Brother/Sister

An absolutely heavenly evening of theatergoing last night, though I am at this point in the week now so tired that I am looking at the time and wondering whether I might not go to bed at eight o'clock!

The play was Tarell Alvin McCraney's In the Red and Brown Water, and it was extraordinarily good in every respect. McCraney has invented his own idiom - it is hilarious, it is touching, it is mythic, it is altogether delightful - interesting, too, to see how this one picks up some tricks from the in certain respects quite tonally different Wig Out! I of course especially love it that he has invented a way to include third-person stage directions as part of the words spoken on stage - honestly, though, if you see only ONE thing this fall, go to the Public Theatre and see one or both of these plays (I loved The Brothers Size when I saw it two years ago - with Brent! - but if anything this one is even better - the contrast to the Robert Wilson production the night before is especially painful to contemplate, not least because the use of music and dance in this one is so superb).

And a divinely good meal afterwards, too, at Indochine (spicy beef salad, an entree special of grilled striped bass with sauteed greens, a ridiculously tasty dessert of steamed Vietnamese coffee cake with bourbon ice-cream and coffee granita): a two-for-two night, which does not happen as often as you might think!