Ghost Light: Memoir

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 comedies--Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Most Happy Fella--which 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.)