New York 4

May 29, 2012

Met TB at Union Square. We had lunch, chatted about the philosophies, intricacies, eccentricities of the three theater companies he apprentices for. I think there must be a company championing every conceivable vision, rational, wilful, inspired, deadly, idiotic, misbegotten, glorious, humane, misanthropic. . . everything, and a little garage somewhere for them to perform in, and this is well. Some concepts are clearly so astray that you assume they’ll produce crap theater, but this is not necessarily the case. Some concepts are so shapely and beautiful that nothing gets produced at all. Makes me wonder what my concept is. I’ve always shied from “concept,” thinking of it as a box or a hobby horse, or in some cases an excuse, but I must have one, anyway, driving me from within, one more intelligible to someone outside. Sidney could probably tell me what my concept it. I won’t ask.

Saw Newsies, waiting in a line that went around three legs of a block. It is Disney’s version of Les Mis, with everything that the name “Disney” implies. Every gesture, every second was Disneyfied, so as to please most and please most broadly and to please, mostly, thirteen year old girls, and to please without challenging or causing thought. It was Velveeta: you know what they were getting at, but it was pure Product, processed out of every semblance of drama or uncertainty, resembling the real thing it imitates only vaguely. The boys could dance, though. An honest dance review or a vaudeville with that same talent would have been sensational. All the fault lay in the concept, none in the performers.

Watched fire trucks– seven of them, at the next corner west of 46th–blaze away in the street, and the long ladder hoisting firemen onto a roof. I think there was really no fire.