Sept 28, 2012 –
I was having lunch today at the Council on Foreign Relations before a meeting with one of the national leaders in town for the UN General Assembly. At my table was William F. McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 1993 to 2003. That meant he was vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which formulates U.S. monetary policy.
It‘s the late 1930s, in Charleston, South Carolina‘s Catfish Row where the poverty of the Depression seems permanent. Clara (Nikki Renée Daniels) cradling her infant, and her husband Jake the fisherman (the charming Joshua A. Henry) thrill you to the bones with “Summertime.”
The poor black residents eke out a living fishing, picking cotton and hawking goods to housewives. They go to church a lot. Sometimes they have a lively good time at picnics. The men, looking for excitement and quick riches, gamble on dice. Their wives struggle to keep them responsible.
Horton Foote‘s “Blind Date,” set in 1928 in the imaginary Harrison, Texas, was written in 1985 and examines the southern marriage mart of the earlier years through the prism of feminism. The first and best of three one-act plays by Foote being presented by Primary Stages, it pits a bright young woman, who likes books and Rudy Vallée songs, against boring gentlemen callers, in this case one who, as a conversation gambit, recites all the books of the Bible in a minute. She (smartly) disappears upstairs.
It‘s always good timing for a play about ruthlessness and skullduggery in politics, but none better than this year when the Romney campaign has raised it to outsized proportions. The essence of Gore Vidal‘s riveting political satire, which premiered in March 1960, is the corruption of the system. Vidal ran for Congress in Westchester County, NY, (alas, he didn‘t win), so he got closer to politics than other playwrights. He also nails the mainstream press for its gullibility and stupidity.
