A Good Case for Staying Home
The big selling point of San Jose Rep’s season opener, The Death of the Novel, is not that it’s a world premiere. The draw also isn’t that it’s a new play by Jonathan Marc Feldman, the screenwriter of Swing Kids, the unintentionally hilarious movie melodrama about the oppressed swing subculture of Nazi Germany (best summed up by the teary little boy yelling “Swing heil!” as his brother is carted off by the Gestapo for doing the Lindy Hop). No, the big deal about this play is that it stars Vincent Kartheiser, best known for playing the weaselly little shit Pete Campbell on Mad Men (and the entirely different weaselly little shit Connor on Angel before that).
The Hoarder of Love
Chicks dig Anatol, and Anatol digs chicks. Exactly why the ladies are drawn to the title character of Arthur Schnitzler’s play Anatol is a bit of a mystery. As played by Mike Ryan in Aurora Theatre Company’s production, he’s a very average guy, not notably attractive or charismatic. He’s fickle, jealous, easily flustered, weak-willed and peevish. He is, however, monomaniacally devoted to romance—the kind of guy who wins women over simply by laying it on thick and not giving up until they give in. He convinces himself that he’s madly in love with each one, whether or not he’s already madly in love with someone else. Anatol loves not wisely but too prolifically.
