Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was better than we had expected. GH picked the show for his nephew who was visiting New York this week. He had just graduated from college and is applying to do his PhD in Economics. Business and Economics are a world apart, of course, but the story about a young man on the make, we thought, would interest someone about to choose the course of his career. The most wonderful aspect of this revival was the set. The gigantic silver frames slid together from the wings to form windows, out through which the cityscape of New York beckoned. The windows were also covered by panes of different colors at different times, forming a changing backdrop to match the mood of the scenes. The song-and-dance also took place on the different levels of similar-looking but much bigger frames. Designed by Derek McLane, the set was simple but ingenious. The lighting design was by Howell Binkley. Nick Jonas was a very creditable J. Pierrepont Fi...

Last night TCH and I watched this harrowing play, directed by Kate Whoriskey, put up by Manhattan Theatre Club, at New York City Center Stage 1. Based on interviews with the women victims of Congo's civil war, the play trains the spotlight on Mama Nadi (played by Portia) who runs a bar-and-brothel in a small mining town. The girls recruited to please the soldiers and miners are already victims of rape, and "ruin." The play does not make clear the difference between rape and ruin, but suggests that ruin involves some kind of genital mutilation beyond that of gang rape. Scarred and traumatized themselves, the girls invite the soldiers to "forget their regrets," as one song puts it (all lyrics also written by Nottage), in the bar. A shelter of sorts, the bar is soon invaded by the surrounding war. What makes the bar so richly symbolic is that it is not only a shelter from violence, it is also a sanctuary from love, and its painful rejections. If violence cracks the...