Multiculturalism

Without revealing any more personally identifying information, BrooklynDodger went to a play in NY called Brooklyn Boy. BrooklynDodger feels just as much pressure to think of something insightful to say about a play when you have close people with ties to the theatre as insightful sport comments with close people in the sportswriting business, and as for fiction writing, don't ask [frage nicht].

Dodger's first observation is that Death of a Salesman has been reprised so often that the original seems a cliche. If you see DOS, you must remind yourself over again that this was the first Broadway play to describe middle class Brooklyn Jewish pathos at mid century. Arthur Miller invented the theme, or at least the theme in the Broadway venue. The author of Brooklyn Boy, Margulies, can't claim not to know, having wrote "Loman Family Picnic."

The Dodger felt cool to recognize the main character's name, Eric Weiss, before the play riffs on Harry Houdini [is this like the gun placed on the table in the first act?]. The Dodger also wonders whether every book tour attracts groupies as hot as seen here; maybe the Dodger should write his own book to find out. [probably only fiction writers get that kind of play.] Actually, the Dodger felt the scene in the hotel room ended in quite an unlikely fashion, since Eric was not apparently so clinically depressed as to end the encounter.

Finally, BrooklynDodger liked the dialogue at the end, where the father talks about the pressure of competition with his son, and disappearing into work to avoid it. Of course, that's after the father is dead and the son is making it up, and anyway the playwright is 50 and probably has his own kids he's thinking of.

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http://theater2.nytimes.com/mem/theater/treview.html?res=9F0CE3D9103BF937A35751C0A9639C8B63


THEATER REVIEW; Crossing the River To Find the Past By BEN BRANTLEY Published: February 4, 2005