Thanks to a canceled flight, I missed the long-awaited August
Wilson/Robert Brustein showdown. So when padding about the streets
of New York later that night I happened upon a television newsperson
whose beat includes the theater, I naturally asked her how the big
fight went. Alas, her editors had dispatched her to cover Liza
Minnelli’s ill-starred run in Victor/Victoria (by “ill-starred” I
mean that, since Miss Minnelli’s arrival on the scene, her leading
man had taken to calling in sick). Before you start sniggering at
the priorities of TV news, it should be said that Liza’s woes— and
the audience’s—were a peculiarly vivid example of the issue at the
heart of Wilson/Brustein, though it’s probably not the issue they
thought they were talking about.

Obviously, I can’t review Wilson/Brustein as a performance (I’m
eschewing the judicial formulation—Roe v. Wade—in favor of
the theatrical: Marat/Sade, Noise/Funk, Victor/Victoria, etc).
But, regardless of how they played it, what they said is worth
discussing in and of itself. My precedent for this is Brustein
himself, who’s not averse occasionally to analyzing a production he
hasn’t seen on the basis of its script. As a much hyped event, the
Town Hall soi-disant slugfest falls into the same category as the
glitzy benefits and memorial services I’ve remarked on before: the
hottest tickets in town are not for American drama but rather for
its obsequies. Indeed, the “buzz” over Wilson/Brustein is the
absurd reductioof present fashion: in a world which