Exclusive interview with author John Lahr and a review of his book about Broadway, New York theatre and playwrights
Rating: Three Stars
By Gabrielle Pantera
“The New Yorker is a kind of magic carpet,” says Joy Ride author John Lahr. “Because of it, I got extraordinary access to people who interested me, which no other writer could get. For instance, I walked with Arthur Miller to the Connecticut cabin he built in order to write Death of a Salesman…visited Pittsburgh with August Wilson…sat with Ingmar Bergman at the National Theatre in the very seat he sat in as a boy when he first attended the theatre. In all these cases, I followed my personal taste. The people included in this book are the foremost stage artists in the Western world.”
Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows is taken from Lahr’s reviews and interviews when he was chief theatre critic for The New Yorker. Precise and engaging, Lahr divides Joy Ride into three sections: playwrights, productions and directors. He shares the biographical details and analysis of the makers of classic shows on Broadway, the genius behind the process of working in the theatre. For every fan of New York theatre and Broadway, it’s a lively way to deconstruct a play.
Profiles include Arthur Miller, who is best known for Death of a Salesman, August Wilson who did a ten-play cycle of African-American life in the U.S., David Mamet and Mamet’s sister Lynn who is an American theatre director, playwright, screenwriter, and television producer. Lahr reminisces about first-run shows like Carousel and The Pajama Game and describes their revivals. High points include Royal Shakespeare Company director John Barton and a section on director Mike Nichols.
“Each profile takes about three months to research and write,” says Lahr. “In that time, I have amassed eight to ten hours with the subject, interviewed subsidiary characters in his or her story, read the work, and amassed a dossier of transcribed interviews that amounts to about 1,000 pages. So, a great deal of effort and scrutiny goes into each one. In most of the cases, like August Wilson, Wallace Shawn, Sarah Ruhl, Mike Nichols because of my unique access to them, the profiles represent the fullest account of their work, opinions and life that currently exists.”
“The book evolved out of a conversation with my editor at Norton about the teaching of drama and the boring theoretical texts students had to read,” says Lahr. “People read plays out of the context of the lives of the playwrights who made them. To stimulate interest and to bring more information to the student, my idea was to publish profiles of playwrights and directors to show the synergy between the work and the life of the artist. When you write profiles, every encounter with a fine writer has its surprises…Miller’s cabin, David Mamet’s struggle with his father, August Wilson’s writing regime and channelling his characters, Mike Nichols’ ideas about comedy.”
Between 1992 and 2013, Lahr was the senior drama critic of The New Yorker, the longest tenure in that position in the magazine’s history. His books include Light Fantastic, Show and Tell, and Honky Tonk Parade. He’s written twenty books including two novels, Notes on a Cowardly Lion which is a biography about his father, Bert Lahr, and Prick Up Your Ears: the Biography of Joe Orton which was made into a film by Stephen Frears in 1987. His most recent book is Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh.
Lahr’s acclaimed Tennessee Williams biography won four major awards and in 2002, he co-wrote Elaine Stritch at Liberty, which won a Tony Award. Lahr is the first critic ever to win the coveted gong.
Lahr was born in Los Angeles and is based in London.
Joy Ride: Show People and Their Shows by John Lahr. Hardcover: 592 pages, Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (September 21, 2015), Language: English, ISBN: 9780393246407 $29.95
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