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SMALL IRONIES: A Novel

Three Continents

From the ship at sea 1

From the ship at sea 2

From the ship at sea 3

From the ship at sea, 4

From the ship at sea, 5

From the ship at sea , 6

From Rio!!

The Trip Home

NEW SHORT STORIES

Nothing There For You

Nothing There For You, 2

Nothing There For You, 3

Nothing There For You, 4

Chase of The Thrill, 1

Chase of the Thrill, 2

Chase of the Thrill, 3

Chase of The Thrill, 4

Of Course, part1

Of Course, part 2

Of Course, part 3

Of Course, concluded

In Memory: Of My Cruise 1

In Memory: Of My Cruise 2

In Memory: Of My Cruise 3

In Memory: Of My Cruise 4

Las Vegas, 1

Las Vegas, 2

Las Vegas, 3

Las Vegas, 4

Las Vegas, concluded

Mad Moment #1

Mad Moment #2

Mad Moment #3

Mad Moment #4

Margaret Never Knows, 1

Margaret Never Knows, 2

Margaret Never Knows, 3

Margaret Never Knows, 4

Margaret Never Knows, 5

Remote, part 1

Remote, part 2

Remote, part 3

Remote, concluded

POETRY

April's Fools

Easter Sunday

...simple answers

And when they come at me

Fogged In

BROADWAY/NYC THEATRE

Love, Linda

Curtains

Barrington Stage Co. 2011

My Name is Asher Lev

The Game

The Best of Enemies

Mormons, Mothers...etc.

Going to St. Ives

Guys and Dolls

Zero Hour

BSC ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Absurd Person Singular

Art

BNelson's All-Male Revue

Carousel

The Crucible

The Fantasticks

Freud's Last Session

I Am My Own Wife

The Memory Show

Mysteries of Harris Burdi

Pool Boy

Private Lives

See Rock City. . .

Sleuth

...Spelling Bee

A Streetcar Named Desire

Sweeney Todd

This Wonderful Life

To Kill a Mockingbird

Trumbo

Underneath the Lintel

The Violet Hour

The Whipping Man

Berkshire Opera

Le Nozze di Figaro

La Boheme

Berkshire Theatre 2011

Colonial Christmas Carol

Birthday Boy

Period of Adjustment

In the Mood

Dutch Masters

Sylvia

The Who's Tommy

Moonchildren

BTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

BTF Archive

Babes in Arms

The Book Club Play

Broadway by the Year

Candida

Candide

The Caretaker

A Christmas Carol

Christmas Carol 2010

A Delicate Balance

The Einstein Project

Eleanor: Her Secret Journ

Endgame

Eric Hill's Macbeth

Faith Healer

The Guardsman

Ghosts

K2

The Last Five Years

A Man For All Seasons

No Wake

Noel Coward in Two Keys

Pageant Play

Prisoner of 2nd Avenue

Red Remembers

Sick

Waiting for Godot

Chester Theatre Company

Tilted House

The Dishwashers

Almost, Maine

Blackbird

Copake Theatre Company

Nine Months

I Do! I Do!

Sour Grapes

Talking Heads

Grace & Glorie

Dorset Theatre Fest 2011

Mauritius

Noises Off

Dial "M" For Murder

Superior Donuts

DORSET ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Fallen Angels

The Hollow

June Moon

Marry Me a Little

Merton of the Movies

Murder on the Nile

St. Nicholas

The Novelist

The Pavilion

A Year with Frog and Toad

Ghent Playhouse

Urinetown

Menagerie A Trois

Ghent's "Dial M...."

Ghent Playhouse Archives

Belles

The Boys Next Door

Clue: The Musical

Complete Wm Shakespeare

Dancing at Lughnasa

Enchanted April

Fantasticks

Hair Loom!

Hay Fever

The Heiress

Jack and the Beanstalk

Lost: The Grimm Years

Mrs. Farnsworth

Over the River, etc.

Picnic

Prisoner/2nd Avenue

Puss in Boots

6 Women...

You're a Good Man, Charli

Literature

B ob Dylan

Christmasville

A Lesser Saint

Upstreet, #1

Mac-Haydn Theatre 2011

Carousel at the Mac

Mac-Haydn's Grease

Swing!

Jekyll and Hyde

The King and I

Annie

Love a Piano

MACHAYDN ARCHIVED REVIEWS

Anything Goes

Beauty and the Beast

Bye Bye Birdie

Chicago

Chorus Line

Crazy For You

Damn Yankees

Hairspray

Hello, Dolly!

High Society

Joseph. . .Dreamcoat

Mame

Meet Me in St. Lou

Phantom

The Secret Garden

Show Boat

The Sound of Music

Sweet Charity

Music

Journeys by Robert Baksa

Mary Verdi: Precious Love

Mahagonny

New Stage Theatre Company

Fahrenheit 451

The Maids

NYSTI

Romeo & Juliet

And Then There Were None

King Island Christmas

A Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The Philadelphia Story

Yours, Anne

Orphan Train

Of Mice and Men

Twelve Angry Jurors

Anastasia

1776

Macbeth

Miracle On 34th Street

Arsenic and Old Lace

American Soup

Ordeal By Innocence

Reunion

Oldcastle Theatre 2011

Night and Her Stars

Last Days of Mickey & Jea

Rembrandt's Gift

OLDCASTLE ARCHIVED REVIEW

"Almost, Maine" in VT

Beauty Queen of Leenane

The Grass is Greener

One Two Three

A Song For My Father

Third

Restaurants

Bezalel Gables

Blantyre

Brazillian

Burrito Bound

SPICE!

Shakespeare & Co-2011

Cymbeline

Santaland

War of the Worlds

Red Hot Patriot

Broadway in the Berkshire

Baskervilles (Revisited)

Romeo and Juliet, 2011

The Hollow Crown

As You Like It

The Memory of Water

SHAKES & CO ARCHIVES

The Actors Rehearse...

All's Well That Ends Well

Bad Dates

The Canterville Ghost

Cindy Bella

Real Inspector Hound

Dreamer Examines Pillow

Goatwoman of Corvis Count

Golda's Balcony

Hound of Baskervilles

Irma Vep, The Mystery of

Julius Caesar

The Ladies Man

Liaisons Dangereuses

Mengelberg and Mahler

Othello

Pinter's Mirror

Richard III

Romeo and Juliet

The Santaland Diaries

Sea Marks

Shirley Valentine

The Taster

Twelfth Night

White People

The Winter's Tale

Special Attractions

Trial of F.D.R.

Autres Temp. . .

Real Desperate Housewives

Four Dogs and a Bone

Capitol Steps for 2011

Ludwig Live!

The Seagull

Stop Kiss

On The Verge

Seascape

Starcrossed

"Earnest" in Albany

Life Is Short

Paris, 1890--Unlaced

BCC's A Christmas Carol

Sister's Christmas Catech

The Pajame Game

Her Name is Vincent

Property Known as Garland

12th Night

I Know I Came...Something

Doubt, a Parable

Voices' A Christmas Carol

Dickens A Christmas Carol

Marie Galante

Machinal

Capitol Steps

Late Nite Catechism

Rabbit Hole

Taming of The Shrew

Mystery of Irma Vep

I Love a Piano

The News in Revue

The Mikado

Saturday Night Liv

A Chorus Line

BCC - Christmas Carol

Morgan O-Yuki

Rent

Stageworks Hudson 2011

Tennis in Nablus

The Divine Sister

Play By Play Shadows

Stagework Hudson Archives

The Amish Project

Forbidden Broadway

Imagining Madoff

Or,

Play By Play Blue Moons

Theater Barn 2011

Stones In His Pockets

The Drowsy Chaperone

The Andrews Brothers

I Love You....Now Change

A. Christie's The Hollow

Boeing-Boeing

THEATER BARN ARCHIVES

Altar Boyz

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Forever Plaid

The Full Monty

Grease

How the Other Half Loves

It Had To Be You

Leading Ladies

Lies & Legends

Moonlight and Magnolias

The Mousetrap

Murder at Howard Johnson

The Musical of Musicals

Red, White and Tuna

Romance, Romance

Same Time, Next Year

Spider's Web

Veronica's Room

Visiting Mr. Green

Zanna Don't!

Visual Arts

Walking the Dog Thtr 2011

Lost Frontier of America

Eurydice

Who Am I This Time?

WALKING THE DOG: ARCHIVED

BecomingFrederickDouglass

Bon Appetit!

Cyrano

daemons

The Gospel of John

i take your hand in mine

Our Town

The Owl and the Pussycat

Painting Churches

Under Milk Wood

Vritue, Desire, etc.

Walking the dog's HAMLET

WAM Theatre Company

Attic, Pearls & 3 Fine Gi

Melancholy Play

Weston Playhouse

A Funny Thing...Forum

Souvenir

Weston Playhouse Archived

Fully Committed

The Light in the Piazza

Les Miserables

No Child. . .

A Raisin in the Sun

Rent - Weston

25th Spelling Bee

Williamstown Theatre 2011

Ten Cents a Dance

Touch(ed)

She Stoops To Conquer

A Doll's House

One Slight Hitch

Three Hotels

Streetcar Named Desire

WTF ARCHIVED REVIEWS

After the Revolution

The Atheist

Beyond Therapy

Broke-Ology

Caroline in Jersey

Children

David Storey's "Home"

Fifth of July

A Flea in Her Ear

Funny Thing/Forum

Funny Thing II

It's Jewdy's Show

Knickerbocker

The Last Goodbye

Quartermaine's Terms

Samuel J. and K.

She Loves Me

Six Degrees of Separation

Three Sisters

The Torch-Bearers

True West

What is..Cause of Thunder

WTF's Our Town

From the fourth floor of the Sofitel, Rio de Janeiro, overlooking Ipanema Beach & Copacabana Beach.

 


 

11/20

We’re in Rio! After all the good and bad times on the Rotterdam we’re actually here in Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro. We were among the last to leave the ship so we had the chance to say goodbye to a lot of people. That was nice. Bob mislaid his keycard for a while and there was the horrifying concept of having to stay aboard, but it all righted itself. We had a five hour transfer the four miles to our hotel. Check-in time was 3PM, and we were on the bus by 11AM. We had a leisurely, but thorough, tour of the city including the new Cathedral which is spectacular and a stop for a tour of the H. Stern Museum and Workshop. H. Stern has been a constant presence for us on this trip; Holland-America has a business tie-in with them. We were promised an "eight- minute tour" which actually took 97 minutes including the one on one sales pitch ("Come on, Peter, treat yourself to that emerald! Don’t you deserve something nice?"). That left us enough time to wander around Ipanema, see the beach, eat a hamburger and window shop. The day was a special holiday (so special that the guide books ignore it) celebrating the freeing of the black slaves by Princess Isabel in 1882. Everything was closed, including the banks and the cambios.

My luggage got lost. No one at the Sofitel can find it or account for it after it left the holding area at the docks. This is a downer.

After waiting for nearly 3 ½ hours for the second bag, containing my dress clothes, my new jacket, ties, and other small things, we had to leave for our Rio by Night tour: dinner and a show. No one knows where it is.

The dinner at a Copacabanna Rottisserie - Porcao - was fun, but exhausting. Included with it was dessert, coffee and either water or a soda. Celine and Bob and I shared a bottle of local Merlot, which was excellent. Then it was on to Plataforma for a 95 minute dance extravaganza, an all dance show that presents the entire history of Brazil in popular dance idioms. The kids in this show are sensational, absolutely, without reservation, sensational. So are the costumes, particularly the Carnivao Samba Club costumes. Back at the hotel, late night drinks in the Horse’s Neck Bar. No luggage delivered to the room, but clearly someone came in to search and see if I am lying about it being lost.

11/21

No word about the missing bag, but the search is extended to two other hotels, Le Meridien and the Sheraton Leblon. Open air breakfast at the pool, on a terrace overlooking Copacabanna Beach. (Note: The view of Copacabana Beach from the terrace of our hotel; click on the image to see it larger.) Nine o’clock we’re on a bus again, headed up into the mountains to the little town of Petropolis, named for  Emperor Peter the II of Brazil who built his summer palace there. It’s our principal destination today.

Fog and rain set in, just as it did in Lisbon three weeks ago. Our trip through the mountain passes had an almost mystical quality about them. The town of Petropolis is a disquieting combination of gas stations, auto repair outlets, shut and deteriorating factories and the most beautiful residential architecture this side of the Danube. When the Imperial family built their summer palace here, the court followed suit and fabulous homes were constructed here. The palace itself was a marvelous tour, including the gardens and the carriage museum. Traffic was impossible. Lunch in a lake house looking up at the former casino was great. Charuscoria par excellence!!

HALLELUJAH!! When we got back to the room, my missing bag was miraculously hanging in the closet. All the tags were missing, but other than that it seems to be intact.

In the evening Marcelo, a Saban Jeweler's representative we befriended on board, took us out on the town. We started out with drinks and nibbles at Garota Ipanema, the bar where Antonio Carlos Jobim and his partner wrote the famous Girl from Ipanema song. Their own bar, which we visited, is across the road. Then he took us to the Lapa district to a fabulous Samba bar called Rio Scenarium (By the way it made the front page of the New York Times Sunday Travel section on Thanksgiving weekend). We drank local beer and Caiprinha, danced Samba and laughed until well after one in the morning, then took Robbie and Celine back to their respective hotels (Sheraton in Leblon and ours in Copacabana) and called it a wonderful night.

11/22

A beautiful, sunny day. After breakfast on the terrace we walked down Copacabana beach, shopped a bit, and came back to the hotel to rest up before we headed out again for a walk on the Ipanema side of the hotel, and then find ourselves the right place for lunch. That place was Casa de Feijoada. Lunch was immense and marvelous. At least until the small restaurant was invaded by a busload of noisy German tourists. However, we had just about concluded our meal by that time. Back to the hotel for a rest and some work on the photographs which will be up on this site next week. Then Marcelo picked us up again and it was off to Flamengo to visit the Carmen Miranda Museum: small but nice.

After that it was back to the beach of millionaires and some jewelry shopping at Saban, Marcelo’s business. We weren’t going to buy anything, but we did.

Tonight it’s dinner at La Pre Catalan, one of the world’s greatest French restaurants we hear. We both are looking forward to it.

11:58PM

Dinner among the most beautiful I have ever experienced. If Rio had nothing other than this to offer it would still be a destination point to consider and that’s my last word on the subject of this trip until we get home. That will be sometime this weekend, but don’t expect to get a call. Not just yet. Thanks for reading all this. Hope that you’ll come back and visit again once the photos are up.

 


 

 

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