The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (1972)

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book was the antidote to miserable news and online bickering. I retreated to my comfy chair and read a charming Christmas story that reinforces the goodness that we all share.

It is definitely a classic and every kid (and adult) should know it. I read parts out loud just to explain what was making me laugh.

What a wonderful way to reach my goal of reading 40 books this year! Merry Christmas 2012 to everyone, even the Herdmans in our lives.

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Late Christopher Bean, The by Sydney Howard

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From a review in Variety of the recent Broadway revival of The Late Christopher Bean by Sidney Howard, which hasn't been seen there since the original production closed in the early 1930s:

A forgotten member of the Eugene O'Neill-Robert Sherwood-Maxwell Anderson set of American playwrights, Howard was the first person to win both the Pulitzer (for "They Knew What They Wanted") and the Oscar (for "Gone With the Wind"). The latter was the first Oscar awarded posthumously; the 48-year-old gentleman farmer was crushed by a tractor in a freak accident in 1939.

I remember seeing the play in Philadelphia when I was growing up; and when I read that a new production had been mounted, I thought about it for a staged reading series I put together.

A New England country doctor and his family had at one time taken in the indigent Chris Bean. When he died, his paintings were cast aside. Now some years later, the art community has declared him a genius and the misunderstandings and greed take center stage. Only the housekeeper, Abby, seems to have genuinely appreciated Bean. The play is funny and pointed and contains many still held beliefs about art. Not perfect but a good play. 


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The Lion in Winter: A Play (1966)

The Lion in Winter: A Play by James Goldman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm putting together a third season of staged readings and have just gotten started on reading the plays that will be part of the project.

The Lion in Winter may be set in 1183 but the struggles and intrigues will be familiar to today's audiences.


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George Bernard Shaw's Rotating Shed (Boing Boing)

Apparently rotating sheds were popular in the early 1900s. Here is information about writer/playwright George Bernard Shaw's with some interesting and funny comments from Boing Boing and the site's clever readers.

Backwards and Forwards (1983)

Backwards & Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays by David Ball


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another overdue book from the library. Recommended by 'becoming a dramaturgist' friend Deb, I had to ask my local library to find it somewhere else in the state. By the time I got the book, the time allowed to read, even this slim book, was not adequate.

Author David Ball was a professor in the Drama Department at Carnegie Mellon when he wrote this book. He has impeccable credentials since then as well. That being said, I found some of his writing rather juvenile. He refers to those who don't understand a play as "dumb readers". Once you get past those types of comments, which are probably meant to draw in the especially educated readers of his book and as a joke, his concept of playreading is fascinating.

His primary suggestion is that you cannot understand a play in totality unless you can connect all the dots. Why do things happen? What propels them?  He posits that by being able to start at the end and work your way to the beginning of the play you will see those important connections.

Using HAMLET as a major focus, he discusses how the play can be built to the best advantage for performance. This is an important book for anyone interested in directing, playwriting, or dramaturgy.

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