Guess who can be "as exciting as a flounder?"

Actor Richard Burton   was  a life-long   diarist   though    he  probably  never set  out to have his  diaries published as they  have been as ‘The Richard Burton Diaries,’ Edited by Chris Williams.


While Burton loved being famous but loathed acting  he  was a passionate reader  and  himself  an entertaining  writer.   Far from being just  gossipy  references to  famous people  his   diary entries  about them    bubdled   with apt descripons.   Not surpisingly, that includes  similes--  for example:

 Mia Farrow   is said to have“eyes as round as her fist” and   “a laugh as false as a dentist’s assurance.”    Maureen Stapleton  according  to  Burton " photographed  like a sack of potato.”

Burton's  metaphoric  description of  himself    includes this  tidbit:  “My eyes are slits that only a locksmith could open”    Famous  actors generally  he  saw as :   “gods in their own mirrors. Distorted mirrors”   

Even Elizabeth  who he loved passionately  didn't keep him during rehearsals of their unsuccessful  rehearsal for a Broadway revival of Private  Lives  as  "Exciting as a flounder."

l. . .likely as Pluto crash-landing into the parking ot

Even more than usual   theater in New York has been all about  revivals of plays  from another era,  made "new"  again courtesy of star casting.   To see a play  that explores  contemporary  issues,  like the  economic crisis that has  made the American Dream an American nightmare for many,  Off-Broadway is the place to go.
One of  the smartest  such exploration  is  Bethany by Laura Marks starring   America Ferrera  (best known as the decidedly NOT ugly Ugly Betty).   Ferrera   is Crystal  a  cars saleswoman who' has lost her home-- and with it, custody of her little daughter (the unseen title character).  On top  of that the dealership where she works is about to close with  potential  customers walking  in ever less likely  -- or as   her  boss puts it with a nifty simile:

If we get any walk-ins, which at this point is about as
likely as Pluto crash-landing into the parking lot, 

Here's the link to my review of the play:

www.curtainup.com/bethany.html

Downton Abbey: Revered -- and Regurgitated

  

 I'm  writing  this  as Downton Abbey launches its  third  season.  Its fans, yours truly included,  will  eat it up. 

But the   phenomenally  successful upstairs-downstairs  TV  soap  opera   also has its  detractors,   most amusingly  so   James Parker  in  the  February  issue of   The Atlantic Monthly.  His article  Brideshead  Regurgitated    sees  the  show  as   a  sad  fall  from   the  more literary  Brideshead  Revisited. of  many seasons past.

Parker  won't prevent me  or   the  legion of  fans  from watching  Season  3.   Besides   quite  a few chuckles he  also   dished up   two  delicious similes,  one about the  dialogue and  the other about the "emonic lady's maid  O'Brien's  hairdo. 

Though Parker admits that the   dialogue   "spins light-operatically along in the service of multiplying plotlets  an  is  not too hard on the ear"   he  does warn that. . .

  Now and again a line lands like a tray of dropped spoons.

 As  for  O’Brien's  hair. . .

 Her hairstyle consisting of two ringlets perched on her forehead like horns

to huff and puff. like. . .

After  seeing  Shuler Hensley  portray a 600-pound  man in  Samuel D.  Hunter's play The Whale earlier this season,  the  central character of Jami  Attenberg's     new novel, The Middlesteins.   is a  lightweight  at 300  pounds.  But  Attenberg's  portrait  is   bigger and  more  comprehensive.   As  New York Times book  reviewer,  Julie Oringer  describes  it  with  an  apt  simile,  we  see Edie  Middlestein develop  from chunky baby  into    a woman  who   "huffs and puffs up the stairs like someone’s gassy old uncle after a meal.” 

Snuffing out similes like a pig after truffles. . .

I recently  came across the  reissue  by  the  New Rview of Books  of  Elaine Dundy's   1958 novel  The Dud Avocado. No  dud    but  a  trenchant   tale  smart and  pretty young American's  adventures in 1950s  Paris.  

Those    adventure include her stint   in  a Paris equivalent of an off-off-Broadway play,  also as  a film extra.  That, of course makes   this   an   especially  fun  book  for  theater enthusiasts  like me  and  Curtainup's  readers.  Typical  of  the  many  trenchant  one liners,  is the narrator's  observation  during her acting stint:

The  most important things to find while working in theater was someone to giggle with. To find someone to giggle with I place just below finding someone to flirt with and just above the ability to knit.

Ever  on the lookout for similes,  here too are  some  little  gems   worth noting here:

Thoughts rising in my head like little puffs of smoke

He was especially good at snuffing out the Big Bores, whom he tracked down like a pig after truffles.

.We walked into the drawing room, where everyone was sitting around like a bunch of stuffed owls.

Exchanged glances were ricocheting around the room like bullets.

Similes by playwright Clifford Odets

The  most satisfying play currently on Broadway  is   the 75-years old  Golden Boy by    Clifford Odets  who according to a New Yorker profile   was once  known as  "America's No. 1 Revolutionary Boy."   Odets wrote   Golden Boy    specifically to  make a lot of money  fast,  which   gives him more than a little  in commen with his   play's  hero  who  gave up violin  playing  for  a boxing career.

While  Odets  enjoyed the momentum  of fame and fortune,   when he found it taking of  his life he described  himself  as  "restelss  as a bullfrog on a lily pad."


The play itself  includes a  pungent   simile   made by  one of the characters    about  Joe Bonaparte's  relationship with his  father:     "His father  sits on the kids' head like a bird's nest.."

For more about the play, seewww.curtainup.com/goldenboy12.html

Crowded- together. . .like cigarettes in a pack

Nathan Englander  who  has  emerged as one  of  our  short story writers  has made an auspicious debut as a playwright with an  adaptation of  his first story  "TheTwenty-Seenth Man,"  based on  a  real  event:     One of  Stalin's  last  horrendous purges  of  people  he perceived as a threat  -- in this case the country's top Yiddish poets. 



The play premiering at the Public Theater  focuses on four  of these poets  thrown into a  cell  and facing execution and the  cruelty  of  anti-Semitic Guards who  find themselves   irrit
Nathan Englander  who  has  emerged as one  of  our  short story writers  has made an auspicious debut as a playwright with an  adaptation of  his first story  "TheTwenty-Seenth Man,"  based on  one of  Stalin's  last  horrendous purges  of  people  he perceied as a threat --  in this case the country's top Yiddish poets.

The play premiering at the Public Theater  focuses on four  of these poets   tossed into one   cell  and facing execution and the  cruelty  of  anti-Semitic guards who    are  annoyed  and  confused  at
ated by having to  deal with-- and here comes the simile--   "a mess of nattering Jews  crammed together like  cigarettes in a pack."

 Here, in case you want to read my review,  is a link: www.curtainup.com/27thman.html