![]() ![]() Richard, his older brother, had a successful stint as an actor before alcoholism ended his career and forced him to return home. After William lost large sums of money, Purdy’s parents divorced, and his mother, Vera, began running a boarding house. His father, William, was a banker unwisely turned property developer. Purdy was born in Ohio in 1914, the second of three sons. Carl van Vechten was converted even before Sitwell and remained a champion. For years his agent had been submitting stories for publication, with occasional success, and the two books Purdy posted to Italy (one of which was financed by his lover at the time, the other by a wealthy friend) had been sent out to many literary celebrities. Snyder starts his book with Sitwell’s epiphany but acknowledges the exaggeration behind Purdy’s claim that she had saved him from giving up writing altogether. ‘Motherfucker’ was taboo, but also unfamiliar in a British context. Gollancz replaced it with the metrically equivalent ‘little bugger’, not as cowardly a substitution as the author of this biography, Michael Snyder, seems to think. Sitwell herself was apparently not inhibited from intoning it in a restaurant, as if it was no more troubling than ‘knickerbocker’. Moments of poetic magic rather than developments in plot or character make the experience of reading compulsive: ‘“Who is this?” she said, putting her hand on his face as one might touch what is perhaps a door in a dark house.’ The last word of 63: Dream Palace was ‘motherfucker’. Themes that recur in Purdy’s later work include power struggles (liable to sudden inversions), extreme emotional states (also subject to reversal), and polar contrasts of riches and poverty, youth and age. The novella’s first sentence reads: ‘“Do you ever think about Fenton Riddleway?” Parkhearst Cratty asked the greatwoman one afternoon when they were sitting in the summer garden of her “mansion”.’ I don’t know that any opening sentence can be considered in isolation a masterpiece, but this one certainly serves notice of a stylised view of the world. Her excitement persuaded Gollancz to publish a volume containing the novella (and borrowing its title) along with nine stories. Purdy then sent her a copy of his novella 63: Dream Palace, also privately printed, about which she was even more enthusiastic, acclaiming its first sentence as ‘in itself, a masterpiece’. In one version of the event, Don’t Call Me by My Right Name, the book Purdy sent from America to Italy, made the last stage of its journey supernaturally, materialising by Sitwell’s bedside when she woke from a nap. He had been making no headway until in 1956 Edith Sitwell read a privately printed book of his stories and, ravished, threw herself into finding him a publisher and an audience. ![]() Clark,, $20-$25.’s literary career comes with its own creation myth. Through 7/14: Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 4 PM, Mon 7:30 PM, the Understudy, 4609 N. But there happens to be no other way to stay alive in a world that’s gone haywire overnight. You don’t even have to mean it when you smile, it turns out. Lolo, like Lefty, has melancholy threaded through her character, but she understands, and becomes Lefty’s teacher in understanding that laughter doesn’t have to be about being happy. Elisabeth Del Toro plays a starlet named Lolo Carmichael who’s engaged to an asinine producer. It’s a rip-roaring time, but the ground note of melancholy never fades away. ![]() The patter between songs comes fast and joke-heavy, especially when Mike Ott, who plays the conniving film agent in the boys’ corner, does his auctioneer’s bark at a million miles per hour. Their close vocal harmony in the show’s duets lends added sweetness to the tender interaction of these outsize personalities.īolstering the central duo is a lively ensemble of minor characters. His partner Crabbe is played by Shea Pender. The deeper pain he’s in, the wider he smiles. Lefty is played by Kyle Ryan, one of the best sad clowns I have ever seen. Its heroes are two relics of the old school with a duo act to beat the band and nowhere to perform it, what with music halls shuttering and Hollywood’s first flowering guzzling the entertainment market share. The heyday of vaudeville is over and done with 15 minutes into this delightful new musical from Underscore Theatre Company, with book and lyrics by Brian Huther, Ben Auxier, and Seth Macchi and music by Huther and Auxier. ![]()
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