After seeing Merrily last week, I reread Frank Rich’s 1981 Times review, the one that famously began with the lament that “to be a Stephen Sondheim fan is to have one’s heart broken at regular intervals.” It’s actually not as mean as it sounds—Mr. Rich was being playful in that lead, noting the accidental heartbreak caused by Mr. Sondheim’s failures but also the intentional heartbreak induced by his incisive songwriting. But I was surprised to discover that so many of his three-decade-old criticisms were the same as mine on Friday: The lack of insight into the characters and their friendship, Mr. Furth’s weak book, an unflattering-by-comparison similarity to Follies.
For all the work that’s been done, yesterday is still very much here.
Tuesday’s Times led with the news that Apple, for the first time, is instituting an outside audit of working conditions at its Chinese factories. Nowhere in the article, nor in the two investigative pieces the Times published last month detailing the appalling abuses in those factories, does the name Mike Daisey appear. That’s surprising, because Mr. Daisey, a writer and performer, has for the past several years been delivering a monologue about his investigation into the appalling abuses in those factories.
The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which first came to the Public Theater in the fall, is Mr. Daisey’s thrilling, funny, occasionally horrifying story of Apple, his own obsession with the company, and his visit to Shenzhen, China, were Apple’s products are made at the giant Foxconn factory. It is, essentially, the Times’s exposés, but it came first, and it’s entertaining. It’s back for a limited return at the Public, and you should see it.
editorial@observer.com
