Mimi Kramer was born in New Tork in 1957. She attended Swarthmore College and Oxford University. She has worked on the staff¹ of The New York Review of Books for the last two years and has written for The New York Times, The New Leader, and Harper’s Bazaar. Since 1983 she has been the regular theater critic for The New Criterion. She lives in New Tork.

One of the funniest things I’ve heard re­cently was an explanation given to me by Bernard Gersten, executive producer of the Lincoln Center Theater, for why I couldn’t see the revival of John Guare’s The House of Blue Leaves. He said there were a lot of Tony Award voters who had to be accommodated. He said it casually, confidently, as though he were saying something reasonable. And he sounded busy, like a man with a lot of Tony Award voters on his mind. All the same, I thought it was funny. What was Bernard Gersten doing worrying about the Tony Awards? The Tony’s, after all, are the theater industry’s big annual promotional event, administered by the commercial the­ater and held primarily for the purpose of enhancing box-office sales. But Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is one of New York City’s leading cultural institutions. I couldn’t help wondering, as I put the receiver: down, whether wooing Tony Award votes is really Mr. Gersten’s job.

I wrote Mr. Gersten a letter, stating clear­ly what I understood