Clothing and a Glass Jar
Last night Harriet Walter was splendid as she recited various passages from literature related to the trope of clothing. Woven together with explanatory stitches by Helaine Smith, the passages came from Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, Alexander Pope, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Richard Wilbur, and Elaine Sexton. The performance, called Clothed in Words, was held in conjunction with a current show of hats at the Bard Graduate Center. The audience, mostly white, mostly women, mostly older, laughed appreciatively and burst out in spontaneous applause when Walter read out Elizabeth Bennet's reception at Netherfield Park after trekking three miles in mud. I last saw Walter as Queen Elizabeth in Schiller's Mary Stuart , a Donmar Warehouse production that moved to Broadway. She was very fine there too. Two Thursday ago, March 8, LW and I watched Katori Hall's play Hurt Village at the new Pershing Square Signature Center. Set in a south Memphis housing project, during the "Seco...