Author: David Gorsline

Out of Heber Springs: 2

An update by Arthur Lubow on the complicated artistic legacy of Mike Disfarmer. Ron Slattery is part of the story, which is not too surprising.

[Family member Todd] Minor said that contrary to prevailing belief, Disfarmer had been close to his sisters and nieces until an acrimonious probate dispute led him to change his name. “Our perception of him is a little off from what people think,” he said. “He was eccentric, yes, but not so extreme.”

Previously on AHoaA:

Really Quite a Lot of Mechanisms

Baltimore artists Alex and Olmsted lean into their entertaining penchant for visible contraptions and wordless storytelling in their new piece, aptly named Really Quite a Lot of Mechanisms. Two workers, clad in cowls and greatcoats that would not be out of place in a production of Endgame, scuttle about a workshop, sometimes producing something useful, but often just punching a time clock and spilling a coffee can of screws and assorted hardware. Found in the can is a charming mini puppet on rods, a mere earthworm, but soon it’s put into service turning a crank in the workshop.

They’re watched over by a huge orbicular eye, also a puppet. Does the Eye suggest the Artist’s nagging self-editing and need to produce creative work? Perhaps, but later in the piece it shows its malevolent side, a HAL 9000 that can only be thwarted by a strategically placed parasol.

And there’s never enough time to eat lunch.

    Really Quite a Lot of Mechanisms, devised by Alex and Olmsted, Baltimore Theatre Project, Baltimore

Between Riverside and Crazy

1st Stage brings life into this play that is less impressive on the page, with a generally balanced ensemble of actors. Chief among them is Dylan Arredondo in the supporting role of Oswaldo, a mountainous, felonious man-child. Tony Cisek’s set design realizes a rent-controlled apartment that has accumulated decades of stuff; at certain points actors are climbing over stacked-up furniture: a novel way to accomplish multiple paying levels. Alas, “Pops” Washington’s second act redemption feels unearned, a little more deus ex machina than dominus vobiscum.

  • Between Riverside and Crazy, by Stephen Adly Guirgis, directed by José Carrasquillo, 1st Stage, Tysons, Va.

At the park: 156

First report of the season for our nestboxes for Wood Duck and Hooded Merganser:

As I (successfully, for once) predicted, our birds have not begun laying in our 16 boxes, due to the snow and cold in February. We added fresh chips to all and trimmed back vegetation around some of the boxes along Barnyard Run.

We have plenty of plastic bags in the shed for carrying chips; we have almost used up our supply of chips. I’ll make a note for next winter to request more chips.

I will bring supplies to touch up the numbers on a couple of the boxes.

L. spotted a handsome Dark Fishing Spider (Dolomedes tenebrosus) in the shed.

See you next Sunday, same time and place. Remember that we switch over to Daylight Saving Time at 2 AM that morning….

Thank you!

The World to Come

There’s a song from 1980 by The Police, “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around.” It would make an interesting underscoring for Ali Viterbi’s excellent apocalyptic The World to Come, starring Woolly long-timers Brigid Cleary, Michael Russotto, and Naomi Jacobson.

Set in what we once called an “old folk’s home” that suggests both an assisted living facility (an “I could retire here” set (at least in the opening moments) by Misha Kachman) and later a concentration camp, the residents piece together news of the world outside that is literally crumbling away. They are aided, then thwarted, by a succession of nurses played by Ro Boddie, who sports a progressively alarming array of PPE.

These self-described alter kockers challenge each other with the question, “What could/would/should you have done to deal with the crumbling?”, be it climate change, tyranny, plague, or nuclear war. Rather than hear answer in words, we see them carry out acts of compassion one-on-one: bring medicine, make love, fight, tell a funny story, say Kaddish,1 join in the other’s hallucination. Most movingly, to close Act 1, Fanny (Jacobson) sings to Barbara (Cleary), as Barbara slides into the undiscovered country; Barbara’s dementia has been punctuated by prophetic visions and moments of her career as physicist.2

Technical praise: Sarah O’Halloran’s sound design, realizing earthquake rumbles without Sensurround, and Ksenya Litvak’s terrifying raven puppets.

  • The World to Come, by Ali Viterbi, directed by Howard Shalwitz, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

1Alas, there are too few characters to make a minyan.

2I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Peter and the Starcatcher: an update: 4

I was reviewing my script and I realized how much importance is placed on characters’ names. Boy, of course, acquires two names in the course of his adventure, escaping the traps of being “No Name” and “Mule,” only after Black Stache asks him, “Appellation, please.” And Stache (who will soon lose that name) hears his own name shouted multiple times, at least once at his own prompting.

Lord Aster bears a rather transparent tag name (“star” in Latin). Sánchez can never get Stache to call him by his name. Prentiss uses an unflattering nickname for Ted. Much fun is made of the meaning of Molly’s name in whatever language is native to the polyglot Mollusks. For some odd reason, Stache calls Alf “Alfred.”

And so it is that I realized that, of the limited text that Captain Scott has, twice he tells us his full three-barreled name, just so we won’t forget who is doomed to an Antarctic grave. And thus I made the choice to make those self-namings really big, declaiming each piece to the three sections of the house, with a slight increase in pitch and dynamics: “Robert Falcon SCOTT.”

New York sights and non-sights February 2026

come inA bit of historical subway architecture: an entrance to the Bowling Green IRT (4 & 5) station.

My favorite breakfast spot (“Cafe Olympia Cafe”) down the block from my favorite hotel in Midtown East is gone. There was a diner a couple blocks up that I think is gone, too. There is still an awning with the name “Palace.” I think that was the place.

The shoe repair/tailor shop is no longer on the block, but a sign in the window says that it’s just moved.