In the spirited and often eye-opening blog, Clyde Fitch Report, Leonard Jacobs proves once again that he has a gift for cutting through the layers of muck that other writers seem to miss.
On the recent brewing controversy over playwright Theresa Rebeck's Guardian piece in which she revives the "old boys" complaint against Broadway, see this Clyde Fitch post.
Quoting Rebeck directly below:
One might put this trend down to something like, hmm, discrimination. But actually what we're told is that the plays that are produced are just the plays that were worth doing, and that playwriting is in fact a Y-chromosome gene. So women should just back off, because putting plays written by women into production because maybe audiences might like a really well-written play that was well-written by a woman would be pandering to ideas of political correctness. And art doesn't do that.
What art does is celebrate the lives and struggles of men.
It also apparently celebrates big nasty women who wreck their children's lives. Last season, Mama Rose once again held the stage; the mother in August: Osage County is a real monster too. So two terrifying women in plays written by men were up to their old tricks. This, we are told, is really what made last season a woman's year.
Clyde Fitch retorts:
Notice how she codes what could be construed as homophobia in her statement: men writing about "big nasty women who wreck their children's lives," "two terrifying women in plays written by men," hint hint? Why doesn't she just come out and call Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein -- oh, and Tracy Letts, too -- misogynists?
Read the whole Clyde Fitch Report.
