Taking in a Show

Miller and Miller

I’m no reviewer. I don’t think I have the stomach for it. I wouldn’t be able to say that the play I went to on Broadway tonight, Superior Donuts, was if not terrible, then not worth recommending paying $65 to see. Donuts is by Tracy Letts, who won a Tony and Pulitzer last year for August: Osage County. Well, Tracy, you win some, you lose some. So does the audience, but even with those odds it would be a crime to live in this city full of theater and not take in a show every now and then. Last week I went to a play with a friend of mine who does write reviews. He came down pretty hard on lead actress Sienna Miller, a movie actress probably better known for splitting up marriages and dating Jude Law (who’s portraying Hamlet on the Great White Way and whom she’s started dating again). In After Miss Julie, Miller plays opposite another Miller, Jonny Lee (the first Mr. Angelina Jolie) in a  sadomasochistic class struggle between the two of them and a rather underused third person. I was glad I didn’t have to review the play because my friend criticized enough for the two of us. I did, however, get to see Susan Sarandon in the audience. “There’s Susan Sarandon!” said the two tourists sitting next to me, as if they were spotting a leopard on safari. I’m sure Sarandon was kinder to the Millers than the critics, her own production of Ionesco’s Exit the King with Geoffrey Rush having come under some terrible scrutiny only a couple of months ago.