I am breaking a promise I made to myself to never, never, ever write another letter to a critic, no matter how inane or insulting their review.
I had been doing an excellent job until I read your shrill and wholly ignorant attack on The Beauty Queen of Leenane ("A Royal Mess," Mia Leonin, March 8). I have neither the time nor the inclination to try to educate you in the subtleties or nuances of the theater art. And I will not try to explain exactly what the motivations of each character in this play were. (Perhaps I should send you a script to read, since you obviously didn't listen to the play.) Nor will I try to enlighten you regarding the Irish psyche and the true world of Leenane. In my opinion that would be frustrating to the point of looking for a poker of my own.
You seemed unable to grasp even the most obvious aspect of this production, whether it was a design conceit, plot point, or dialect. If I didn't doubt your credentials as a qualified critic of theater before, I certainly do now. Shameful and shallow is the only way to describe your utterly uninformed review of this play.
You do, though, have the distinction of being the only critic of the nearly one dozen who have witnessed this play and have written about it to have dismissed the work in such a frivolous and flimsy way. What did everyone else see and hear that you didn't?
The Beauty Queen of Leenane is a beautifully written play full of power, pain, and humor. Martin McDonagh is a playwright of enormous gifts, and his work will be done for many years to come. For my part (as director), I am extremely proud of this production and the work of the cast and crew. Audiences apparently concur, and their response has been outstanding. Word of mouth has been great, and ticket sales remain strong. In other words we have a hit here. So sorry you missed it.
Kenneth Kay, director
Caldwell Theatre Company
Boca Raton
Imagine! She partook of the swami's aerointerest!
I enjoyed reading Amy Roe's article on yoga ("Body & Soul," March 1). Beautifully written!
I live in Plantation Acres near the Sawgrass mall and have been teaching Hatha yoga for 30 years in the area's community schools. I attended classes at the Sivananda Yoga Center in downtown Fort Lauderdale for many years and taught classes there for six years starting in 1968. And I visited Swami Vishnu's ashrams in Canada and Paradise Island, where he taught many classes himself. I even have a picture of me taken with the swami and one of his famous airplanes!
Kathy Oliff
via the Internet
The ladies of the evening are lonely down south:
Not only should the City of Hollywood bust the hotels and motels on Federal Highway for allowing the johns and hookers to "hook up" for an hour at a time, but the state and federal governments should force treatment on drug-addicted prostitutes while they're in prison ("Street Life," Emma Trelles, February 15). These governments should help them get jobs, too.
But perhaps if the hookers would move a little north and west into the Emerald Hills section of Hollywood, then the mayor and commissioners might get a little more serious about this problem. It's their 'hood.
But never mind. They're too busy screwing the citizens of Hollywood with their white-collar giveaways to be bothered with drug-addicted, AIDS-infected whores! So, in essence, we get screwed by the hookers and the city politicians. How was it for you, my fellow Hollywoodians? It was (and remains) lousy for me.
Harvey Slavin
Hollywood
How about a little compassion, folks?
It seems that the basic problem of the people Emma Trelles described is poverty. Until we address the root cause, we will continue to arrest and imprison more people than most Western countries combined.
We need to move more in the direction of socialism, like Sweden or Denmark. I also blame the poor for not organizing for their own betterment, instead of drowning their sorrows in drugs. Until this happens the poor will always be with us.
Bob Andrews
Fort Lauderdale
