Tag Archives: real life

All the Monkeys Aren’t in the Zoo

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White-faced monkey Some of them, like the fellow in the photo at right, just fled the balcony of our Costa Rica hotel room. A week in this Central American paradise is an opportunity to see a huge diversity of wildlife. Only about half the size of the U.S. state of Ohio, Costa Rica has 1/20th of the world’s biodiversity: “nearly 8% of the world’s bird species, 10% of the world’s butterfly species, 10% of the world’s bat species and 20% of the world’s hummingbird species,” according to our highly-recommended guidebook by James Kaiser. In all, a quarter of Costa Rica’s land has been set aside in national parks and preserves to maintain this astonishing homeland for so many creatures.

On our too brief week-long visit, we didn’t have to go outside the hotel grounds to watch both white-throated capuchin monkeys and see (and hear) howler monkeys. Our hotel grounds on Guanacaste province’s Papagayo peninsula also was home to white-nosed coatls (coatimundis), which the locals call raccoons—their familiar relatives both zoologically and behaviorally—two kinds of iguanas, the green and “black,” lizards of various sizes, diverse butterflies, and many birds that I could hear but could not find in the trees. Every morning I watched a hummingbird take a morning sip from the flowering the trees outside our balcony.In the nearby waters we saw flying fish and snorkelers described puffer fish, sea urchins, and bright tropicals.

Jesus Christ LizardA boating excursion on the Tempisque River in Palo Verde National Park gave us the chance to see the so-called Jesus Christ lizard, whose webbed toes allow it to “walk on water” for distances of 10 to 15 feet, very handy when escaping a terrestrial predator. The real reptilian attraction of the river tour is, of course, the crocodiles. Aided by the low tide, we saw them in grinning profusion. The 12-foot beauty pictured at bottom was quietly sunning, seemingly oblivious to the gawking boat passengers. Then she decided to have some fun by rolling into the river and drenching the humans with muddy water.

The river trip was led by our excellent guide Jose from the aptly named “Tropical Comfort Tours” and an eagle-eyed boat captain. They were able to spot for us numerous local animals tourists’ untrained eyes would have overlooked: all three species of night herons, all three species of white egrets, the little blue heron (whose presence signals river health), and many more. En route to the river we saw wood storks, flocks of parakeets, the white-throated magpie-jay, and crested caracara (my spotting).

Crocodile Even though I’d spent a week researching, reading about, and memorizing the look of the country’s various poisonous snakes, did not see one. (Yay!!) High winds caused the authorities to close the mountain and volcano parks that were some distance from our hotel, because of the risk of falling trees and poisonous fumes from a rumblingly active volcano. (Silver lining: the winds kept mosquitoes and other bugs away.) These protected gems contain much of Costa Rica’s biological diversity, including hundreds of orchid species. We have to go back!

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Going Like Hell Again!

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Ford GT, auto racing, LeMans

(photo: Ford Motor Company)

Caught up in publicity about Ford Motor Company’s return to the prestigious 24-hour LeMans endurance race, only four months away, I’m reproducing my review of the epic battle between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II (“The Deuce”) below. It’s a terrific read!

Once again, in this year’s race, a Ford GT will represent the company, this time with a lightweight carbon fiber chassis and advanced aerodynamics. Most surprising, it will be running on a V6 EcoBoost engine against the V8s and V12s of its competitors. Ford is confident the V6 EcoBoost can do the job because it has powered Fords to the checkered flag at both the 12-hour Sebring in 2014 and the Rolex 24 at Daytona last year. See how this bright new red-white-and-Ford-Blue competitor evolved from its predecessors.

Go Like Hell: Ford, Ferrari, and Their Battle for Speed and Glory at Le Mans, by A. J. Baime, read by Jones Allen, recounts classic duels of machines and drivers in the French countryside. It includes just enough biography of Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari to understand the motivations of these two rivals, willing to stake their fortunes, their companies’ futures, and (all too often) their drivers’ lives on this grueling competition. The Deuce believed—correctly—that supremacy in the racing circuit would lead to sales of Ford cars. And, when the Ford GTs came in 1-2-3 in 1966, his big gamble paid off. This sweep was followed up with wins in the next three LeMans races.

The components that had to be developed to survive the 24-hour race at Le Mans were testaments to product reliability as well as power, and many advances originally developed for racing vehicles—such as independent suspensions, high-performance tires, disc brakes, and push-button starters—have found their way into passenger cars. (The new 2016 racer already has inspired features built into Ford’s GT Supercar, available this year.)

For Enzo Ferrari, whose interest in consumer cars was always secondary to racing, the point was being the world’s best and proving it in the world’s most prestigious and dangerous sports car race, Le Mans. If you’re at all familiar with auto racing’s “golden age,” the big names are all here in this book: Carroll Shelby, A. J. Foyt, Dan Gurney, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Ken Miles, Bruce McLaren, and an upstart kid from Nazareth, Pennsylvania, who took the pole position in the Indianapolis 500 the year I saw the race, Mario Andretti. To get an idea of the speeds they achieve, Baime noted that at top speed they complete the 100-yard distance of a football field in one second.

This was a fast, fun read that shifts between Dearborn, Shelby’s racing car development team working for Ford in Southern California, and Ferrari’s workshop in Maranello, Italy. For a Detroit girl like me, whose grandfather, father, and many uncles worked for the Ford Motor Company, it was a thrill a minute! But even for people who don’t get goosebumps when they hear those Formula One engines roar, Baime’s cinematic recreation of the classic Le Mans races of 1965, 66, and 67, with all their frustrations, excitement, and tragedy is a spectacular true story.

*****Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence

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Declaration of Independence, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson

Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson (graphic: wikimedia)

By Joseph J. Ellis – What a wonderful way Pulitzer Prize-winner Ellis has of distilling complicated historical events and people into a readable narrative! I’ve read his His Excellency, George Washington, too, and for the first time truly appreciated our first President. Both books are relatively short—around 200 pages—so if you need a doorstop, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

In Revolutionary Summer, Ellis takes the reader through the events of 1776, both before and after the Declaration of Independence. He says most histories of that era concentrate either on the political machinations within Independence Hall or on the travails of George Washington leading the ragtag Continental Army. Ellis’s contention is that the two threads—military and political—are inextricably intertwined, and the fates of each depended on the other.

As an example, the individual colonies-cum-states put their local political autonomy (an early manifestation of “states’ rights”) above the needs of the combined entity that the delegates in Philadelphia were promoting. While they’d occasionally contribute a few ill-trained and ill-equipped militias to the cause, they wouldn’t necessarily respond to Washington’s pleas for more.

On the political side, says Ellis, “Virginia regarded itself as the most important player in this political crisis, and the Virginians sent their resolutions [regarding independence] to all the other colonies on the assumption that they set the standard for others to imitate.” This mindset accords perfectly with genealogical research I’ve done about my family, in which early Georgia settlers from Virginia generally held themselves in much higher esteem than the “uncouth and rowdy” settlers from the Carolinas (my people!).

On the military side, Ellis makes the interesting point that “both (the British and American) armies would have been better served if their respective commanders had exchanged places. For Howe, in targeting the territory rather than the Continental Army, pursued the cautious strategy when he should have been bold. And Washington, in his very decision to defend New York, pursued the bold strategy when he should have been cautious.”

This book is a highly readable refresher if you’ve neglected your American History since, say, 10th grade. The United States has a great historical legacy, but by and large greatness is not necessarily found in the teaching of history nor in its textbooks. Revolutionary Summer is a bracing corrective.

Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano

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Elton JohnHitting the jackpot in Las Vegas may be dicey, but you can count on Elton John’s Million Dollar Piano show, which debuted in 2011, for a first-class entertainment experience there that blends visual and musical wizardry.

Sir Elton’s show at the Colosseum at Caesar’s Palace includes 20 top tunes in two hours. Joining him is a superb backup band including drummer Nigel Olsson, percussionist Ray Cooper and guitarist Davey Johnstone, each of whom has played with Sir Elton for over four decades. They know each other—and the material— so well that the groove is stirring and strong.

Sir Elton, who turns 69 in March, is celebrating a 50-year collaboration with lyricist Bernie Taupin. His piano playing remains rollicking and his voice is still strong (for a limited time, you can hear a BBC interview with him here). The Colosseum has excellent sight lines and sound that brings the audience right into the mix. At the end of the show, some in the front rows go onstage to sing around the piano with Sir Elton.

It took Yamaha five years to design and engineer the piano expressly for the space and show. Co-producer and lighting designer Patrick Woodroffe explained, “I always thought that the piano would be an extraordinary thing, (but) I wasn’t sure how we would integrate it into the show. It wasn’t until she (the piano is named Blossom) was plugged in, turned on and tuned up that I suddenly felt like she had come home.”

The piano is an “electronic paintbox,” which augments and enhances each tune and includes photographic images and colorful effects. For example, when Sir Elton sings “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” a photo montage appears showing him in his outlandish outfits at various stages in his performing career. For “Crocodile Rock,” the piano edges and backdrop are green glowing scales. According to the show’s website, the 19 animated films and videos that the piano is keyed to were completed in less than four months and involved 175 people working 24/7 in London. The “canvas” is a tennis-court-sized screen behind the band.

Co-producer Mark Fisher had free rein to imagine the set design. “What I was imagining was the creation of an over-the-top world that presented Elton as I saw him, dancing on the knife-edge that separates high art from low camp,” adding “I was looking to balance the huge size of the Colosseum stage with the human scale of one man at the piano.” Huge hanging keyboards, rockets and Sun King images, along with tall guard dogs whose gaze is focused on Sir Elton, add visual interest to the vast expanse.

Sir Elton is in Japan and Australia on tour now, but he and the Million Dollar Piano return to Caesar’s from April 16-30, 2016. It’s a sure bet for an evening of great entertainment. For more information, go to Caesar’s website.

This review is by Tucson-based guest reviewer Jodi Goalstone, who writes the highly entertaining blog Going Yard, Offbeat Baseball Musings.

Savannah’s Southern Charms

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horse, ship

Figurehead, Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Last week I wrote about the terrific walking tours we did in Savannah last Thanksgiving. And there was so much more! Here are just some of the highlights:

  • Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum (41 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard; ) at the William Scarbrough House and Gardens– If you like stories of the old sailing days and maritime disasters, as I do, this is your place. No sightings of Captain Jack Aubrey, but unbelievably gorgeous ship models, carvings, artworks, and short videos. Note: a lot of ships have been named Savannah!
  • Inspired, we did the one-hour Savannah Riverboat Cruise of the harbor and from the water, you see the city differently. Savannah was a strategic port city in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars and today is one of the nation’s largest seaports, with direct access to the Atlantic Ocean. Having taken a lot of riverboat tours, I can authoritatively say this was one of the best narrations ever. Interesting and informative. Located at 9 East River Street.
  • Too much city prompted us to take the short drive to the 175-acre Oatland Island Wildlife Center, which is quite manageable for people of all abilities (strollers), and you see some pretty impressive critters up close (gators, mountain lions, buffalo, wolves, and much more) and in their natural habitats. There’s a boardwalk through the salt marsh and well-marked trails: 711 Sandtown Road; 912/395-1212.
  • Congregation Mickve Israel on Monterey Square was founded in 1733 with the largest single migration of Jews to the colonies—mostly Sephardic Jews who’d fled to London to escape Portugal’s Inquisition. The sanctuary is in gothic style (consecrated in 1878) and its museum includes two 15th century deerskin Torahs.
  • Being in town at Thanksgiving, we got to see the Christmas Lights Boat Parade on the Savannah River, with scores of boats “decked out” in lights, displays, Santas, music, and fun! We initially watched from the balcony of one of my favorite restaurants of the trip—Vic’s on the River (26 East Bay Street)—then from the esplanade.
  • cemetery angel

    Bonaventure Cemetery (photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

    On the must-see list (but too far out for the trolley tours) is Bonaventure Cemetery (330 Bonaventure Road), site of the unforgettable scene with the hoodoo priestess in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Alas, the statue of the “Bird Girl” from the cover of that book had to be moved to a more secure location. But there you’ll find an unforgettable southern gothic atmosphere, as well as graves of national treasures Johnny Mercer, whose tombstone inscription is “And the Angels Sing” and Conrad Aiken, whose reads “Cosmos Mariner, Destination Unknown.”

 

Not to mention Forsyth Park where the elaborate fountain reportedly came from a Sears, Roebuck catalog, the Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, the beautiful Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, the childhood home of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts . . .

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The Big Short

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The Big Short

Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale

Five stars for this comedy-drama (trailer) based on the best-selling Michael Lewis book about the 2008 financial crisis and the lonely voices in the wilderness calling, “Housing bubble,” “Housing bubble,” “This will end baaaadleeee.” The idea that mortgage-backed securities could be anything other than rock solid so went against conventional wisdom that no one listened. But, as we know now, these securities had become more and more vulnerable as riskier loans were bundled into them, and the chaff soon outweighed the wheat.

It takes a bit of understanding about how this financial market operated to grasp the significance of the action. Director Adam McKay, who wrote the screenplay with Lewis and Charles Randolph, cleverly provides the necessary background, having characters break the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience. For example, from her symbolic bubble bath and sipping champagne, actress Margot Robbie tells us what a financial bubble actually means. It’s “ a terrifically enjoyable movie that leaves you in a state of rage, nausea and despair,” says A.O. Scott in his New York Times review, which includes a clip from McKay on some of the clever ways the film explains the financial goings-on.

The cast does an exemplary job of embuing characters with strong personalities. Christian Bale plays Dr. Michael Burry, a loner physician-turned-hedge-fund-manager who figures out the problem early (and whose character confirms my aversion to heavy metal music). He takes the unprecedented step of actually looking at the individual mortgages bundled into the securities being offered and sees that many of them are weak and involve adjustable rate loans. When their interest rates go up, the homeowners will default. This, to him is an investment opportunity; he’ll bet against the mortgage market. The banks are happy to back his scheme (involving credit default swaps), seeing it as a sure-fire winner for them.

One of the banks he approaches has on staff a skeptical analyst, played by Ryan Gosling, who believes the good doctor may just be right. He convinces the unconventional trading firm led by Mark Baum (Steve Carell) to invest in the swaps, too. In one of the movie’s funniest sequences, Baum sends staff to Florida to investigate some of these mortgages. They find unbuilt houses, a forest of “for sale” signs, and two beach-bum mortgage brokers (Max Greenfield and Billy Magnussen) , who don’t hesitate to say they will insure basically anything. “Why are they confessing?” Baum whispers to his staffer. “They’re not confessing. They’re bragging,” he replies. Similarly, Melissa Leo, as an official at an investment rating agency, is badgered into explaining how, if her firm rated investments accurately, the banks would just take their business down the street.

In a Colorado garage, another pair of youthful investors (played by John Magaro and Finn Wittrock) wants to parlay $30 million into a bigger fortune. They set out to New York to figure out how. There they stumble onto the real estate problem and see the credit default swaps as their big chance, but they need connections, and they get help from their neighbor back home, a disenchanted former investment banker (Brad Pitt).

It’s telling that the few people who foresaw and took advantage of the inevitable crisis were all, one way or another, Wall Street outsiders. They weren’t unaware that their gains were made on the backs of everyday Americans who lost billions in housing value, jobs and homes, pension fund value, and savings. Meanwhile, the many individuals and institutions whose carelessness, greed, or criminality created the bubble in the first place have not been called to account. No less an expert than Paul Krugman has written, “I think (the movie) does a terrific job of making Wall Street skullduggery entertaining, of exploiting the inherent black humor of how it went down.” And, even more important, he says it “got the underlying economic, financial, and political story right.” And it’s still a story lots of people don’t want Americans to hear.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 87%; audiences, 91%.

Christmastime In NYC

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New York, Christmas

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

New York, Christmas

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

New York, Christmas

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

 

 

Best Salvation Army Bellringer Team Ever!!

Trumbo

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Bryan Cranston, Trumbo

Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo

After practically having the frequently shown previews for Trumbo memorized (trailer), I finally saw the film itself. (Though one trailer scene with Helen Mirren didn’t actually appear in the movie. Weird.) This is the second movie in the past week that celebrates the role of righteous writers in upholding social values: Trumbo supporting “freedom of thought and expression,” and Spotlight pursuing “truth, however uncomfortable.” I’m basking in reflected authorial glory!

As you undoubtedly know, Trumbo is the story of the Hollywood 10, writers blacklisted during the communist witch-hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s. Joe McCarthy and all that. When called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Dalton Trumbo (played beautifully by Bryan Cranston) and the other nine refused to give Congress information about their beliefs or to rat out others in the film industry. As a result, a number of them including Trumbo went to prison for contempt of Congress (“I am contemptuous of Congress,” he said after the HUAC hearing).

He was in the slammer for 10 months and once he was out could no longer get work.

Meanwhile, some industry personages—in the movie, producer Buddy Ross (Roger Bart) and actor Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg)—saw their careers going up in smoke and did testify (though in real life, Robinson did not name names). The movie effectively skewers that Great American Flag-Waving Hero, John Wayne, who managed to avoid any military service during World War II and Korea. “If you’re going to act as if you won the war single-handedly,” Trumbo tells him, “it would be more believable if you’d actually served,” as he and so many of his black-listed colleagues had.

They represent the tip of the iceberg of people harmed by the virulent anti-Communism of the day, and although the movie is about the Hollywood 10, it’s really about the Hollywood One, Trumbo, the most accomplished of the lot. The composite character Arlen Hird has the unenviable job of being Trumbo’s verbal sparring partner and representing an amalgam of several of the harder-line writers’ views. Trumbo is unfailingly supportive of him, even though he inserts his political views into scripts (which Trumbo rewrites) and clearly doesn’t trust Trumbo. (This is where the “You talk like a radical, but you live like a rich man” line from the trailer fits in.)

While not a lot of acting was required of Diane Lane as Trumbo’s wife, she did a fine job, and Helen Mirren is perfect as the odious Hedda Hopper, blackmailer without portfolio. As writer Hird, comedian Louis C.K.’s acting inexperience shows a bit, as he’s up against such acting superstars, while John Goodman is all prickly geniality and Alan Tudyk plays a credible Ian McLellan Hunter. Hunter wins the Academy Award for the Roman Holiday script (the Gregory Peck, Audrey Hepburn classic), but Trumbo wrote it. In fact, Trumbo and the others write many screenplays for which they receive credit only belatedly, if at all. The back of the blacklist can’t be broken until a few Hollywood luminaries are willing to give appropriate screen credit.

Directed by Jay Roach with a solid script from John McNamara. While in their vision, the character of Trumbo doesn’t change much over the course of the story—except perhaps to learn not to take what he most cherishes for granted—“he is no more or less principled at the end than he was at the start,” said Anthony Lane in The New Yorker. He is forgiving, though, and in the end acknowledges that all humans are a mix of good acts and bad (except perhaps for Hedda Hopper).

The real opportunity for learning lies with the audience. While those anti-Communist days may now seem rather quaint—Congress taking on a bunch of two-fingered typists—there always are people who believe they know best what other people should think, who believe others are too dim or inattentive to grasp hidden political messages, who think citizens are like children who have to be protected from difficult ideas. That, Trumbo seems to say, is still the danger. Another film well worth the price of a ticket.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 71%; audiences 84%.

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Spotlight

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Spotlight, Boston Globe

Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, & Brian D’Arcy James in Spotlight

Shades of Woodward and Bernstein, the based-on-a-true story Spotlight (trailer) follows the actions of an investigative journalism team way out on a limb in Catholic Boston. They’re not just in pursuit of the story of clergy child sex abuse, their mission is also to expose the shameful cover-up of abusive priests, and the institutional shortcomings that allowed them to carry on. Unlike today’s social media blowhards (and political candidates), they can’t just make accusations; they need actual proof.

A nice coincidence is the support the reporters receive from another Ben Bradlee—this one Ben Bradlee, Jr., played by John Slattery, who never has a good hair day. Like his father in the Watergate era, he lets the reporters run, even though he’s initially skeptical they’ll come up with anything.

Crusading journalists are a social corrective we have largely lost in the era of declining newsroom budgets and staffs and the competition for sound bites and snarky bits. The reporters in this film reporters fill the job description, pushed by a fierce desire to expose the truth. Sometimes, of course, that leads to more truth than they might desire—closer to home truths of different kinds. They’re after the kind of story that wins Pulitzers (and did), but more important to the journalists, they know it’s an important story for the affected families and a sobering story about how evil can hide in plain sight.

The principals include the Boston Globe’s new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber) and his investigative “Spotlight” team, led by Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton of the pursed lips), with reporters Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo, who sticks his head out like a turtle, so eager is he to grab onto the story), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachael McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James). The actors do a fine job, as do Stanley Tucci and Billy Crudup in smaller roles.

As written by Tom McCarthy and Josh Singer and directed by McCarthy, the film is a “magnificent nerdy process movie—a tour de force of filing cabinet cinema,” says Justin Chang in Variety. Yet it is never uninteresting. Even better, it is never sanctimonious.

The film’s tension comes from fear that the Church will find out what the Globe is up to and exert its considerable influence to put a stop to it or—and almost worse from the reporters’ point of view—the Boston Herald will scoop them. If they can delay publication until they have proof top Church leaders knew about the abuse, it would be impossible for them to persist in the “few bad apples” claim.

In sum, “A taut story, well-told,” says Jim Lane in the Sacramento News & Review.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating: 98%; audiences 96%.

The Second Mrs. Wilson

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Woodrow Wilson, Edith Wilson, President

Woodrow and Edith Wilson

A timely new play at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ, especially for political junkies, is Joe DiPietro’s The Second Mrs. Wilson. You may recall that Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke during his second term as President and that, for many months afterward, his second wife, Edith, was in all but title Chief Executive. Detractors called her the nation’s first female president.

This was the time when the treaty ending the appalling First World War was being considered. In Paris, Wilson had helped negotiate the treaty and, back in the States, he campaigned tirelessly for it. He’d been president of Princeton University (and, briefly Governor of New Jersey) before becoming President, so may have had an especially keen appreciation of the nearly 20 million soldier and civilian lives lost, worldwide, many of the soldiers young men who were age peers of those he’d led at the University. In 1919, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, then, on a public speaking tour to promote the treaty, he collapsed.

Edith was his second wife. For nearly 30 years, he’d been happily married to Ellen Axson, but she died early in his first term, a loss that left him devastated. Almost miraculously, it must have seemed, Edith Bolling appeared on the scene and renewed his zest for living.

A two-hour play necessarily collapses and condenses a great many events and emotions, and this play focuses on his love for his new wife and her dedication both to him and his foremost concern: ratification of the Versailles Treaty, which included adoption of the League of Nations. Wilson believed the League was the key to sustained world peace and the avoidance of future conflicts. But with him bedridden, the political forces rose against the League, dramatized in the play through Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Republican opposition, combined with Wilson’s inability to consider any compromise in the legislative language, ultimately denied him this victory.

No one knows how history would have played out had America joined the League, but certainly the country’s post-war isolationism drastically weakened the organization during the period leading to World War II. Although the play is grounded in events of almost a century ago, we see today the problems of intransigent political opposition, when politicians make decisions not on what is best for the people they represent, their country, or the world, but their own political gain.

The play is brilliantly acted by John Glover (Wilson) and Laila Robins (Edith), whom we have seen and appreciated in numerous previous productions. Michael McGrath as Wilson’s aide Joe Tumulty and Stephen Spinella as his long-time colleague Col. Edward House are particularly poignant, facing their chief’s decline. The second act could be somewhat shorter, though Glover’s portrayal of Wilson’s initial extreme disability and the gradual return of functioning is both masterful and deeply moving.

It’s not possible to discuss this play without reference to recent events at Princeton University , where black students have protested the naming of various university units—including the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs—after Princeton’s and the nation’s former president. Wilson supported racial segregation a hundred years ago, when that was Americans’ predominant view. Judging the past by the standards of the present is always problematic, and in this case ignores the tremendous good Wilson—deemed one of the nation’s greatest progressive presidents—contributed to social justice through expanded voter and worker rights and many other measures.

The Second Mrs. Wilson is on stage until November 29.