#52: I was in the presence of Andrew Scott
Death By Consumption
4/29/25 - 5/5/25
Well well well, if it isn't 1 year of Death By Consumption. A whole year of consuming things, and so far I haven't died! I started this as a thing I just wanted to do for myself, tired of how easy it has become to mindlessly consume words and images and art without stopping to think about any of it. I wondered if, in writing down my thoughts, no matter how stupid or anodyne or, well, thoughtless, if it would help clarify the way I felt about a piece of art — or maybe, if in the act of observing my consumption patterns, if I would change what I consume (would I wean myself off the reality TV teat?).
I haven't found an answer to any of it yet, but I can at least say that I've stopped feeling total dread on a Monday when I realize I haven't written anything yet! And I do seem to be retaining more details about things I've consumed, once I've written about them — the latest Sally Rooney has so far stayed more vivid than any of her earlier books — so at least some part of the plan is working.
But the most surprising and rewarding part of this is (brace for sincerity) you (awwwww). I'm genuinely surprised, touched, and semi-mortified (working with my therapist on that last part) whenever someone says something complimentary about these emails, when you reply to them, or when you forward it to a friend who subscribes. Reaching the point where the majority of subscribers are strangers rather than friends or family was a big milestone we crossed a while ago, and it remains baffling that anyone who isn't being held at gunpoint by me actually takes the time to read a weekly email containing some random gay's thoughts about which actor is hot or which psychos on reality TV deserve a Nobel.
In the iconic words of the Countess Luann:
So, thank you for not finding these emails upsetting.
It's a New York-focused issue this week, as I went to the theater, darling, to see Andrew Scott kind of have a mental breakdown on stage. I also watched a stupid new movie, read a spectacular new book, and got worked up over two big new articles about how New York kind of sucks sometimes.
Vanya — at the Lucille Lortel Theater
I’m really not a one-man show kind of guy, but I will make an exception for Andrew Scott. We went on Friday night (thank you to Jenny for getting tickets, like, 10 months ago! If you are bad at planning, it’s important to have friends who are able to plan life more than a few hours out) and I wasn’t sure what to expect. Would he be doing, like, voices? Running back and forth while speaking to himself? Putting on silly little hats to differentiate the characters? The answer, it turns out, was yes, all of the above!
In Vanya, Andrew Scott plays every character in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, all alone on an unchanging stage, for over 2 hours, uninterrupted. And, yes, Andrew pitches his voice differently based on the character — a high girlish lilt for Helena, a deep and slow brogue for Michael — which does feel a little silly at times. He stays in the same costume the entire time, adding a prop or two to differentiate characters, like a tennis ball he impatiently bounces as Michael, or a dish towel he carries as Sonia. This helped me figure out who was who, sometimes, but a large percentage of my energy throughout the show was spent on simply trying to track all the characters. I kept getting pulled out of the story because I had to think: wait, is this Ivan or is this the old dude? (The show knows this is a thing the audience is going to have to do, and pokes fun at it, like when Andrew suddenly says to thin air, “Elizabeth! How long have you been here?” which was a funny moment until I realized, oh no, I would now have to keep track of Elizabeth, too.)
It probably helps to have been familiar with Uncle Vanya before, but, tragically, I was not. So I was the idiot who wondered, 90 minutes into the play, when the fuck the titular Uncle Vanya would show up, only to realize near the end of the whole thing that Vanya is a nickname for Ivan, who had been there the whole time. By the end of the play, I was genuinely exhausted simply from following along — once the characters started giving a dramatic monologue and leaving, one by one, I silently cheered each departure, happy to be ticking characters off my mental rolodex. 3 gone, 5 to go.
Now, it must be said that Andrew Scott is a spectacular actor, before I say this next part: this is very much what you picture when you hear "one-man show". There were moments when, watching Andrew run back and forth while putting a scarf on and off, speaking in two different voices to himself, I had the distinct feeling of watching a 7-year-old make up a play on the spot. It felt at times like we had been invited to a special performance night at a mental institution. It felt, at times, like a senior thesis performance at Tisch. It wants you to know it is Art with a capital A.
Once we passed the two-hour mark, I started to feel deeply exhausted — not just for me, but for Andrew. How he pulls this off is, genuinely, a feat, like a mixture of acting and athletics. I don’t know how he manages to do anything after the show at all (according to Instagram, he got dinner with Glenn Close after our performance, so I guess I can see how he could muster up the energy for that). And when he wasn’t hopping from character to character, and dialed into a specific character for an extended time, I would think: holy shit, this is a motherfucking actor.
With less than 300 seats, the theater is intensely intimate (I could hear the guy softly snoring in the back row, and a stomach growling on the other side of the room), so I could stare directly into Andrew’s eyes as they welled up with tears. In those moments, when the one-man gimmick dropped away and he was simply performing, he held the audience in the palm of his hand in a way that could never translate through the screen. Those moments felt genuinely transcendent, and I would understand on a visceral level how theater can be so uniquely powerful. And then he’d slap a little scarf on and do a silly voice and we’d be back in the mental institution.
Vanya is, clearly, designed for Andrew Scott to simply show off his talents, which would be annoying in a lesser actor’s hands (I imagined Bradley Cooper thinking he has the skills or charisma to pull something off like this, and felt sad for him) — but Andrew deserves to show off! He’s very talented! Also: very handsome! So, no, Vanya did not turn me into a one-person show kind of guy, but if anyone could do it, it would have been Andrew Scott.
Drop (2025) — on Apple TV
A knowingly stupid movie that’s a silly, stupid time. I liked the premise (woman on a date keeps getting airdropped threatening messages forcing her to do stuff or they’ll kill her son and babysitter) and Meghann Fahy is great in this, so it was enjoyable, though not at all groundbreaking or super memorable. But it’s really not trying to be that — it’s just a dumb movie! Who cares! It did, however, get an enormous LOL out of me at the text from the killer that just said in an exasperated tone: “ARE YOU STUPID?” Rude!
The Book of Love, by Kelly Link (2024) — paperback
Sometimes I delay reading a book I’ve been excited about for a while, and I’m not sure why. I guess it’s kind of the same principle as eating Starbursts in order from yellow to pink — the act of saving something I know will be good makes it, somehow, better. For whatever reason, last week I decided it was finally time to dive into The Book of Love, Kelly Link’s first novel, and I tore through all nearly 600 pages in a couple days. Folks, I love Kelly Link!
She doesn’t need to prove herself — she’s already got a MacArthur Genius Grant plus nearly got a Pulitzer — but I was somewhat nervous to see how she would pull off a long fantasy novel, after a career spent exclusively on short stories. Well, I needn’t have worried: this is a beautiful, dreamlike book, one that feels like the kind of novel only Kelly Link could write.
Set in a small town in Massachusetts in 2014 (I assume purely to avoid having to mention Trump or Covid, which is greatly appreciated; all fiction moving forward should be set either before 2015 or after 2100!), it tells the story of three teens who died and then came back to life, mysteriously. Their loved ones, who mourned them for a year, have had their memories wiped — in their minds the teens weren’t dead, they were studying abroad in Ireland — and now the teens are locked in a supernatural battle with possibly malevolent, possibly helpful beings/gods who all have nebulous goals, which may include letting the teens live again, but maybe not. If that feels complicated and vague, it is! The story follows dream logic, so you’re constantly on shifting ground, which with a lesser writer at the helm would feel unstable, but with Kelly Link it means the book never gets boring, because things just keep happening.
The constant throughout, though, is the characters, who feel truly real, and I typically hate books that primarily feature teenagers! The core of the story, to me, were the two sisters, one dead and one alive, who deeply trigger each other and deeply love each other, a relationship that felt so true to life that I knew without having to look it up that Kelly Link absolutely has a sister.
This is a long book, one that takes frequent discursions that could annoy certain people — periodically, you'll get an entire chapter from the perspective of an inanimate object — but I couldn't get enough of it. In a time when our major fantasy writers like JK Rowling and Neil Gaiman have proven to be absolute monsters (and also, kind of, one-hit-wonders), it could not be a better moment for Kelly Link to finally take her much-deserved place at the top of the fantasy world.
"It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl" by Brock Colyar — in NY Mag
When we saw Vanya, I couldn’t believe the line outside L’Industrie Pizza — it was at least a block long, maybe longer, and I genuinely assumed something special was happening inside. But, no, the people were just lining up to get a slice, and I guess this is just the West Village now: lines, and basic white girls, and straight people.
After Vanya, we went to Stonewall (not out of gay solidarity as much as needing a place to pee and knowing that Stonewall is always the emptiest bar on the block), and every bar we passed, no matter how gay, seemed to be full of straight girls and the occasional straight-looking guy. How long has this been going on?! Anyway, I’m relieved that Brock Colyar dropped their new cover story just in time to explain this vibe shift:
The neighborhood has, in recent years, transformed into a fabulous theme park for young women of some privilege to live out their Sex and the City fantasies, posting and spending their mid-20s away. They all seem to keep impressive workout routines (“Hot this and hot that,” McKeon said), have no shortage of girlfriends, and juggle busy heterosexual dating schedules. (The boys they consort with tend to be of the fratty variety.) They work in finance, marketing, publicity, tech — often with active social-media accounts on the side. They have seemingly endless disposable income. They are, by all conventional standards, beautiful. Occasionally, they are brunettes.
The story is hilarious and haunting and made me feel so, so ancient. I alternated between, “I hate these kids,” and, “It’s fine! They’re being young and dumb in the city like I was!” but I definitely came down on the former camp overall. It just feels so… hive mind. I have to hope these girlies are, when they’re not in the West Village, being more adventurous and independent and unique, but I wouldn’t bet on that!
Anyway, they’ll all grow up and move to Dallas soon, and whatever 20-somethings replace them to re-colonize the West Village in the 2030s will be even more annoying. The circle of life!
"Why I Broke Up With New York" by Lena Dunham — in The New Yorker
Thank you to the New Yorker for publishing a “why I left New York” article by THEE Lena Dunham to clear my soul after that harrowing dive into the West Village Girlies, but it made me sad that this didn’t cause the SPLASH such an essay would have created in the past. There was a time — allow me to pull up my rocking chair to tell you about the internet of 2011 — when someone (and it could really have been anyone) would publish a “why I’m leaving New York” essay and everyone with a desk job and a Twitter account would spend the afternoon tearing themselves apart. And if you added Lena Dunham to the mix? Oh boy, we’d go fucking feral for days.
But now, I guess, all that fun is over, and Lena Dunham is just another person publishing just another essay that is tossed into the churn. Does anything have lasting value anymore? If I were in charge of things, you'd be hearing a lot more about new writing from Lena Dunham, rather than the constant updates about ChatGPT having a new tone of voice or whatever.
I found this essay, however, oddly uncontroversial. I expected more from Lena! It feels a bit rote, a bit pat, a bit like something anyone could have written. I suppose people grow up, and after the hell she went through during Girls I can understand why she doesn't feel the need to expose herself any longer, but I miss her, and, after reading this, I can't help but blame London for this. Has she adopted the British stiff upper lip? Has Lena Dunham — the Hannah Horvath herself — grown out of oversharing for our amusement? It sounds like it's all much, much healthier for her, but what about us? Lena, come back to New York!