Opposite, Both True.

I have to say I was shocked to read the New York Times's huffy review of the new Sam Gold revival of The Glass Menagerie this morning because my experience of it was so deep and powerful -- and so intimate -- that I couldn't get my head around the notion that anyone in that room could have had such a different experience. It was hard for me to imagine anyone thinking that Gold altered or tinkered with or did violence to Tennessee Williams's play. To me, this production revealed the play.

But that's just how it works, I guess. Other critics described something more in line with what I saw.

Though, as an artist, I know how personally wounding a negative review can be, when it comes to other people's work, a polarized response makes me much more interested to see something than universal praise. (I didn't really have much interest in seeing Hamilton until the backlash started which made me think there was something interesting there after all. Yes, I'm still entering that damn lottery every. single. day.)

I keep reminding myself of this as the reviews of the London production of LIZZIE roll in. Depending on whom you believe, it is either "loud, messy, and incoherent" or it is "the greatest American musical since Sweeney Todd." The critics are just about evenly split between hating it and loving it, with not much in between. It is a roller-coaster. But if this weren't my work and I were just somebody reading reviews, this would be the show I would be dying to see.

All of which is to say that the (to my mind, clueless) Times review of The Glass Menagerie pissed me off, but on the other hand left me reassured that I'm in good company.

I Fell In Love Last Night.

For Christmas I got C tickets to the new revival of Sunday in the Park with George. The not-really-a-gift-because-it's-for-me-too-ness of it was somewhat mitigated by the fact that I've never really liked this show. It is musical theater apostacy, but I was never -- except for the Gypsy and West Side Story lyrics and maybe a dozen songs that I think are absolutely sublime and most of them are from Company -- never really much of a Sondheim lover. All those jagged melodies, and the always sort of cool, highbrow take on the subject at hand, and here's another word that rhymes with that, and here's another, and another. And another. Sunday in the Park with George always felt like the embodiment of everything I didn't respond to in Sondheim's work.

I am happy to report that it was I who was full of shit. In the middle of the first act, just when I'm thinking "what is this show about? is anything going to actually happen?," the lights focus in on George sitting downstage left, the orchestra gets quiet,  it's the end of the song, and he sings

Look I made a hat
Where there never was a hat 

I couldn't breathe for a second. From that moment till the end I was either weeping or on the verge of it. This show that I always said I didn't know what it was about was suddenly about everything I've ever cared about in my life. I knew it was about art, but I never felt how it was about art till last night.

(One big revelation for me was learning that Putting it Together is a song about fundraising. I guess I'd never listened closely to the lyrics, but I always thought it was a song about the artistic process. I know, duh, I'm probably the last person on earth that didn't know that. It didn't resonate when I first encountered the song -- I wasn't so battered and bruised by decades of negotiating the relationship between art and money.)

Maybe it's just because I'd never seen a production of the show, or maybe because this cast make what I think is overcomplicated music emotionally straightforward. Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford both give really clear, simple performances that were at times heartbreaking. The simplicity of the staging also threw the emotional arc into relief.

I love having something new to be a fan of. What's next? God forbid, Into the Woods?