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Ghost Light: A Memoir, by Frank Rich
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There is a superstition that if an emptied theater is ever left completely dark, a ghost will take up residence. To prevent this, a single "ghost light" is left burning at center stage after the audience and all of the actors and musicians have gone home. Frank Rich's eloquent and moving boyhood memoir reveals how theater itself became a ghost light and a beacon of security for a child finding his way in a tumultuous world.
Rich grew up in the small-townish Washington, D.C., of the 1950s and early '60s, a place where conformity seemed the key to happiness for a young boy who always felt different. When Rich was seven years old, his parents separated--at a time when divorce was still tantamount to scandal--and thereafter he and his younger sister were labeled "children from a broken home." Bouncing from school to school and increasingly lonely, Rich became terrified of the dark and the uncertainty of his future. But there was one thing in his life that made him sublimely happy: the Broadway theater.
Rich's parents were avid theatergoers, and in happier times they would listen to the brand-new recordings of South Pacific, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game over and over in their living room. When his mother's remarriage brought about turbulent changes, Rich took refuge in these same records, re-creating the shows in his imagination, scene by scene. He started collecting Playbills, studied fanatically the theater listings in The New York Times and Variety, and cut out ads to create his own miniature marquees. He never imagined that one day he would be the Times's chief theater critic.
Eventually Rich found a second home at Wash-ington's National Theatre, where as a teenager he was a ticket-taker and was introduced not only to the backstage magic he had dreamed of for so long but to a real-life cast of charismatic and eccentric players who would become his mentors and friends. With humor and eloquence, Rich tells the triumphant story of how the aspirations of a stagestruck young boy became a lifeline, propelling him toward the itinerant family of theater, whose romantic denizens welcomed him into the colorful fringes of Broadway during its last glamorous era.
Every once in a while, a grand spectacle comes along that introduces its audiences to characters and scenes that will resound in their memories long after the curtain has gone down. Ghost Light, Frank Rich's beautifully crafted childhood memoir, is just such an event.
- Sales Rank: #664132 in Books
- Brand: Rich, Frank
- Published on: 2001-10-09
- Released on: 2001-10-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .80" w x 5.20" l, 2.00 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
Amazon.com Review
When Frank Rich was an anxious, unhappy kid marooned in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the fact his parents were divorced was discussed "only in the whisper that Grandma Ross used when talking about being Jewish or having cancer." Like so many others who feel painfully different, Frank found refuge in the theater, particularly the classic musicals of Broadway's golden age. After an enchanted trip to see Bells Are Ringing in 1956 when he was 7, Rich writes, "I was now destined to trace my childhood almost exclusively through an accelerating progression of plays, good and bad, that would captivate and kidnap me." Many of the tickets came from his stepfather, who was sometimes generous and fun but often frighteningly abusive. Once again, the theater helped him cope: when Frank saw Gypsy, its portrait of troubled family relations "made me feel less lonely." Similarly, when chronicling his attendance at such legendary shows as Bye Bye Birdie, Fiddler on the Roof, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, among many others, Rich concentrates on his responses rather than the productions themselves. What interests him most here is the theater's power to shape lives. Paying tribute to the men who both shared and cultivated his passion for the theater, Rich draws touching portraits of Scott Kirkpatrick, manager of Washington's National Theatre, who hired young Frank as a ticket taker, and of Clayton Coots, a company manager who befriended him. Those who admired (or excoriated) Rich's work as drama critic for The New York Times will find Ghost Light an intriguing look at the personal history that lies behind his critical judgments. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Two intertwined themes propel this evocative memoir of growing up in the 1950s and '60s by a former drama critic and current op-ed columnist for the New York Times. The first is the pain and confusion of being the child of divorced parents at a time when most families remained intact. The second is how the allure of theater softened that pain and gave the author a new way of understanding the world. Rich's world changed radically when his middle-class Jewish parents divorced in 1956, and the comfortable everyday routine of The Mickey Mouse Club and family dinners disappeared. It was during this time that Rich's parents introduced him to Broadway musical comediesAPajama Game, Damn Yankees, Most Happy FellaAwhich became both a passion and a private imaginative world for him. Rich's prose can revel in nostalgia, as when he conjures up his anticipation of going to his first Broadway show or meeting Jack Benny in a restaurant. It can also be effectively frightening, as when he recounts physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his new stepfather. Rich offers some wonderful insights, for example when he realizes, upon seeing and reading Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, that the American theater is maturing along with him; or when he writes about how his older gay male mentor (who eventually died of AIDS) prepared him to face problems in his personal life as well as to embrace his life in the theater. In the end, Rich's story resonates with the pain and triumph of everyday life. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Many know Rich through his fine theater reviews that appeared in The New York Times from 1980 to 1994, but his love for the stage developed much earlier. From the time his parents brought home cast recordings of South Pacific and The Pajama Game to the day he attended his first show, Damn Yankees, at Washington's National Theatre, Rich increasingly hungered for bigger doses of this magical world. After his parents' divorce, the theater offered solace. It was a common interest he shared with his mother and the only real bridge between himself and an abusive stepfather. The young Rich reconstructed theater sets in miniature, collected discarded Playbills from garbage baskets, dreamed of the stories and the music, reveled in New York theater trips, and studiously devoured Variety from an early age. Set in the Fifties and Sixties, this engrossing memoir is threefold: the story of a boy who found refuge in the theater during family turmoil, a mini-history of contemporary productions, and an informal observation of events and culture of the day. Readers will be enchanted with the young Rich. The tale of his early life, with its personal distresses and theatrical passions, is astonishing, and it is well toldDas haunting as the specter that the "ghost light" left on at the theater all night is meant to dispel. For circulating libraries, particularly those with large theater collections.
-DCarol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
Smart and touching memoir
By Michael Schau
During his reviewing days at The New York Times, Frank Rich's love of the theatre was evident and contagious. Now we learn why: How could he not love an institution that had given him so much solace, excitement and escape when he was growing up? His remembrance of his 1950s childhood and the theatre (mainly musicals) that paralleled that troubled boyhood is special. It has much in common with Moss Hart's "Act One," another autobiography that traces redemption and lifelong devotion to the theatre. Rich's book will resonate most with people who recall musicals that thrilled and with grown-ups who began life in "broken homes" before divorce was as ordinary as an Andrew Lloyd Weber score.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Thanks for the memories
By D. Clancy
Frank Rich's memoir "Ghost Light" is a painful reenactment of a lonely childhood. His parents divorced and he found solace in the wonderful world of the theatre. His stepfather shared his passion for this although he was abusive and difficult to live with. Personally, it was painful for me to read but I understood so much about my own childhood. Like Mr. Rich I found comfort in the wonderful world of cast albums, dreaming of seeing a Broadway show,keeping a vast collection of programs, etc. Mr. Rich proved to me that there were other kids like me and he had the guts to write about it. My one criticism of the book is that it tends to plod in places. Particularly in the beginning. He describes his bucolic childhood before his parents divorced with a little too much detail. Mr. Rich I salute you. Thanks for the memories
20 of 24 people found the following review helpful.
Ghost Light Shimmers!
By Eric Price
Fifty years ago, legendary playwright and director Moss Hart published an authobiography entitled Act One that instantly became a classic and held its place among the greatest theatrical memoirs ever written. This month, former New York Times Chief Drama Critic Frank Rich published his own story, full of passion, literacy, and wonder, that at once pays homage to Act One and transcends it. Rich has crafted the definitive stagestruck story, and there is no more significant book on growing up in the theatre. Rich's boyhood becomes a spellbinding play, a story that is joyous, crushing, funny, moving, and indelible. Anyone who cares for the American theatre, who has ever been shaken by the pulse of an orchestra begining an overture, who can find in himself even a glimmer of the passion bursting from Rich on every page, must read this book.
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