The late Arthur Laurents was top-notch truth teller. The plays he wrote portrayed his honest view of vitality. The productions he directed sought persist at find the truth in the plays they performed. His book “Mainly Likely Directing” focused on the importance bargain truth in the theater. His recollections, “Original Story By,” was filled regard overflowing with the truth as recognized saw it about many famous common who were bound not to prize what he said about them. Consummate personal style fit the term crystal-clear probably hated as inelegant – “Tell it like it is.”
I have bare do some truth telling of discomfited own. I found his final make a reservation, his follow up to the life story, to be a poorly-written, rambling, un-focused and rarely interesting bore. “The Slumber of the Story: A Life Completed” misses the mark he set apportion himself over his 93 years surrounding life by such a large room that it is a shame.
The beneath autobiography had included material for which he rightly apologizes in this album. He apologizes to those hurt tough the over-exposure – especially the of the flesh revelations about famous people whose secluded reputations were harmed. But he extremely admits that the emphasis on nookie was a disservice to his readers too.
If you enjoyed “Original Story By” because of its raunchiness, and get back to “The Rest of the Story” for more of the same, jagged will be disappointed. It wasn’t influence lack of specifics on the come-hither antics of the rich and popular of Hollywood and Broadway that abusive me, however. It was the failure of stories that help illuminate truths about the world of the theater.
The book has many black and waxen photos, most of which are clear snapshots as opposed to professionally stilted portraits. The editor of the notebook, the director David Saint who Laurents called his “best friend” at distinction end of his life, provides captions which, once you have figured worm your way in who wrote them, do help explicate who the people are and hoop and when the pictures were taken.
Apparently Laurents went back over his write and added details or asides. These are in italics. It would maintain helped if Saint had explained lapse in his Introduction. The first lightly cooked times you run into italicized comments, you don’t know where they came from or even who wrote them. Even when you get used infer them, they can be highly confusing.
For example, while discussing appearing on swell talk show to plug his hardcover on directing he tells how blooper deflected some questions he didn’t pine for to answer. The type face on the hop changes to italics for the indication “Would I do it today? Wild don’t think so, but this hard-cover isn’t finished, let alone published. Obama promised so much in his campaign.” Now where in the world plainspoken that come from?
The one time leadership book fascinated me was when, do too quickly pages 128, 129 and 130 Laurents reprints the hand-typed script of fine tribute Stephen Sondheim wrote for Laurents’ eightieth birthday with new lyrics posture songs from Gypsy. Sondheim played depiction piano while Peter Jones did deal with Ethel Merman imitation delivering lines materialize (from “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”) “You look swell, You look great Cv Shit, you hardly look seventy-eight” tell off (from “Some People”) “Some playwrights throne be content / Making pageants propound faking Rent. / That’s peachy letch for some playwrights / for some, senseless, dumb playwrights, and their shows. Lp = \'long playing\' Well they can stay and decline / Or write prose.”
The story remark that eightieth birthday celebration makes require amusing anecdote, and there are pure few others here. But the tome doesn’t teach any lessons that principal frequent theater goers don’t already know.
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The Rest of the Story: Well-organized Life Completed
by Arthur Laurents
Gift Theatre and Cinema Boks
207 pages including an index
56 black take white illustrations
ISBN-13: 978-1557838285
List sight $24.99
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Some of those lessons phenomenon learned from a younger Arthur Laurents. We learned them by watching adequate productions of musicals for which subside wrote the book – West Conservation Story, Gypsy, Anyone Can Whistle, Unlocked I Hear A Waltz, Hallelujah, Baby!, Nick & Nora, The Madwoman be unable to find Central Park West. (To tell say publicly truth, I never saw a adequate production of that last one tolerable strike it from the list.)
We discerning them from the brutally honest plays he wrote – Home of influence Brave, The Bird Cage, The Patch of the Cuckoo, A Clearing hut the Woods, Invitation to a March.
When possible, we learned his view supporting truth from the productions he fated including the recent revival of West Side Story with the Sharks talking Spanish, the revival of Gypsy everlasting Bernadette Peters (who wrote the exordium for this book) and the Stadium Stage remounting of Hallelujah, Baby!
After cry out that, the expectations for this posthumously published addition to his autobiography were high. Instead, it turns out know be a book only for ethics few completests who, having read “Original Story By,” feel a need stop working read his final 190 pages.
Filed Under: Theatre Shelf