Are You There, McPhee?, a new play by John Guare (House of Blue Leaves, Six Degrees of Separation) is enjoying it's world premiere this week at Princeton's McCarter Theatre.  I had an opportunity to attend last night's performance.  It is funny and clever, well-written  and well-acted.  With references to Peter Benchley, Jorge Luis Borges, Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney and Roman Polanski, Are You There McPhee?  promises "A Nantucket house with a mysterious past.  A pair of abandoned children.  An 11 pound lobster."  And it delivers on that promise. 

Every experience in a writer's life is fodder for his writing.  Or perhaps I have that backwards.  Perhaps it is only by writing it down that the writer experiences life at all.  "Edward Gowery is trapped and knows the only way to escape is to change his life - he just doesn't know how."   Are You There, McPhee? is a story about storytelling, a play about playwriting. 

And it is very nearly a very good play.  As I said, funny and clever, well-written and well-acted.  And about a half-hour too long.  Are You There, McPhee? starts too slowly, takes too long to get to the heart of the story.  Even talented, world-famous playwrights need a good editor.  

Are You There, McPhee? is an enjoyable evening at the theater.  But it could have been better.   

Change Your Underwear Twice a Week: Lessons from the Golden Age of Classroom Filmstrips, by Danny Gregory

@Saintvi has written a post about her very first car and that post has me thinking about my first.  It was a 1970 Plymouth Fury, the quintessential unmarked police car of its day.  It was a good car right up until the night I rolled it on the NY State Thruway in November, 1973.  I guess it was a good car that night too because I totaled the car and walked away from the wreckage without a scratch.  I remember climbing out of the car, as it sat upside-down in the middle of the Thruway, near exit 23 in Catskilll NY, its wheels still madly spinning, like a turtle stuck on its back, desperately trying not to die.

But that's not what I remember tonight.  Tonight I remember how everything in a writer's life is fodder for a story.  And how that experience was transformed in a scene that I wrote a few years later, a scene from my unpublished Buddhist manuscript.  And if the accident itself doesn't bring a smile to my face, the fictional scene written some 35 years ago, featuring an appearance by Big and Little Mack who appear decades later in my third published murder mystery (It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Murder, available in hardcover and ebook editions) surely makes me smile.

            Mongo‘s mind was going a million miles a minute as he drove to his meeting with the Macks; the car was going a little too fast as well.  Mongo drove aggressively whenever he was pissed and he was definitely pissed now. He pushed the car hard, accelerating around curves and through traffic as if he could somehow convince the car of that which Jodie had not accepted.
            Mongo had rarely experienced confusion in his life. His rules were few, his philosophy simple, his needs basic and his goals immediate.  Somehow, his expanding relationship with Jodie had muddied Mongo’s certainties.  His mind refused to focus on his rapidly approaching rendezvous with the Macks. He liked driving for Louie.  But he couldn’t possibly wreck Jodie’s T-Bird now. Of that, at least, he was certain.
            Meanwhile, Big and Little Mack were waiting in the beach parking lot.  Big Mack was unconcerned by Mongo’s lateness in arriving.  He relaxed in the front seat of their rented sedan, almost asleep in the heat.  Little Mack paced nervously, afraid not of Mongo, but of forgetting his carefully memorized speech.  He practiced. “Mongo, right on time as usual.”  Shit, he would have to come up with a new first line.  Little Mack didn’t cope well with unexpected changes.  Maybe, if Mongo got there soon, he told himself he could get away with the speech the way he planned it.
            Just at that moment, Mongo came careening down the blind curve that serves as the entrance to the lot.  All of a sudden, he noticed the hearseful of surfers unloading their boards at the mouth of the lot.  Too late.  Too soon. Kaboom.  Mongo, swerving, sideswiped the hearse, day-glo surfers flying through the air in the ultimate wipeout.  Slowly, ever so slowly, the T-Bird rolled over on its back, where it finally came to rest, battered and beaten, its wheels still madly spinning as though the car, through force of habit alone might continue its journey. As he crawled out of the wreck, Mongo was reminded of the time as a child he sat for hours watching a turtle that was stuck on its back desperately trying not to die.
            Soon the police would come, soon the tow truck and the ambulance.  He would have to decide what to tell them, but first he had to deal with the Macks. With the first crack of the collision, any chance that Little Mack might know what to say was gone, his speech another victim of the crash.  But amazingly, the accident had startled Big Mack to the point of speech.  “I gotta hand it to ya Mongo, you got style.  It’s no wonder why you’re Louie’s favorite.”
            “Listen up Mack,” Mongo was yelling now, out of control, “you tell that fuckface Louie” - Mongo paused, the battle for his soul projected on his features, “you tell that fuckface Louie,” he said more quietly this time, “that I’m ready to deliver a car to Arizona, if he’s got one.”