Winter Woes and Wonders

Nathan Lane and Dylan Baker in November.

Lest anyone think I'm spending the winter in a yacht docked just off the coast of the French Riveria, I assure that's not the reason for my delinquency in posting lately. Chalk it up to a minor illness last week (I didn't know it was possible to sleep for more than 12 hours straight!) and an addiction to online Scrabble courtesy of this dreadful time-waster of a site.

But I have been writing and reviewing. Here are three recent Cititour.com reviews: The Homecoming, which left me with no doubt that Eve Best is one of the finest stage actresses of her generation;

The 39 Steps, which had some charm but not a lot of laughs;

and Is He Dead?, which had a great cast but not a lot of laughs.

It's not that I don't like comedy. The belly got quite a workout at November on Saturday. It seems the President is a role Nathan Lane was born to play. I nearly spit out the beverage I was drinking when I first heard about the Lane/David Mamet pairing, but their sensibilities meshed quite nicely. And the show couldn't have been more perfectly timed. With war, politics and elections on everyone's mind these days, the only thing you can do is laugh. One of my favorite touches: a stack of legal tomes sitting on the floor with a hardcover edition of Stephen King's Cujo stuck in between. The characters never mention it, which somehow makes it all the funnier.