Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles - Hardcover

Lahr, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585670626 ISBN 13: 9781585670628

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2000

Synopsis

In Show and Tell, John Lahr, "probably the most intelligent and insightful writer on theater today" (The New York Times Book Review), reinvents the celebrity profile to get at the essence of performance. Lahr's utterly winning and incisive profiles probe some of the most compelling, elusive, and irresistible public personas of our time, among them: Woody Allen, David Mamet, Ingmar Bergman, Frank Sinatra, Roseanne, Irving Berlin, Bob Hope, Mike Nichols, Wallace Shawn, Arthur Miller, and Neil LaBute. In these, and the moving autobiographical portraits of his father, Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, and his mother, a former Ziegfeld girl, Lahr charts the geography of fame.

Lahr's gift is to get inside both the art and the artist, to show how the work and the life intersect. He has had unusual access to his subjects who talk to him with rare candor. In prose "as lively as good conversation" (Robert Brustein), he arrives at truths of uncommon clarity, a claim seconded by Arthur Miller, who said that Lahr's essay on him is "by far the best thing about my stuff I've ever read". These very special profiles, the product of eight years' work at The New Yorker, deepen our understanding of their subjects and the culture that they profoundly reflect. Show and Tell, like the icons whose lives and work it so meticulously chronicles, corrupts an audience with pleasure.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"What a talented, wonderful, and complete writer."—Mel Brooks

"By far the best thing about my stuff I've ever read."—Arthur Miller

"These are wonderful portraits."—Edna O'Brien

"The high-water mark of theatrical reportage. Exhilarating! Smart! Lahr gives as much thunderous pleasure as the great entertainers he writes about."—Richard Avedon

"There's never been an American critic like John Lahr. His writing exalts, honors, and dignifies the profession and, more importantly, the art."—Tony Kushner

About the Author

John Lahr writes for The New Yorker, where he was for 21 years the Senior drama critic of the magazine. A veteran of all aspects of the theatre, Lahr has contributed behind-the-scenes portraits, reviews, and Profiles, and has expanded the magazine's drama coverage beyond Broadway to include the work of international theatre and regional companies.

A former theatre critic at The Nation, The Village Voice, and British Vogue, among other publications, Lahr has published seventeen books on the theatre and two novels, "The Autograph Hound," and "Hot to Trot." His book "Dame Edna Everage and the Rise of Western Civilization," won the 1992 Roger Machell Prize for best book on the performing arts. His other works include "Light Fantastic: Adventures in Theatre," (1996) and "Show and Tell: New Yorker Profiles," (2000). In 2001, he edited "The Diaries of Kenneth." His expanded New Yorker article on Frank Sinatra was made into a book with photographs, "Frank Sinatra: The Artist and the Man." Lahr's most recent book is "Honky Tonk Parade: New Yorker Profiles of Show People," published in 2005.

Lahr served as literary adviser to the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis in 1968, and as Literary Manager of the Vivian Beaumont Theatre from 1969 to 1971. He was the co-producer of the 1987 film "Prick Up Your Ears," based on his Joe Orton biography of the same title, and was the editor of "The Orton Diaries." Lahr has also written numerous movie scripts. His short film "Sticky My Fingers. . . Fleet My Feet" (directed by John Hancock) was nominated for an Academy Award in 1971.

Lahr is a two-time winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism. In 1968, he became the prize's youngest recipient; he was honored again in 1993. Lahr has written many stage adaptations, which have been performed in England and the United States, including:"Accidental Death of an Anarchist," "The Manchurian Candidate," "The Bluebird of Unhappiness: A Woody Allen Revue," and "Diary of a Somebody," which began at the Royal National Theatre, played the West End, and later toured England. He co-authored the Tony Award-winning "Elaine Stritch at Liberty," which won the 2002 Drama Desk Award for outstanding book of a musical. Lahr, who was the first drama critic to win a Tony Award, is the son of the comedian Bert Lahr, whom he wrote about in his biography "Notes on a Cowardly Lion." He divides his time between New York and London and maintains a Web site at www.johnlahr.com.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abrams Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1585670626
• ISBN 13: 9781585670628
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240