On a recent Saturday night, I went to review Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play, “Dutchman” (staged by Magenta Giraffe), for Between the Lines at Detroit’s Furniture Factory. I was one of about nine people in the audience.

That’s a pretty darn empty theater for a Saturday night, and it got me to thinking about how “Dutchman,” like Matrix’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days” before it, has a daunting task in terms of drawing theatergoers in. When you’re offering tough, complex, classic works that find their way onto more college course syllabi than actual stages, people often stay away in droves.

I get the resistance. Seeing a fun, happy-ending, feel-good show like the touring production of “Legally Blonde, The Musical” will always sound more inviting, just because, especially this past year, regular life feels hard enough. Why not seek out something that will take us somewhere happier for a night? (“Dutchman” focuses on a white woman and a black man on a train who flirt, abuse, and argue until one commits an act of violence.)

But I was reminded by “Dutchman” how much there is to be gained by seeing theater that you know will be intellectually rigorous and challenging. A key part of this involved the talkback that MG offers after every performance of “Dutchman.” This changed my entire experience at the theater that night, partly because I now often have to go alone to shows (since Joe has to stay home with our girl). “Dutchman” is a play that absolutely begs to be unpacked and discussed, and without having that option, I would have felt far less satisfied.

Regarding that discussion, though, a few interesting things happened. First, I was only one of two or three people in the audience who were white, suggesting that in addition to the nature of the play proving to be a difficult sell, white theatergoers may also tend to stay away because they consider “Dutchman” to be a “black show.”

And I’ll admit, there’s definite discomfort in seeing the closest version of your own identity represented on stage by a cackling, abusive, ugly, violent character. That’s part of the point, of course; but getting people to invite that discomfort into their evenings, their lives, is a tall order.

And while I wanted to participate in the post-show discussion, I found myself holding back. Some of the talk addressed how the train passengers watched as violence unfolded in “Dutchman,” and an actor mentioned that he knew a woman who voiced her disapproval when a headphone-wearing man on a bus was singing misogynist lyrics, and the man yelled at her and no one else on the bus stepped in. Everyone in the cast and the audience clucked in judgment at this, and said how awful it was, but I was thinking, “I may not like the lyrics, either, but the man’s got a right to sing along with them if he wants, number one. And number two, I wouldn’t have intervened, either. He wasn’t physically threatening this woman, presumably, but rather was angry that someone was telling him to shut up, and that’s an issue that’s strictly between these two people.”

And no one at the talkback addressed the main reason that people don’t intervene in these situations, which is a sense of self-preservation. Whether you’re brown, black, or white, and whether you have a lot or a little, people naturally want to hold on to what they have – and I don’t even mean that strictly in the monetary sense. People think of their families, and how they just want to get through the day and get home to them. And I understand that. Obviously, there’s a line past which one is morally obligated to get involved and try and help, and God knows that line gets blurry sometimes. But speaking as someone who avoids confrontation like the plague, I get the general resistance to getting involved.

(As a side note, a disturbing bit of misinformation was passed along in the MG talkback. The “birthers” came up in the conversation – those who pressed for Obama to produce a birth certificate – and an actor said the push behind this movement was that these people couldn’t believe an articulate, smart black man was American. But the truth is far more insidious, of course, as the movement strove to de-legitimize Obama’s election and presidency by “proving” that he didn’t fulfill a basic requirement for the office – that is, being born in America. I tried to jump in and correct this misunderstanding, but unfortunately, the opportunity passed too quickly.)

I’m aware of the irony inherent in talking about non-involvement while not being able to insert myself into a casual post-show conversation. But therein lies a genuine problem. I did feel a bit hesitant about adding my two cents, cowed by the nature of the show that preceded the talk. Giving voice to the unheard is clearly a key part of shows like “Dutchman,” so the last thing, I thought, this crowd wants to hear is MORE from a white person.

And feeling like I’d been silenced wasn’t fun. So maybe part of the experience of “Dutchman,” for me, was having the sensation that so many felt for so long.

Writing reviews is often difficult. You’re rooting for a company or show or playwright and take no joy in writing a less-than-positive review. Or you really, really like – from a professional distance, of course – the people putting it on. But what on earth do you do when a beloved, influential person who’s essentially the charismatic heart of local theater passes away days before his last show opens?

You write a piece about his loss and his esteemed place in the (theater and at-large) community; you attend his memorial service, where more than a thousand heartbroken people (I’m not exaggerating) show up and demonstrate exactly how much of a difference one person can make in the lives of others; and you see the show he was directing during what was, unbeknownst to him, his final days.

The man was Ann Arbor’s Jim Posante, and the show was “Souvenir” at Performance Network, in the early days of 2008. Just days before he suffered a life-ending stroke, I interviewed him for the show’s preview. He loved the play, and he loved Florence Foster Jenkins, the profoundly awful (but presumably unaware) “singer” at the center of it; but he also spoke to me with affection and regard, though we’d only spoken a handful of times under similar circumstances. He asked me about my pregnancy (I was about five months along), how I was feeling, and how work was going. “What a lovely guy,” I thought when I left the Network.

And judging by the words spoken about him at his memorial, I didn’t even know the half of it.

So I attended the emotional opening night of “Souvenir,” knowing that the two person cast, Naz Edwards and Fred Love, as well as everyone working behind the scenes, had a nearly-impossible task in the week leading up to the show: to leave behind this sudden, tragic loss, though it had just happened, and move forward.

But when the realization that I didn’t care for the show slowly crept over me while watching on opening night, I found myself facing a lose-lose situation: I could either sugar-coat my review out of respect for a wonderful man and his lifetime of work, and then feel lousy about being gutless and dishonest; or I would be respectfully candid about my feelings and face some serious backlash from people already, and justifiably, feeling hurt and angry and shocked by Jim’s death.

Of course, I chose the latter. I knew I couldn’t, in good conscience, do the former; and though I only knew Jim a little, I knew he would say that this wasn’t a choice at all – you have to write what you have to write. Like many things, though, this is a principle that’s easy to argue for, but tough to practice and live with.

And indeed, although I spent HOURS carefully couching my review in terms of personal taste – confessing that anything (like “American Idol”) that invites us to chuckle at the obliviousness of fearless-but-incompetent performers makes me uncomfortable, even if we admire them on some level – I got precisely the response I knew was coming. Personal insults and attacks, in e-mails and letters to the editor, followed, as if my review had essentially painted a big, red target on my chest. Take your grief out on me, it said. I’m the villain.

It was a terrible time – a time when I hoped to just hold on and ride out the aftermath. Why couldn’t I have lied? I asked myself repeatedly. Things would have been so much easier, so much simpler. Would it have killed me to write a positive review of a show I didn’t personally care for?

Of course not. No one dies from such an act.

But it would have killed my self-respect – and while that’s hardly the same thing, that was one of the few things I had to hang on to throughout those painful weeks. So I have no regrets, other than wishing I’d gotten to know Jim better. And I can’t help but feel, in some weird way, that he would have wholly supported my choice.

OK, what wasn’t surprising when I went to “Phantom of the Opera” at the Detroit Opera House was the obnoxious, thirtysomething couple behind me who would once again NOT shut up. Did you morons really dole out a couple hundred bucks to chat while sitting in an ornate theater with a dressed-up crowd? (And though I thought, with relief, that they’d left at intermission, they loudly stumbled back to their seats after the show started again, as I heard ice cubes clinking in their glasses; and after talking through the second act, the woman could barely stand for the inevitable ovation. It wasn’t until then that I realized, “Ohhhhhhh – they’re wasted.” Again, couldn’t this goal be achieved at home with a six pack?)

Anyway, I’ll confess that I hadn’t been looking forward to “Phantom.” I’d already seen it four times or something – with friends who were big fans of the show in college – and as far as I’m concerned, I can live the rest of my life without seeing the show again, or even hearing its soundtrack. So why did I take the assignment from Between the Lines? Because Joe had never seen it and had always been curious about the show. But then, in a smackdown from Fate, we couldn’t line up a babysitter, and he stayed at home while I headed downtown alone to a show I didn’t really want to watch. Rah.

I was pleasantly surprised, though. I gave myself over to the show, in all its glorious cheesiness, and I had a pretty good time – when I could ignore the couple behind me, that is. (You know who they made me think of? The characters featured in the “Two A-holes” series of SNL sketches that star Kristin Wiig and Jason Galifianakis. That was TOTALLY them.)

After having some time to think about it, I believe part of my enjoyment of this familiar show was that it supplied this temporary reprieve from the economic crisis that’s hit all of us, but that’s particularly hit the arts community. “Phantom” is a holdover from a more bombastic, showy, over-the-top time, so its production values are through the roof. The press materials came with an itemized list of how many people were involved in various elements, and how much things cost. It was staggering to see in bald numbers, and even more difficult to comprehend. For so long, theaters everywhere have been hurting, and more recently, their patrons have, too. So there was something liberating about seeing a no-holds-barred, money-is-no-object production. It temporarily took me back to a time when day-to-day life wasn’t so fraught with bad news and bleak financial indicators.

So perhaps, “Phantom of the Opera” became for me “Phantom of the Pre-recession.” And you can understand the appeal. But then the lights came on – and I bemoaned the fact what I would be paid to write the review will barely cover what I had to pay for parking on a Friday night in downtown Detroit. That’s what we all face now. But “Phantom” provided a surprising, seductive break for a few hours, and for that, I’m grateful.

A fitting title for a blog, perhaps, but this is actually a reference to an experience I had last night in the Mendelssohn Theater while watching “The Producers.” Not that I spoke aloud to myself, but the person seated next to me did freely during much of the evening.

I confess that this is a new phenomenon for me and a somewhat baffling one. Like everyone, I’ve sat next to chatty folks who exchange comments with each other throughout a show – much to my annoyance – but never before had I experienced the equivalent of sitting next to someone with a Bluetooth.

Clearly, this person was an insider who knew many, if not all, of the performers on stage. Most of the comments were things like, “He’s so good!” and “Oh, my God, Dave!” and “So funny!” I get the whole “enthusiasm for friends’ work” thing. I really do. I cheer my friends on when they’re pursuing their projects, too. But when I do so, I’m not doing so aloud, at a show where people are trying to focus on a story that’s being told.

I’ve often said that people who talk at movies are acting like they’re at home, chatting while a DVD plays on the TV in their living room. But is talking to no one but yourself an even further extension of that? Yes, I’ve occasionally uttered something beneath my breath during a show, but that’s a rare exception, and will happen, at most, once. These comments were coming after nearly every number.

Maybe this person knew I was there for a review and thought I needed a little nudge. Or maybe the person just has no internal filter that discerns what’s worth giving voice to and what’s fine being left in the confines of your head. I don’t know. It’s strange, of course, because going to sporting events, like Michigan football games, encourages just this type of interactivity; but the nature of that spectator activity is worlds apart from theatergoing.

So I’ll confess that sometimes I wish theaters offered isolation booths so that the ultra-noise-sensitive among us could watch shows in peace. Would this move us away from the subtle sense of community established in a live theater audience? Perhaps. But out of respect for all the work that went into what’s happening on stage, I sure would like to be able to concentrate on it without distraction.

Many of you know that I lost my mother, quite suddenly, at the beginning of this year.

Yes, she’d been fighting cancer on-and-off for 14 years, so it wasn’t as though I’d never faced down the possibility. But it was sudden in the sense that, though my mother was in treatment during her last year, she mainly seemed tired during the just-concluded holidays (and, astonishingly, she somehow still managed to make and serve Christmas dinner for 12 of us). When the cancer spread to her liver, though, she declined so quickly that my sister and my husband and my then-eight-month-old daughter and I were in the air, flying to NC, when she died.

I don’t have regrets. Joe and I had just spent both Thanksgiving and Christmas with my parents, so I got to watch my mother play with and adore Lily, whom she’d already come to love ferociously. (At her NC service, my mother’s quilting friends told me that the previous May, my mother arrived to a meeting and said, “Guess why I’m wearing pink? Because I have a new granddaughter, and her name is Lily!”) Plus, I know that if she’d had a choice, she would have wanted to go quickly, as she did; and because she was incoherent in her final hours, I don’t think I would have gotten any more closure, even if we’d made it to her bedside before she left us. So although the experience was obviously, inevitably difficult, I took comfort in these truths – as well as the fact that because treatments are so much better than they used to be, we likely got to spend years more with her than we would have, had we lived in a different time.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t sure of how smooth my transition back to “regular life” would be. A tough second act concerned the announcement of the closing of The Ann Arbor News. (Mary Morgan, an ex-Newsie who founded the online Ann Arbor Chronicle with her husband, Dave Askins, wrote a marvelous, eloquent piece about losing her own mother at the time the News announced its demise. I’m not going to attempt to match the insights of that essay, but will instead recommend that you all read it for yourselves.) So from my perspective, things looked pretty bleak for a while. I’d never lost someone that close to me before, and I’d absolutely adored my job. I was scared of, and curious about, how I would respond. I had no clue.

The same was true when Lily’s due date came. I’d never so much as suffered a broken bone in my life, so I wondered at how I’d react to intense pain. I’m generally reserved, and I questioned just how and when I would reach my threshold, and what on earth would happen when I did – one of many situations wherein you can’t even guess how you’ll respond until you’re actually in the thick of it.

So my life immediately after my mother’s death involved the same feeling of tentativeness and caution. A few days after Mom’s funeral, I went to the Purple Rose to do interviews for “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and actress Michelle Mountain quite innocently asked, “How’s your family?” I broke down crying.

Everyone was kind and understanding, though I was embarrassed, and this thoughtfulness extended through to the Rose’s opening of “Wake.” Both managing director Alan Ribant and artistic director Guy Sanville, sensitive to my circumstances, made a point to warn me that the show depicted the death of a parent. I then wondered, “Am I destined to (uncharacteristically) fall apart at dramas like this for a while? How much will I be able to stand?”

But when the lights went down, and I saw “Wake”’s story unfold, I had no such visceral reaction. The acting was fine – it wasn’t that; but the mother-daughter relationship on stage bore no resemblance to my lived version. These were different people, after all.

And generally, this has held true this past year. What I’ve learned about myself is that mourning hasn’t significantly altered my responses to particular stories, or made such scenes more immediate or personal. Why? Who knows? Yet strangely, when my doctor, who lost her own mother in January, too, looked me in the eye and bluntly  said, “It sucks, doesn’t it? It just sucks,” I had to fight back tears. I just found this candor and empathy so comforting.

The one show that emotionally shook me up was Redbud’s production of “Wit” last fall, several weeks before my mother’s sudden death. I got a good deal of my uber-rational stoicism from my mother, so Loretta Grimes’ take on Vivian Bearing – as a person more baffled by the choices of those around her than strictly condescending to them – reminded me of Mom in some ways.

And because my mother was struggling unhappily through her cancer treatment at the time, watching Grimes portray Vivian’s suffering was wrenching. My mother was then facing down her disease, yet again, while several states away, and this time, I was only hearing by phone about the pain in her hands and joints,  the ragged mess that was her fingernails and toenails, the fatigue, the dogged-but-flagging determination to beat the cancer back again. Watching Grimes play out the course of the disease in front of my eyes just brought me to my knees. I’d seen “Wit” a few times before, but seeing it at just this juncture of my life made me appreciate my mother and her epic struggle all the more.

But lest you think a genuine emotional response affects a critic, know that while watching one of the play’s most brutal scenes, I was also thinking, “The physical staging of this looks weird.”

My mother teased me a couple of times by saying that it was no surprise to her that I became a critic. She said this primarily because my father is a man who, when confronted by his daughter’s score of 98% on a test, asked, “What one did you get wrong?” So I learned to expect a lot from others, because I always expected a lot from myself.

But Mom, of course, was just as much a member of that club as any of us.

Between the Lines’ Wilde Awards – the only regional theater awards program left in southeast Michigan – happened Wednesday night at Detroit’s Gem Theatre, and I had a front row seat.

OK, not so much. More like a seat against the back wall at a small table by myself (since Joe stayed home with Lily). And I gave up after waiting several minutes, and getting absolutely no closer to the bar, on getting an overpriced, pre-show cocktail. But nonetheless, I was there as some terrific professional work from the past year got much-deserved recognition (and I eventually snuck out for a mid-show cosmo). Congrats and thanks to all who work so hard to bring high quality theater to our area.

Near the end of the ceremony, host Don Calamia announced that I – along with former Oakland Press critic Judith Cookis Rubens, now in the Grand Rapids area – would be joining the review team at BTL. This may have confused some folks, so I thought I’d clear up what’s happening.

As a staff writer at AnnArbor.com, I will continue to preview and review all the shows I would normally cover in the Washtenaw area. But now, thanks to the increased openness and flexibility of online journalism, I can also take additional work from publications like BTL. (My hope is that some cross-pollination will occur, bringing readers from AnnArbor.com to EncoreMichigan and vice versa.)

I’m stoked about this, since I will soon get to experience live theater in venues that will, in many cases, be brand new to me; places I’ve been dying to go but previously couldn’t. So Williamston, Tipping Point, Ringwald, Who Wants Cake?, BoarsHead, Planet Ant, Meadowbrook, Detroit Rep, Go Comedy, etc. – I’m coming for you soon. And I can’t wait!

In other news, AnnArbor.com is now encouraging local theater companies to consider filming part of a rehearsal for promotional purposes. The Acorn would post it with the preview when it runs, and obviously, the theater company could also post the clip on its own site as a new way of selling an upcoming show. I think it sounds like a fabulous idea…

A thought I had this past week, meanwhile, concerns high school coverage. Despite the high quality of high school productions in the area, I’ve always been hands-off about reviews. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you think about it, these are often young people who are trying theater for the first time. They should have the freedom to just enjoy the experience without the added pressure of an “adult” coming in and critiquing them. Yes, I would try to be fair, but I would also have to be honest – and I didn’t want the parent phone calls that would inevitably follow.

So I recently thought that peer reviews for high school productions would be a great thing for the Acorn. I hope to find a student or two at each high school who’s interested in arts criticism, and I’ll mentor them as they write reviews of shows. A student wouldn’t review a performance at his/her own school, but rather another at another school, so that they’re more comfortable being objective. This would give the student writers some experience and clips, and provide solid coverage of high school theater groups in the area. Win-win, right?

So that’s what’s brewing on this end, folks. Sorry for being a lazy blogger of late, but there’ll be another entry soon. I hope.

Oh, Billy Joel. You seem like a messed-up cat in some ways, but you got that much right.

I recently read a FB comment, by someone I don’t know, that posited a tired-but-widely-held belief: that critics go into shows looking for things to criticize and put down. OK. So not true. Just like everyone else, we’re sitting in our seats when the lights go down, silently voicing that prayer that the Narrator voices at the start of “The Drowsy Chaperone”: “Dear God, please let it be a good show.”

I think all critics walk into the theater hoping every time to be moved, amused, challenged, or transported. How could we not want this? Almost no one spends as much time seeing different shows than critics do, so doesn’t it make sense that we’re always hoping for the best? Yes, as humans, we always have expectations going in, informed by a company’s previous work as well as our familiarity with the play/musical being staged. But that’s not to say that these expectations, great or not, can’t be foiled. They are – on a pretty regular basis.

Just last year, Eastern Michigan University surprised me with a few shows that I didn’t expect to embrace as much as I did: though not a Brecht girl (like a Breck girl, without the great hair), I was pretty riveted by “Brecht on Brecht”; and although I’ve seen “Romeo and Juliet” several times before, I’d never seen it done in the way director David Blixt staged it; and while “The Exonerated” sounded on paper like it might be a too-earnest, slanted rant about capital punishment, it was a thought-provoking, fascinating night of theater.

But I reminisce about all this while having just filed a mixed review of “Oklahoma” at the Encore Theatre. Yet the circumstances were the same. I went in rooting for the Encore, wanting to love the show. But when that didn’t happen, I had the unpleasant task of reporting the news by way of a review.

Because believe it or not, critics don’t relish writing middling-to-negative reviews. Positive ones are much simpler, faster, and often more fun to write; plus, the process then isn’t weighed down by the dread of the inevitable, often-personal feedback that you’ll get from those who disagree with you.

So take it from me: critics never go to a show with their eye trained only on the negative. On the contrary, we’re rooting hard for local theater companies, and shows, every time we go to an opening night, and we’re also always looking for the good stuff in productions. The reason we end up doing this work is because we love theater far more passionately than someone with merely a passing interest.

Friends sometimes ask me, “Don’t you get sick of going to shows all the time?” My answer is always, “I can’t imagine ever reaching that point.” And it’s true.

While watching “Oklahoma” at Dexter’s Encore Theatre (you can read my review here), I took great interest in a couple who had brought their three kids along to see the show.

In the past, of course, I wouldn’t have been remotely interested. But since Joe and I had Lily last year, I’ve been wondering about how and when to introduce her to theater as she gets older.

Every theater lover, I think, has gauzy, romanticized notions of taking her child to musicals and plays and then, of course, talking about them over a dinner (one in which the child doesn’t fling food at you or other diners, or have a complete meltdown while a french fry hangs sadly from her lip like a limp cigarette). Obviously, the reality of parenting is much messier and more complicated than our daydreams, so I’m chewing on the ways Lily’s introduction to theater might really go down.

The kids at “Oklahoma” were pretty darn well-behaved, but two and a half hours is a long time for anyone to sit, let alone little ones. The kids stood behind or hung on the father – the seats were at the end of a row, so no one’s view was disrupted – and the little boy occasionally hummed or chatted.

From a couple rows away, this didn’t distract me too much, despite how manic I can be about what I consider to be my “right” to lose myself completely in a show or film; as far as I’m concerned, I purchase that right when I pay for my ticket. And this is why cell phones ringing, and then BEING ANSWERED, in either context represents one of the rare times in my life when I contemplate committing violence upon someone.

Part of this obsessiveness on my part comes from my inability to multi-task. I was built to do one thing at a time, very carefully and meticulously, and that’s IT. Many will likely view this as a handicap – like only having vision in one eye, or not owning a Prius in Ann Arbor – but I accept this about myself. I was the grad student who, while in a quiet part of the library, shoved earplugs in my ears. I want and need to have my attention tightly reined in in order to get the most out of things.

Maybe it’s because e-mail and the Internet came along during my path to adulthood, and so I was just on the cusp of a generation that struggles to harness their attention, too. I don’t know. But my own highly-calibrated sensitivity makes me worry that I’d have so much anxiety about Lily disturbing others that I might hesitate about bringing her to shows.

Then again, Guy Sanville, the Purple Rose’s artistic director, often sits behind me at the theater with his young daughter, Rose, who watches the plays with rapt attention. Now, Guy’s quick to point out that she’s amazing and unusual, of course, but this does remind me that every kid is different, and it all depends on the individual kid. Even within the same family, some kids may be fine and focused while watching live theater, while others would be a nightmare.

So I guess that’s my answer. I’ll just have to see what kind of kid Lily is, what her interests turn out to be, and how her personality forms. I’ll test her out with movies first, and when she can sit for those, we’ll give theater a try, if all other indicators are “go.”

My guess is that between her litigator father and writer mother, she’ll have a pretty good shot at being a kid who can focus for a good amount of time. But as with all things related to parenting, it’s a crap shoot.

Let’s just hope she doesn’t fall in love with “Cats.”

We can all agree on this, right?

Tonight I’m heading to Dexter’s Encore Theatre to see “Oklahoma,” and thank goodness. Yes, regularly spending Thursday and Friday evenings at home with my lovely husband and little girl in the late summer has its joys, but I’ve started seriously missing my reviewing “duties,” so I’m looking forward to this, my first review assignment for the Acorn (AnnArbor.com).

I’m also scheduled to interview Jake Wilson, the U-M musical theater grad behind the online series “The Battery’s Down,” this afternoon, which should be fun. So much to ask, so little time…

Yes, after four days of biking to vineyards for wine tastings (wine bottles fit perfectly in those “water bottle” holders that you attach to bikes, FYI), seeing professional productions of plays (part of the annual Shaw Festival), and being completely “offline,” we’re back – and I miss Niagara-on-the-Lake already.

Seriously. This Ontario town is one of those places where, as soon as we arrive, I feel myself relaxing. Joe’s parents made the five hour drive, too (they’d offered their “nannying” services to us), and we all stayed at the Butler Creek Bed and Breakfast, since they have a suite with three bedrooms, a living area, and two bathrooms. It was a perfect set-up for us, and if we manage to get back to NOTL again next year, we’ll make the same arrangements.

The shows we saw this year, though – Eugene O’Neill’s “The Moon for the Misbegotten” and Garson Kanin’s classic comedy “Born Yesterday” – varied in quality.

“Moon” featured a powerhouse performance by Jim Mezon as Phil, but when he wasn’t on stage (beautifully designed by Christina Poddubiuk) – which was sadly often, since the primary “action” takes place between his daughter Josie and his landlord Jim Tyrone – things got pretty dull. I also quibbled with casting petite, attractive Jenny Young as Josie, when O’Neill very clearly indicates that the actress playing the role should be physically large and, well, not beautiful. On the surface, this may sound pithy, but the truth is that the physicality of the character makes a huge difference in O’Neill’s complex, unhappy romance.

“Yesterday,” though, was a joy for almost every minute of its three hour running time, with Deborah Hay masterfully charming the audience as former showgirl Billie Dawn. The ensemble in general is top-notch, but Hay is the center of the show’s universe, and Kanin’s celebrated, comedy classic script couldn’t be in better hands.

Of course, if you asked Lily for her reviews of this vacation, she’d just give a thumbs-up on the town’s fountain in the park (she played in the water for about an hour and had to be dragged out), hits of ice cream, and the aviary near the Falls, where she got to pet a baby alligator and see turtles and scarlet ibises, among other things. Generally, another great NOTL trip.