The first of the 13 stories in the new collection from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Steven Millhauser is called “Cat ‘n’ Mouse.” It describes, in scene after scene, a cartoon cat’s attempt to catch a cartoon mouse. The cat uses every trick in the Warner Bros. book: He dresses up like a lady mouse. He rigs […]
Alison Hallett
Alison Hallett served nobly as the Mercury's arts editor from 2008-2014. Her proud legacy lives on.
Posted inTheater & Performance
Moonlight and Magnolias
When the original director of Gone with the Wind is fired after only three weeks of shooting, producer David O. Selznick (James Sullivan) hires director Victor Fleming (Michael Teufel) and screenwriter Ben Hecht (Michael Mendelson) to rework the script in preparation for a fresh start. Hecht has never read the book, so, as imagined in […]
Posted inBooks
Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
by Dan Kennedy
Early in Rock On: An Office Ballad, author Dan Kennedy makes a confession. “There is a delusion I have apparently quietly indulged in since, say, age 30, and it’s this: that I am still as cool as I was when I was 17,” he tells us. When recovering slacker Kennedy gets a high-paying job in […]
Posted inUncategorized
Could Be Worse
[Insert Ninja Turtles Joke Here]
Leonardo’s isn’t going to make it onto any critical best-of lists anytime soon, with a menu of passable Italian dishes dressed up with bells and whistles that aren’t fooling anyone into thinking the food is better than it actually is. (Pine nuts! Dried cranberries!) The place is mediocre, but inoffensively so—and considering that Leonardo’s is […]
Posted inBooks
His Illegal Self
Peter Carey (Knopf)
Peter Carey is the two-time Booker Prize-winning author of True History of the Kelly Gang and Oscar and Lucinda. His understated, evocative new novel, His Illegal Self, concerns itself with the fraying ends of the hippie movement, after the Democratic National Convention of 1968, after the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) went underground. It’s […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Rabbit Hole
David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole was the dark horse winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama—his script, about a couple struggling to cope with the loss of their son, wasn’t even nominated, but members of the judging committee shoehorned the work to a surprise victory. The script paints a subtle, powerful portrait of contemporary grief, […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Twelfth Night/ The Beard of Avon
I have to confess to a certain ennui when it comes to Portland Center Stage productions. Their work usually strikes me as competent but a tad soulless; pretty sets and costumes, safe scripts, actors who know how to emote clear to the balcony. So suffice it to say that I was taken aback by how […]
Posted inBooks
Sharp Teeth
by Toby Barlow(HarperCollins)
At a certain point, reading Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth in bars and coffee shops, I just started lying when people asked me what it was about. “Oh, it’s about, um, savagery in the urban landscape, and the metaphorical wilderness within all of us. And… dogs. Nick Hornby gave it a great write-up in The Believer.” […]
Posted inNews
A Fine Romance
Wining and Dining and Valentining
It seems perverse and a bit cruel to ask a perennially single and grumpy-about-it employee to write a roundup of romantic date spots, doesn’t it? I mean, Jesus, talk about salting a wound. But the Mercury overlords have spoken, so I’ll do my best: Here’s a short list of spots you can take a date […]
Posted inBooks
The Book of Other People
edited by Zadie Smith (Penguin)
The Book of Other People is a Zadie Smith-edited collection of short stories, solicited from an all-star lineup of contemporary fiction writers whose only instruction was that they “make somebody up.” Each story is named for the character it’s about, from Chris Ware’s “Jordan Wellington Lint” to Miranda July’s “Roy Spivey” to George Saunders’ “Puppy.” […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Bodas de Sangre
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Miracle Theatre: They generally do solid work, and they’re a valuable community organization. So it’s in the spirit of tough love that I have to say that their current production of Bodas de Sangre is just not up to their usual standards. Written by the […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Rock ‘n’ Roll ‘n’ Racism
Honeydripper: John Sayles Meets Jim Crow
John Sayles’ sedate, inoffensive Honeydripper takes place in Harmony, Alabama, in 1950, where Jim Crow laws are in full swing and black men can be arrested simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Honeydripper of the title is a run-down, failing club owned by Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover), a menacing […]