Janet Wendy Last - Performing Arts Critic

Wendy and I had the time of our lives in 1978-79, the sabbatical year I spent at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Mid-Town Manhattan, New York City. We had a 2-bedroom apartment on the 18th floor of a co-op high-rise in Morningside Gardens, a complex of multi-ethnic co-op high-rise apartments that had been partly subsidized by the Rockefeller Foundation. We were at the corner of 123rd Street and Amsterdam Ave, looking west towards Riverside Church and North towards George Washington Bridge with views of both from our windows. I was editing the massive multi-author textbook of Public Health and Preventive Medicine eponymously known as Maxcy-Rosenau, and for the first few months I had a rather light work-load while I wrote my own chapters and waited for the team of friends, colleagues and former contributors to deliver their contributions. We rode our bikes all over Manhattan Island, exploring it from Battery Park at the south end looking towards the Statue of Liberty to the Cloisters, 13 miles north, where the Hudson River and the East River converged and coalesced before separating and going their own way again. Several times each week we went to Off-Off-Broadway theatres and other venues of performing arts; we went to galleries and open-air performances in Central Park and elsewhere; and during the week while I worked in my office, Wendy explored New York on her own by bike, bus or on foot. She filled two fat scrap books with theatre programs, brochures from art galleries and museums, and kept the used tickets in the scrap books if these were colourful and worth preserving. If costumes or sets were memorable, she sketched these also in her scrap books. She wrote her own personal critiques too, so here are some excerpts from these critiques, for 2 weeks in September 1978.

Sept 15: To St John's cathedral, Amsterdam Ave, for a magnificent mediaeval play with 16th Century instruments, masks, characters on stilts (she drew sketches of masks)

Sept 20: Mud men of Papua New Guinea; Dancers with faces covered by masks of mud (clay). A vivacious, energetic show with basic stamping, simple steps, dramatic leaps by the men & some good drama. Too much nasal monotone singing, slow action. Impressive head dresses & grass skirt costumes, bare bosoms and lovely white teeth.

Sept 22: Happy Birthday John. To Androcles and the Lion - G B Shaw at the No-Smoking Playhouse, a tiny shabby theatre; simple stage sets, primitive togas for costumes but a magnificent, cuddly horrendous lion. Excellent acting and singing, a really first rate performance; most enjoyable!  To the Russian Tea Room after the show. (She pasted our tickets in her scrap book with one word, "Expensive!") Posh red velvet seats, lots of brass samovars, sashed waiters & expensive menu. Red and white table cloths, real napkins, lamb specialty, just a glorified hamburger but v tasty. John's omelet good.

Sept 23: Long account of Cloisters with photos and drawings. In the evening, to the Drama Committee Theatre, You Never Can Tell. A rather shabby production with poorly altered costumes, awful singing & ineffective use of black stockinged white gloved rather plump mime, ballet girls who act as props, otherwise no scenery. Not a convincing evening except for the butler.

Sept 30: Browsed around antique fabric and book shops. Bought cushion cover material. Biked home than bus to Third Ave at 94th Street for dinner at the Cock-Eyed Clam. Superb fresh fish in tiny, crowded, noisy, happy restaurant. Very good value, $13 for two of us. Then watched street artists in Sheridan Sq, Greenwich Village.

The two fat scrap books go on like this through the rest of our wonderful year in the Big Apple. I'll add more later with scans of some of the sketches she drew to illustrate the text.

Wendy in our 18th Floor apartment in New York with some of the paintings she produced while we lived there.  I made the mobile from scraps of driftwood I picked up on the beach at Santa Barbara during our brief escape to California in the depth of winter 1978-79