Spin Doctor (30 page)

I guess it all comes out in the wash.

Shaw's Giselle Gave Me the Wilis

It's always a treat to see a fine performance of
Giselle
but I would encourage anyone within a hundred miles of Manhattan to jeté, don't walk, to see a stunning debut in the role. New York City Ballet's Talia Shaw, back in the rosin after a crippling injury several months ago, imbues the fragile title character with a range of emotions that this writer has not seen since she saw Fonteyn dance the role decades ago. Just because I'm an octogenarian doesn't mean I'm in my dotage; Shaw is the real thing. To his credit, City Ballet's artistic director Peter Martins has increased Shaw's repertoire gradually so that she has had time to grow into the great roles. And as the young country girl jilted by her lover, Shaw truly shines, her emotional connection to the doomed Giselle right on point, capturing both the joy and exuberance of the early scenes and the elegiac wistfulness of the denouement.

Her technique and control have matured over the years as well: sprightly and bouncy when she needs to be, with flawless allegro work; and strong and supple as a reed, with one of the surest and most disciplined arabesques I have seen in years. Perfectly partnered by the always-elegant Damian Woetzel as a truly tormented Albrecht, Talia Shaw's performance is an experience not to be missed and one surely guaranteed to elevate this relatively unknown, homegrown American ballerina into the pantheon of great Giselles.

Lenore Hetter

NewYorkCity
GreatEats for$25 and under

NO PROBLEM

113 DeKalb Avenue

Brooklyn NY

718–555–5924

Review

“A Jamaican vacation right in your own back yard,” any local will tell you that reservations are a must at this hot new Caribbean entry, with “Mama”—the incomparable Meriel Delacour—in the kitchen. At No Problem, you'll savor all the Jamaican staples—curried goat, jerk chicken, and the moistest black fruit cake this side of Kingston, served in a cheery decor by a friendly, laid-back staff that won't set your wallet back.

Alice Finnegan and Dan Carpenter

Alice Finnegan, daughter of Frank and Leah Finnegan of Boca Raton, and Dan Carpenter, son of the late Ronald Carpenter and Helen Carpenter Tavares of Saratoga Springs, have announced their engagement. A September wedding is planned.

The bride-to-be, who will keep her name, is a professional actress. She has performed Off-Broadway, most recently in the long-running interactive comedy
Grandma Finnegan's Wake,
and is currently represented internationally in television and print advertising as the “Snatch Girl.”

Mr. Carpenter is a self-described “Mister Fixit” with a specialty in antique furniture restoration. He is also a folk guitarist. His first CD, cut this past June, is titled
If You Were My Lady
and features Ms. Finnegan on some of the background vocals.

The couple “met cute” in the elevator of Ms. Finnegan's apartment building. “He was carrying one of those little black bags and I thought he was a doctor, especially when he said he was paying a house call. Turns out, he was going to repair his niece's Victorian dollhouse!”

The Actors Resource

Harry Potter
Magic Comes to Broadway

 

The Great White Way will be transformed into Hogwarts when the long-awaited musical version of the first Harry Potter classic,
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
chugs into the Shubert Theater in November. Rumors have been buzzing for months about Brian Vinero's witty lyrics and solid book, which honors the tried-and-true source material while adding its own special brand of magic. J. K. Rowling is said to be over the moon about the way her blockbuster novel is being retooled for the stage. The talented Adam Guettel, the man with the strongest musical theatre pedigree in America, has written the charming and oh-so-singable score. Young Ian Lederer, a Broadway veteran at the tender age of twelve, who really captured hearts when he performed the title role in the workshop versions of HP, is set to star. Let's hope he can nab that Tony Award before his voice changes! For all you potential Hermiones, Snapes, and Dumbledores out there, turn to the Casting section for the AEA casting notice and breakdown.

Simi Sheward

Top Ten College Freshmen (and Women!)

This month,
American Beauty
honors the best and brightest of this year's crop of exiting college freshmen: students who've made a difference in the lives of the people around them.

Nineteen-year-old Molly Lederer's novel,
Confessions of an Overachieving Underachiever,
which chronicles life in the trenches amid the insanely competitive world of New York's private high schools and the high-stakes college admissions race, will be published by Avon Trade next fall. She's also just signed a six-figure deal for the motion picture rights to the book, “The first of many, I hope,” she cheerfully avers. Molly completed her first year at Bennington as an English major. “They didn't have a Creative Writing major anymore when I applied, but after me, they changed their curriculum again.” True, the Vermont college, better known for its free-thinking “fruits and nuts kind of students,” as Molly calls them, has decided to bring back the Creative Writing major.

“When word got out that one of our freshmen had a publishing contract—and then a movie deal—based on a manuscript that was nurtured by her professors here at Bennington, well, there was such a flurry of e-mails asking us about our Creative Writing major that we were ashamed to admit we'd discontinued it,” said Bennington provost Akia Summers. “Thanks to Molly, we're back on track.”

A note to prospective Bennington Creative Writing students: get those college admissions applications in early!

Molly Lederer will be
American Beauty
's student guest editor in the August issue. What does she think of this exciting assignment? “It's all so Sylvia Plath!”

In Praise of OlderWomen

Faith Nesbit has made a sizable donation to the Butler Library in the name of her late husband, Columbia grad (class of '51) Dr. Ben Nesbit. Dr. Nesbit was a pioneer in the field of gastroenterology, but had a passion for “just about everything under the sun,” according to his widow. “Ben loved history, the classics, baseball, Javanese puppet theatre, Italian cuisine, seventeenth-century Flemish architecture…it was hard for me to keep up with him!” Mrs. Nesbit said that she had thought of earmarking the money for a specific area of interest, but she felt that it would be better spent on a diverse range of subjects. “I think Ben would have been very pleased with my decision. He's up there somewhere, smiling.”

Newter & Spade Presses First AmendmentSuit and Wins

Newter & Spade, in a rare pro bono representation, has struck a blow for First Amendment rights. Romance novelist Casey Rabinowitz, who writes under the pseudonym Ciara Romero, was appearing at a Nassau County Barnes & Noble as part of the book tour for her current release,
And then He Kissed Me There
, when two police officers interrupted her reading and arrested her for public lewdness. Rabinowitz spent seventy-two hours in lockup before she was arraigned. Amy Witherspoon, on behalf of Newter & Spade, brought suit in the Eastern District of New York, claiming that the defendant was well within her First Amendment rights to read passages aloud from her own work, “‘however purple and lurid they might be to some auditors'.”

Federal District Court Judge Shera Goldberg ruled for the defendant, awarding fifty thousand dollars for defamation and monetary damages on the counterclaims.

Full decision will be published tomorrow.

A Valentine to Nontraditional Moms

Lesbian moms speak out on everything from overcoming prejudices to icing cupcakes at three
A.M
.

“The most important thing a parent can give a kid is TLC,” says Naomi Sciorra, who with Claude Chan, her life partner, adopted Jin, a Chinese baby girl last year. Claude agrees. “There are so many children out there, particularly children of color, or girls in China, for instance, who have been deemed by their own cultures as less than desirable. How can any reasonable person not find that appalling? Where's their humanity?”

Sciorra is adamant in stating her view that a loving home is “obviously preferable” to life in an orphanage, no matter the nationality, religion, race, or sexual orientation of the parents. “Where is it written that a man plus a woman of the same ethnicity as their child equals the perfect family?”

Claude laughed. “Yeah, think of the number of people who grew up in so-called ‘normal' or ‘mainstream' homes who are in therapy!”

Having spent a good deal of time with Chan and Sciorra, I can safely assure the naysayers that Jin is one very happy—and very lucky—little girl.

Erica Barth

Clients Who Air Their Dirty Linen in More Ways than One

Susan Lederer is a Manhattan psychotherapist. Nothing unusual about that, especially on the Upper West Side, where there are probably more analysts per square inch of real estate than there are parking meters. What makes Lederer's practice so uncommon is that she devotes a significant part of her week to conducting free private therapy sessions in her prewar apartment building's laundry room. Her patients, fellow tenants (and all women, as of this writing) have really cottoned to the idea. “My clients find the atmosphere relaxed and informal—though I wish we could do something about those gray walls—and the various scents of detergent and fabric softener seem to have a beneficial side effect. One of my women calls our sessions ‘aromapsychotherapy.'”

Lederer's clients credit her unorthodox method with any number of outstanding breakthroughs in their emotional and psychological health and well-being. “I would have been mortified to walk into some office filled with ferns and a receptionist who wonders what my neuroses are and all that,” said Faith Nesbit, who now commutes from Brooklyn to her weekly sessions with Lederer. “What can I say? I missed her energy. Or maybe I'm still crazy; I guess some people would say that a seventy-three-year-old woman who hops the D train at dawn to go all the way into Manhattan to talk about herself for fifty minutes is somewhat off her rocker. Susan is a very warm and loving person. Never, ever judgmental. I don't even know if she realizes what a treasure she is.”