Fever Hitch | 5 years ago | May 4, 2001 | Jeffrey Gantz reviewed the Red Sox musical The Curse of Bambino.
“For all its attractiveness, the concept is a little problematic: how do you stage the repeated agony of defeat? Kruh and Bergman start things off in 1986: a new dad, infant in his arms, is watching the fateful 10th inning of game six, as Met batter by Met batter victory slips away. A quartet of spectral Royal Rooters appears, fans in straw boaters and raccoon coats who’ve been inducted into Red Sox heaven, and we flash back to 1919, to the Third Base (‘the last place you stop before you go home’), a bar where our four working-class heroes — one Irish, one Italian, one Polish, one Russian — hang out....
“What we have, then, is not a story that ‘travels’ through the Sox’ travails, with different versions of the same characters (played by the same actors, of course) advancing the plot year after year, but a story that takes place over a few months in 1919–’20, with largely cosmetic flash-forward musical numbers. If only they were good musical numbers....
“What’s left is a typically underdeveloped (for musicals) plot — but some of the Lyric cast transcend caricature. John Davin, doubling as Yankees owner Colonel Jacon Ruppert and the crusty Irish owner of the Third Base, is a tough-talker and tough-drinker who could work for Steinbrenner, and R.C. Jacobs is a perfect childish, duplicitous foil as Harry Frazee ... The Curse of the Bambino is no Damn Yankees, but it will please the Fenway faithful — of whom there’s no shortage in Boston.”
Late Bloomer | 10 years ago | May 3, 1996 | Mark Bazer interviewed humorist Dave Barry.
“It’s been said that the best comic writers are depressed, and find comedy in their despair or other people’s despair. Do you think this is true?
“I don’t think that’s the case with me. There’s lots of anger in humor. And fear. And insecurity, but actual depression I don’t know. I think if you’re really depressed, you’re much more likely to become a rock singer. Everybody cites Woody Allen as a person who doesn’t seem happy, but I wouldn’t call him depressed. I’d call him profoundly, spectacularly insecure. You want people to like you, so you make them laugh. I absolutely know that’s what I do because that’s what I always did when I was a kid. You’re not going to believe this, but I was not really a tall, handsome kid.
“What were you?
“I was a little dweeb.
“Do you think you still are?
“Yeah. I reached puberty when I was about 38. I still don’t have any arm hair. I’m still waiting for arm hair. If you get on a plane with lots of businessmen, and they roll up their sleeves, you’ll see they’ve got lots of arm hair. Now, they’re not going to be humor writers.
“Are there some subjects you don’t feel are appropriate to joke about?
