"...at times it began to sound a lot like the 1960s"

That's Chicago theater critic Hedy Weiss writing about last weekend's Humana New Plays Festival in the Sun Times. (full article here) She apparently came down from the windy city and managed to look down her nose long enough to notice this blindingly obvious fact: "the festival [...] often seemed like a temporary blue zone in a decidedly red state."

Nahhh! Ya think so? I decided not to attend the Humana series this year after reading the plot summaries and reviews in the LEO. Way, way, way too leftist for my tastes. And having been out of the theater loop since I left Louisville to join the Corps in 99, I couldn't score any comp tix. If a playwright wants to protest against the war to the point of offending veterans, she's welcome to do so. It's a free country. But I'm certainly not going to pay to see it! Even sophistocated, blue-state critic Weiss was unimpressed, calling Kia Corthron's Moot the Messenger a "long, self-indulgent, shrilly finger-wagging play..." She continues...

"Corthron rails against the war in Iraq, the corporatization of the media, the inequities of racial hiring and firing, the class-based nature of the U.S. military and more."

... thus confirming that my decision to skip the festival was indeed a wise one, at least as far as my blood pressure is concerned.

[cross posted at The Cardinal Coalition]