Last night, after barely escaping from a play with my intellectual life, I was filled with a longing usually reserved for Italian bakeries, Johnny Depp and napping, in exactly that order. Why, I thought, am I not the most influential critic of an influential newspaper? This was not my ego run amok, which has certainly happened before, though not usually without a makeup artist present and very soft track lighting. No, this was actually a rare sighting of an altruistic impulse. How might I save another woman from leaving her apartment in arctic winds and ruining with her wool beret the one time her hair come out exactly the way her hairstylist swore under oath that it would? How could I save her using the over-priced eye pencil, her internal ten-minute debate over footwear, the depleted metro card? How ever could I stop yet another New York City Saturday night entertainment ambush?
Now, the morning after, I want to track down the rave review I read and force said reviewer--at pen point, if necessary--to read the complete works of Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker and Fran Lebowitz before ever writing the word "wit" again without a permit. "Angry Young Women in Low Rise Jeans with High Class Issues" is the worst writing I've heard read out loud since freshman poetry. I would have gone back further in my educational career, but the writing was better.
How, in a post-Lindsay-Lohan world, any sentence including the word "pubes" can shock people enough that they guffaw like middle-school boys remains an unsolved mystery in the cold light of day. Clearly, I was an outlier in the audience, being that I can actually listen and think simultaneously. I would have found the play depressing if it weren't for the fact that I have never met women like those depicted, nor have had any occasion to let a man talk me into taking off my top because of a contract, marital or otherwise.
It was with no surprise that I discovered this puddle-deep exploration of women's sexual psyches was written by a man. That explained the Animal House nudity, if not how he got obviously talented female actors to mouth his drivel. I can only guess that Italian bakeries were involved.
