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Questioning a classic – The Catcher in the Rye

“I can’t explain what I mean. And even if I could, I’m not sure I’d feel like it.”

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These are the words of Holden Caulfield, perhaps one of the best known protagonists in American literature. They are also words that pretty well describe how I feel about this novel, which I read for the first time as a 41 year-old woman. My reactions to this book are a little bit confused and hard to explain; and, while the story grew on me in the second half, I never fell in love with The Catcher in the Rye.

So who am I to question the presupposed genius of this classic? Who am I to doubt its place in high school English classes across the country? Who am I to dare criticize an author as wrapped in mystique and reputation as J.D. Salinger?

I am a reader. I am humble enough to acknowledge that I probably don’t have much new information to add to a 60 year-old discourse, but I’m confident enough to declare that I don’t have to like a book just because it’s deemed a “classic.” So here I go.

Holden Caulfield is a deeply depressed, conceited young man on a 24-hour drinking, smoking and spending bender, unsupervised in New York City. His voice is “lousy” with criticisms of the “phonies” who surround him in boarding school and nightclubs, dismissive of anyone whose life doesn’t measure up to the unrealistic ideals he’s created and immature about relationships. These qualities may have been revolutionary in 1951 (and they may indeed still describe most 16 year-olds), but characters like Holden are now found everywhere, and in far more likable guises, in literature.

So, basically, I didn’t like him for most of the novel. I spend most of the book wondering why someone would want to write this particular character. That’s a problem.

But here’s where my confusion comes in. There were moments (too few and far between) that Salinger really touched my heart, when Holden seemed three-dimensional and painfully honest.

“That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never knew where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can.”

And then, the middle-of-the-night scene in his sister Phoebe’s room is really genius. I found this book so much more engaging when we got out of Holden’s mind and into some dialogue and interaction. With Phoebe, we see Holden’s sensitive side. I finally started to like him, but the book was 75% done. It just took too long to get there.

I find it very difficult to grasp that in a few years my son will likely have to read this novel as the definitive “coming-of-age” novel of modern literature. It doesn’t feel in any way modern. I don’t think my sons will identify with Holden’s life. So if they come back to me with, “this book is so boring,” at least I’ll be able to relate.

I’m glad I read it, because I do think this book has influenced so many writers. I am willing to concede that I may just not get the point. Are the very things that bothered me the reasons it has stood the test of time? Maybe, but, in the words of my husband, “meh.”

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by alenaslife on February 11, 2013  •  Permalink
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This is How You Lose Her – a new review

I have had difficulty approaching a review of this book. I’m not even sure how to classify it – short stories or a novel? The bottom line is that I liked listening to it. this is how you lose her(The audio is version is narrated by the author.) The language and immediacy of Yunior’s emotions really moved me. I felt I was reading a viewpoint of the world that I don’t get to hear often, so in that way it felt very fresh.

But, I don’t like Yunior. He’s a cheat – the lowest of the low. He’s also the center of all but one of these stories – intelligent, but dishonest; lonely, but cold; searching, but blind.

In fact, I wanted to despise him, but Diaz writes him well enough that I stopped short of hatred. In fact, I felt a little heartbroken for him even as I cringed at his language and behavior. Yunior says about himself:

““In another universe I probably came out OK, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead.”

and

“I’m so alone that every day is like eating my own heart.”

Compelling, right? Then, in the next moment, he’s describing Alma this way, “An ass that could pull the moon out of orbit.” I just never knew how to feel about him and the broken world he inhabits.

And, I have to admit, the foul language and vulgarity were hard to listen too. I think when I read the printed word I must skim profanity to some degree because I often found myself cringing at the crudeness of the men in these stories. Even when Diaz throws in Spanish words and phrases (which he does quite often without any translation other than context) I had the feeling he was swearing.

So I’d start to dislike the book a little bit and then Diaz would reel me back in with such beauty that I felt my breath catch. I especially liked the one story told from a woman’s perspective and the honest beauty of Miss Laura.

“There were a lot of middle-aged types living alone, shipwrecked by all kinds of catastrophes.”

Miss Laura is a sort of continuation of the earlier story of how Yunior deals (or doesn’t) with his brother Rafa’s death. It deals with Yunior’s inability to face the real world and his love affair with a much older neighbor woman. To me, this is the strongest story in the collection.

I haven’t read Diaz’s book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and, honestly, I’m not in a hurry to pick it up after finishing this book. But I do admire his in-your-face style and bits of beauty.

“The half-life of love is forever. Sometimes a start is all we get.”

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by alenaslife on February 7, 2013  •  Permalink
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January books — 2013 off to a strong start

Not only is my 2013 off to a very quick start (I’ll never be able to keep up the 10 book/month pace), it’s off to a good one. Of the 10 books I completed in January, most were well above average. A couple surprised me. A couple disappointed me. And all made me glad I love to read.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

4 stars

fun homeA very quick, if mildly disturbing, read. This is my first experience with a graphic-book and I found the illustrations sometimes really added to the limited text,but in some cases stole from the sharp, crisp writing. Bechdel does not shy away from the discomfort inherent in not only her own coming out story, but the complicated back-story of her father’s closeted homosexuality. The complex father-daughter relationship was fascinating to me and I would have liked that to be fleshed out even more (in terms of text). Overall, I was impressed by this memoir.

He used his skillful artifice not to make things, but to make things appear to be what they were not.”

The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis

4 stars

Previously reviewed

The air would smell like taffy and drying seaweed, and they would wear white, and there would be still more happiness. So much happiness. It was almost as exhausting as this relentless February.”

With or Without You by Domenica Ruta

3.5 stars

Previously reviewed

Is it possible to have nostalgia for a time in which you never lived? I’m sure there is a word for this phenomenon in German — beautiful, absurd, and twenty letters long.”

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

3 stars

the chaperoneI really liked so much of this book (including Elizabeth McGovern’s excellent narration), but it just went on so long. I felt like it had several false endings, places where I was finished but then it kept going. Maybe the problem is just that I didn’t expect an epic when I began. The story covers almost 50 years of Cora’s life in a great deal of detail. And while I find the 20th century interesting background, I was frustrated at Moriarty’s need to touch on so many different “issues” — Prohibition, adoption, gay rights, reproductive rights, suffrage. Add to that, Cora happens to witness or read about dozens of historical events. I began to feel manipulated after a while. What a I loved was the relationship between Cora and Louise Brooks. I would have been much more satisfied had she ended the book after their summer together.

The young can cut you with their unrounded edges…but they can also push you right up to the window of the future and push you through.”

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

3.5 stars

Deceptively simple story about a Bengali woman, Amina, who meets her American husband on-line, moves to Rochester and struggles to bring her parents to America. Immigrations, marriage, family, desire, truth are the themes all tangled under the surface story.  I liked Amina a lot and thought the author brought up many interesting questions, but the other characters didn’t seem as truthful to me. I couldn’t understand their motivations or transitions,which is what prevents a higher rating. I would read more of this writer.

You thought you were a permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together — until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did.”

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

4 stars

Reviewed previously

You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it’s whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God.”

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (audio)

4 stars

Another great installment of Harry Potter. I can see that the tone of these novels has really darkened considerably. There were moments when my youngest was truly afraid. It’s quite an accomplishment that, even knowing that Harry will survive, I feel the danger and fear he faces. The suspense and environment are so rich, that “spoilers” don’t even interfere with the drama. Can’t wait to start the next one.

If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”

The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison

2.5 stars

I really, really wanted to like this book but I couldn’t. In fact, I cared so little about it when it was over that I didn’t write any sort of review or notes and now I can only remember a disabled teenager, a grieving loser-ish thirty-something and a trip in a van where they pick up all sorts of oddballs. It sounds like a premise I’d love (kind of Little Miss Sunshine), but it never came together.

I know I’ve lost my mind. But I’m not concerned, because it’s the first thing I’ve lost in a long time that actually feels good.”

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories byLudmila Petrushevskaya, Anna Summers (translation)

Dozens of short stories, most about people whose lives are not going to work out no matter what they do or hope for. I’m sure they are a reflection of the author’s Soviet reality, but, not only were they depressing, I never found any one or any moment to hold on to. Reading this was like skipping stones over a very flat, dark, lake. Ultimately unfulfilling. I received a complimentary copy of this book from Penguin Books in exchange for my honest review.

A Red Herring Without Mustard (A Flavia de Luce Mystery #3) by Alan Bradley

4 stars

A Red Herring without MustardWhile other books were failing me, Flavia was there to bring a smile to my face. As usual, this precocious 11 year-old amateur chemist/detective found herself embroiled in murder and mayhem. While there is a certain formula to all these books, Bradley wisely goes deeper into each character with the succession of novels. We learn more about Flavia each time and get to know more about her long-lost mother Harriet, who posthumously plays a huge role in the emotional undercurrent of this book. The “Buckshaw Chronicles” are a smart, entertaining, emotionally fulfilling series of mysteries. I’m so grateful their interesting titles drew my eye a couple of years ago.

Whenever I’m with other people, part of me shrinks a little.  Only when I am alone can I fully enjoy my own company.”

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by alenaslife on January 31, 2013  •  Permalink
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With or Without You – a new review

with or without youI read a Tweet recently along the lines that memoirs need not be the “Olympics of tragedy.” I apologize for my inability to credit the source, but the phrase stuck with me. I had just finished reading With or Without You, a new memoir by Domenica Ruta, whose life seems like the 1600 IM of tragedy and abuse.

The daughter of a drug addict, albeit a high-functioning and dynamic one, Ruta writes about coming of age among drugs, sexual abuse and addiction. But, remarkably, that’s not really what the book is about. The story derives its drama from the unusual mother-daughter relationship (another prevailing memoir theme).

It is the declaration of every thinking woman at some point in her life, a manifesto that crosses all barriers of class or color or whatever arbitrary thing we try to pretend separates us. It starts out as a girlish whisper, grows louder with each passing year, until that faint promise we traced in the sand becomes a declarative, then an imperative: I will not become my mother.”

The drugs, sex and neglect of her childhood seem almost like minor details compared to the agony of her painful mother love. It took me a while to understand that, in my horror at her upbringing, I was missing the main point of this memoir.

Understanding how much Ruta wished she, and not addiction, were the center of her mom’s universe was heartbreaking. Kathi is a flamboyant, intelligent, (formerly) beautiful, larger-than-life character, at least in Ruta’s retelling. As a reader, as angry as I felt at her actions, I couldn’t help but like, and sometimes even admire, her.

In this way, Ruta provides an unusual tension in the story-telling. Over the course of her life, you can almost see the logical part of brain, which writes almost clinically about her mother, fighting with her heart which writes with emotion and longing.

Ruta wisely includes a great deal of self-deprecating humor to break up the pathos.

Kathi and I were the two most outrageous snobs ever to receive public assistance.”

“Is it possible to have nostalgia for a time in which you never lived? I’m sure there is a word for this phenomenon in German — beautiful, absurd, and twenty letters long.”

She also shines the harsh spotlight on her own flaws and addiction, but perhaps I wanted even more in terms of soul searching. I was horrified throughout, but I never came to love her (which I want in an Olympian…oops…I mean a memoirist).

I received an Advanced Reading Edition of this book as part of the Random House Reading Circle. Please note that the quotes included in this review are not taken from the final edition. Expected publication date is February 26, 2013.

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by alenaslife on January 14, 2013  •  Permalink
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Why I Love Flavia de Luce

(If you’ve visited alenaslife looking for my usual Monday Quote, I’m taking this Columbus Day off. Monday Quote will return next week. In its place, I offer a short review of my most recent audio read, The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bag.)

“You are unreliable, Flavia,’ he said. ‘Utterly unreliable.’
Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.”

I just love Flavia de Luce, the precocious 11 year-old narrator of Alan Bradley’s entertaining mystery series. I read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie a couple of years ago, based on its title alone. I never thought I’d be so engaged by a British mystery, but Bradley has a way of making me almost forget that there’s a murder to be solved. Instead, I’m swept into the mind of Flavia, the incredibly bright motherless chemist and amateur detective.

I am often thought of as being remarkably bright, and yet my brains, more often than not, are busily devising new and interesting ways of bringing my enemies to sudden, gagging, writhing, agonizing death.”

Indeed, Flavia spends many remarkable paragraphs cooking up concoctions in her laboratory, located in one of the wings of her family’s troubled estate, Buckshaw. Never one for chemistry formulas myself, I am still engaged by how her knowledge (obsession really) with organic principles, poisons and death, always seem to embroil her in Bishop Lacy’s latest drama. The trouble in these books just seems to find Flavia.

Flavia takes me back to my love of Trixie Belden as a young girl. The difference is that, unlike Trixie’s loving family and band of best friends, Flavia seems quite alone. Her sisters are “horrid;” her father is aloof at best; and there are seemingly no other children in the vividly imagined Bishop Lacy. When Bradley does introduce a heartfelt moment, as he does with Flavia’s aunt in this book, those scenes resonate even more for their rarity.

“There’s a lot to be said for being alone. But you and I know, don’t we, Flavia, that being alone and being lonely are not at all the same thing?”

This storyline revolves around the sudden appearance of a puppeteer and his female assistant. There is, of course, a dead body (more than one actually), and a cast of extremely complex supporting characters, most of whom are suspect.

It’s remarkable that over the week I listened to this book in my car, I was often reluctant to turn off the CD, and always eager to return to driving alone. The narration was charmingly British. I never guessed the mystery, which is an added treat, but not what makes me love this series. Flavia de Luce has joined Scout Finch and Trixie Belden as among my favorite young heroines, wise beyond their years and beautifully innocent at once.

I can’t wait to find out what awaits her next.

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by alenaslife on October 8, 2012  •  Permalink
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We Need to Talk About Kevin — a true American horror story

I’ve had to wait a while between finishing this novel and attempting any sort of review. Ultimately, I think this is a great book, but it took me almost 2/3 of the book to reach that conclusion.

It’s DARK…

I knew it wouldn’t be “light reading” given that the subject of a school massacre is central to the plot, but I didn’t quite expect the deep despair that permeates this book. I would read 20 pages and simply have to put it down. Passages like…

In truth we are bigger, greedier versions of the same eating, shitting, rutting ruck, hell-bent on disguising from somebody, if only from a three-year-old, that pretty much all we do is eat and shit and rut. The secret is there is no secret. that is what we really wish to keep from our kids, and it’s suppression is the true collusion of adulthood…”

…may contain some true grain of truth, but I just didn’t want to be stuck there with Shriver.

When it comes down to it, Kevin’s actions and his mother’s reactions struck a real chord of fear in me. Of course I’m afraid one of my sons might do “something unforgivable.” It’s my worst nightmare. So to read about that, was discomforting.

I had trouble empathizing…

Kevin’s mother Eva tells the entire story through a series of letters to her husband, Kevin’s father. These letters take the tone of confession, but I couldn’t bring myself to like Eva. She hates her son and I just can’t find a place in my mind or heart for that .

“…You can only subject people to anguish who have a conscience. You can only punish people who have hopes to frustrate or attachments to sever; who worry what you think of them. You can really only punish people who are already a little bit good.”

I also wanted to feel empathy for Kevin despite his deeds, but the epistolary style only allows us t know him through his mother’s eyes.

But then…

Suddenly 200 pages into the book, I was hooked. I wanted, maybe needed, to understand the factors involved and the (gruesome) details of the massacre itself. I won’t try and convince you that it gets and brighter, but I did develop some sympathy for Eva. In a million years, with all the confessions and everything I knew, I still didn’t see the end coming. That is a wholly satisfying feeling when I read.

“Liked” is not the right word to describe my reaction to the book since it left me feeling sick with horror and fear, but it deserves my four star rating. It’s a book I’ll never forget.

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by alenaslife on October 5, 2012  •  Permalink
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Jonathan Tropper – a review and a meeting

Jonathan Tropper has rescued loser middle-aged white men as lead characters for me. After basically writing off any more books about whiny men (The Ask, Freedom, A Hologram for the King), my last two Tropper reads have reminded me that these men are not without redemption.

His latest novel, One Last Thing Before I Go, tells the story of Silver. (Silver has a last name, but no one used it. Everyone, including his daughter, just calls him Silver. Not Gold, not Bronze, just middle of the road Silver.) Still reeling from his days as a one-hit-wonder drummer in the Bent Daisies, Silver’s life is a downward spiral of divorce, drink and the occasional one night stand. Then his estranged daughter shows up pregnant.

Amidst all of this and driving the plot forward, Silver discovers he is “living” with a torn aorta that’s causing strokes and mini blood clots to swirl around. This condition causes him to speak all of his thoughts out loud, much to the chagrin of the people he’s with. No filter. He declines the life-saving surgery, leading to the book’s many scenes of friends, family and foes trying to convince him to save his own life.

If this all sounds a bit contrived, it is. But in Tropper’s hands it’s also brilliant and funny and heartbreaking. Once again, his characters are so complex and lifelike that I can’t help but root for them. Far-fetched scenarios seemed completely believable because Tropper invests those moments with sincerity and a great deal of wit.

He always felt this way around distressed women, that there’s something they’re waiting for him to say, and if he could figure out what that is, he could soothe the thing in them that needs to be soothed…he always believed that if, just once, someone had given him this vital piece of information, his entire life would have shaken out differently.”

This book is, quite simply, a great read – one of those novels I never want to put down. And, I certainly didn’t want it to end. But, once it did, I gave a rare “Hooray” for an author choosing a brave, smart ending that trusts his readers to figure the rest out on our own. Loved it.

Full disclosure: I read this book a week after meeting the author at a book reading. I’d been following @jtropper on Twitter and saw that he was going to be at Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville so my mom and I made the last-minute decision to go see him.

Not being the type of person who normally does things like that, I did not know what to expect. What I found was exactly the man I would have expected to write This is Where I Leave You. Tropper is smart and funny, somewhat foul-mouthed, brutally honest and adoring of his family. He was self-deprecating at times, but unafraid to state his opinions.

He skewered Random House, admitting he basically found working with them so intolerable that he paid the publishing house to get out of writing another book for them. (He is now published by Dutton, a seemingly much happier arrangement.) He also admits he wrote his first book Plan B, just to prove he could follow a formula and get a book published. He definitely does not recommend it – and wishes instead that he could “unwrite” Plan B.

I just did not expect an author trying to sell his books to be so forthright about the industry. I should have. Tropper speaks the way he writes. I would go see him again in a heartbeat.

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by alenaslife on September 6, 2012  •  Permalink
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5 stars for A Sense of an Ending

The Sense of an Ending is further proof that my favorite books are not those that are driven by plot, or even by character, but instead, are books whose language transports me. I don’t mean to imply that nothing happens or that I didn’t care about the characters, but they aren’t the critical elements in my 5 star rating for this book.

What elevates Julian Barnes to 5 star status is the way he makes me think. Within the first five pages, I was stopping to re-read sentences, to pull them apart and ask myself, “Where is this author taking me?”

I need to return briefly to a few incidents that have grown into anecdotes, to some approximate memories which time has deformed into certainty. If I can’t be sure of actual events anymore, I can at least be true to the impressions those facts left. That’s the best I can manage.”

Incidents to anecdotes, to memory, to certainty, to impression. How’s that for a circuitous path? It’s meandering and interesting and frustrating. Barnes uses Tony Webster, a fairly typical middle-class Brit, to travel this winding path. Tony is a pleaser, never thinking too hard to too much, until a strange bequest brings his past hurdling into his present. What follows is a novel full of ruminations and meditations.

“That’s one of the central problems of history, isn’t it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that is being put in front of us.”

Barnes asks many more questions than he answers, but that’s life, right? He provides a back story with a mystery (or at least a riddle) to solve and while I saw some of the plot twists coming; others took me completely by surprise (more of life).

At its heart, this is a book about actions and consequences, but Barnes approaches that topic with very little action. The minimalist plot left me room to think about my own life, the consequences of my choices. I was definitely in the mood for literature that is so smart and cerebral. In fact, I read it in a single sitting.

Tony’s conclusions, such as they are, mirror my own.

History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated.”

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by alenaslife on August 2, 2012  •  Permalink
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Memory Wall – a new review

“What is memory anyway? How can it be such a frail, perishable thing?”

These are the central questions in Anthony Doerr’s Memory Wall, a novella plus additional short stories. Without trying to provide easy answers or falling back on clichés, Doerr takes the reader deep into the fractured minds of his characters.

I was immediately drawn into the title novella’s premise, set in Cape Town. Alzheimer afflicted Alma has had a medical procedure to allow her memories to be “reaped” and replayed electronically. We get to know her in the present day, plus relive her flashbacks as her servant plays memories back to her. I love the idea that, “What we know is always evolving, always subdividing. Remember anything often enough and you can create a new memory, the memory of remembering.”  What I love even more is that Doerr didn’t just write this as a sci-fi concept. He fills this story with heart-wrenching characters – all in search of history, memory, evidence of life.

Likewise, in the sweet and affecting “The River Nemunas,” we meet a young orphan dropped into rural Lithuania after the death of her parents. She and her cat (aptly named Mishap) try to find a place, a rhythm to this new life. Mostly though, Allison struggles against the weight of memory.

“Thinking about the house sitting there empty back in Kansas starts the Big Sadness swinging in my chest like a pendulum and soon a blue flood is streaming around the edges of my vision. It comes on fast this time and the axe blade is slicing up organs willy-nilly and all of the sudden I’m looking into a very blue bag and someone’s yanking the drawstring closed.”

Doerr’s writing is both beautiful and haunting.  I was impressed by his character development, especially in such short stories. Whether he’s writing an aging Holocaust victim’s childhood in Poland or a Wyoming couple’s struggles with infertility, he finds each person’s true voice. I was swept away time and time again.

“Every hour, Robert thinks, all over the globe, an infinite number of memories disappear, whole glowing atlases dragged into graves. But during that same hour children are moving about, surveying territory that seems to them entirely new. They push back the darkness; they scatter memories behind them like bread crumbs. The world is remade.”

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by alenaslife on August 1, 2012  •  Permalink
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A Tale as Old as Time in a Brand New Production

I was thrilled to return to Chicago Shakespeare Theater last weekend for the press opening of their Family Series production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. My review will be published in the August issue of Chicago Parent as well as ChicagoParent.com.

Chicago Shakespeare Theater has built its reputation on excellent quality productions reflecting Shakespeare’s love of storytelling, language and human emotion.

That has carried that through to its Family Series as well. When I learned that CST chose to premiere the 70-minute version of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast for the summer children’s show, I was unsure how it fit the mission. However, after seeing this beautiful production, I’m more convinced than ever that CST is a best bet for families.

With a cast of only 16 people, they managed to provide the feel of a full-scale Broadway musical. Outstanding voices and swift choreography set the mood. Dynamic costumes and an ever-changing set complete with computer-animated graphics bring the enchanted world of Belle and Beast to life.

In fact, the scenes in the forest with wolves attacking and fog rolling through were so realistic that some young audience members cried out to leave. That’s certainly testament to human emotion.

Emily Rohm is perfect as the inquisitive, feisty and beautiful Belle. She brings something fresh to the well-known character, captivating the young girls in the audience. William Travis Taylor (Beast) and Jake Klinkhammer (Gaston) provide the perfect counterparts in the quest for her love. Klinkhammer makes Gaston’s smarmy and conceited villain the show’s comic relief. Taylor has the challenge of conveying Beast’s emotional journey through an intricate mask and mass of beastly hair. Using his voice and body language, he succeeds.

Once again, director Rachel Rockwell keeps the pace of the show and its ensemble members moving quickly. She milks the comedy, but doesn’t shy away from the romance inherent in the story. My 10-year-old son thought there were “too many slow songs” but, judging by the reaction of the audience, he was in the minority.

Girls and boys alike were lined up in the lobby after the show for their chance to get an autograph from, and picture with, some of the actors.

You can read more of my stories at Chicago Parent.

4 Comments
by alenaslife on July 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Chicago Parent, Family, Theater
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Posted by alenaslife on July 13, 2012

http://alenaslife.wordpress.com/2012/07/13/a-tale-as-old-as-time-in-a-brand-new-production/

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