novel and quotes the African-American poet Langston Hughes, my eyes got moist and Superior Donuts grabbed ahold of my heart. As long as I can remember I've loved putting words to paper, so I've got a big soft spot for stories about aspiring writers.

Of course, I've been watching McKean for years, starting with Laverne & Shirley and This is Spinal Tap. Sometimes it's hard to lose myself in a performance by an actor I know from movie or TV roles but he's terrific as a weary, cynical man who's been beaten down by life.

Hill, in his Broadway debut, is a revelation. He's amazing as Franco - sweet, eager, a bit brash and totally engaging.

And these two actors have such great chemistry. The way their relationship evolves as Franco's irrepressible enthusiasm meets Arthur's seemingly incurable pessimism is a treat to watch. This is a story that could easily have turned into a cliche but under Tina Landau's direction, it maintains an edge.

Arthur's donut shop is located in a Chicago neighborhood that city planners might call "in transition." A Starbucks has opened nearby. The local video store owner and entrepreneur, a Russian immigrant named Max Tarasov, played by the hilarious Yasen Peyankov, is preparing to take on a Best Buy.

As James Schuette's set design perfectly conveys, Superior Donuts is one small business that's hardly prepared to compete with the gigantic chains. The paint on the radiator is peeling, the linoleum floor is worn, there's gum stuck under the tables and the ceiling tiles are filthy. The place looks greasy and unappetizing.

Once Franco comes along well, he has plenty of ideas - healthier food, bran muffins maybe, and poetry nights to attract a younger crowd. There's a hilarious scene where he tries his hand at making donuts. Arthur is skeptical, to say the least, about Franco's big plans.

While Arthur doesn't have many customers his regulars do make up a little community. There are the two beat cops - Kate Buddeke's Randy Osteen is a little flirtatious with Arthur and James Vincent Meredith's James Hailey is a delightfully nerdy Star Trek fan. Jane Alderman is great as a bewildered, slightly daffy bag lady.

One of the things I loved about August: Osage County was the way Letts illuminated the lives of women, demonstrating all of the pressures of being a wife, mother and daughter in a way that seemed so true to life.

With Superior Donuts, he does something else that I appreciate: he creates a young African-American male who's not a wisecracking character from a TV sitcom or a wanna-be rapper or professional athlete. It's tragic that we don't take as much care with smart, ambitious young men like Franco as we do with the teenagers who have a great jump shot.

Ironically, Franco urges Arthur to take off his Grateful Dead T-shirt and cut off his ponytail. (The only people who should wear ponytails are girls and ponies, he advises him.) Because sadly Franco, with his heavy winter coat, knit cap, baggy pants and unlaced boots, is just as likely to be judged.

But both Arthur and Franco defy expectations.

Franco's not someone you should be crossing the street to avoid out of fear. And Arthur, whose father called him a coward for going to Canada instead of Vietnam, isn't a man to run from a fight. He proves that by tangling with the mobster, played by Robert Maffia, who's trying to collect a debt Franco owes.

At one point, Superior Donuts brings out the biggest collective gasp I've ever heard from an audience. That's because the more you know about Arthur and Franco, the more you care about them and the more you root for them.

If it's not too much to ask, I wish Tracy Letts would return to Superior Donuts for a sequel in a decade or so. Because I really want to find out how they're doing, how America is doing.

Avenue Q

Gratuitous Violins rating: *** out of ****

Even though I graduated from college sometime in the last century, I still remember what it was like: the ink barely dry on my diploma, settling into my first (low-paying) job and my first lousy apartment, my first loan payment due in a matter of months. Oh, the memories.

But I never had the experience of living in a neighborhood like Avenue Q, which is where you end up if you take a very wrong turn off of Sesame Street. (And I mean wrong - despite the presence of puppets, this is not for children.)

So the musical, which tells the story of Princeton, a new college grad who's trying to find his purpose in life, did resonate when I saw it on tour at the Providence Performing Arts Center. It's funny and appealing and overall, pretty entertaining.

Like most of Avenue Q's residents, Princeton is portrayed by an actor manipulating a puppet. (In this case, Brent Michael DiRoma, who also plays Rod, the closeted Republican investment banker puppet.)

There are non-puppet characters, too, including a would-be comedian named Brian played by Tim Kornblum. His girlfriend, Christmas Eve, is played by Lisa Helmi Johanson, a therapist who speaks with a think Asian accent. The superintendent of the building where Avenue Q takes place is Gary Coleman, played by Nigel Jamaal Clark. (Yes, "the" Gary Coleman.)

Jeff Whitty's book is mostly a boy-meets-girl story. Princeton meets and falls in love with the very sweet and idealistic Kate Monster, played by Jacqueline Grabois. Yes, it's clever and there are plot twists.

For me, the puppets, designed by Rick Lyon, are what give the 2004 Tony winner for best musical, book and score a big chunk of its appeal and originality. (I still think Wicked was robbed that year but in fairness, my theatergoing companion felt Avenue Q had the more universal themes.)

I don't think the musical always hits its mark. Rod's being in the closet and struggling to accept the fact that he's gay is a serious issue. There's a transition from a funny scene to one involving Rod that I think was supposed to be funny but I just found it jarring and sad.

Don't get me wrong - I laughed a lot during Avenue Q, even at some of the more crude and juvenile humor. There are some hilarious songs, by composers Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx.

Take "The Internet is for Porn." I mean, how true is that, right? (Not that I know from personal experience. I'm just guessing.) Yes, it's crude but it's also very funny, especially because it involves a giant furry puppet named Trekkie Monster. I howled at one lyric that I'm too embarrassed to repeat.

The video projections that recall Sesame Street episodes are truly inspired. And like I said, the puppets are great - especially Trekkie Monster, a Mae West-like Lucy the Slut and the "bad idea" bears, who I think are the Care Bears' evil twins. The cast does a great job of focusing your attention on the puppets, not on them.

I loved the dilapidated New York City brownstone designed by Anna Louizos and Howell Binkley's lighting that captured the passage of time from day to evening to dawn so well. (They also did a similar set and lighting for another New York City musical, In the Heights.)

So, while there was a lot to like and I really was entertained, I felt that Avenue Q did go overboard at times. For example, Christmas Eve and her stereotypical Asian accent wore thin. (Sometimes I had trouble understanding her, too.) The song "Everyone's A Little Bit Racist" didn't do a lot for me.

Plus, I saw the show at a theatre that seats about 3,000 people. That's much bigger than the John Golden Theatre, where it played on Broadway for six years before closing last month. It's enormous compared with the musical's new off-Broadway home, New World Stages. I think Avenue Q may lose something in a larger space. (For one thing, in a smaller space you could see the puppets' faces a lot better.)

And speaking of overboard let me tell you, a little hot and heavy puppet sex goes a long way.