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“Orpheus Descending,” a great big louche mess of a play by Tennessee Williams, from 1957—revived at Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center, directed by Erica Schmidt—kicks into gear when a good-looking kid called Valentine Xavier (Pico Alexander) slinks into the Torrance Mercantile Store, in a small town in Mississippi. I say “called,” not “named,” because he seems like the type of guy who’s had to shed his given name like a skin, and maybe a handful of others after that, continually improvising. Self-created and just turned thirty, he’s decked out in a snakeskin jacket, carrying a much loved acoustic guitar.
Val’s an odd guy, shrouded in put-on mystery and spouting high-flown, lyrical talk.
In search of a job, he produces a reference letter that’s off-puttingly candid: his former employer at an auto-repair shop says that he is “a peculiar talker and that is the reason I got to let him go.” As for himself, Val offers, “Well, they say that a woman can burn a man down. But I can burn down a woman.”
This story is from the August 07, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the August 07, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
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Old Money - How treasure from an eighteen-century shipwreck ended up in the hands of a Florida couple
How treasure from an eighteenth-century shipwreck ended up in the hands of a Florida couple.
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HEAVY WEATHER
Some first-generation disaster films were real-life disasters for their actors. D. W. Griffith's 1920 melodrama \"Way Down East,\" featuring the climactic rescue of a woman being carried off on an ice floe in raging currents, was filmed in a real river after a real blizzard.
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BIZARRE REALITY
Julio Torres's \"Fantasmas\" finds truth in fantasy.
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BEACH BOYS
Eating and drinking through Provincetown.
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OVERCORRECTION
On the abolition of prisons.
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WHAT HAPPENED TO THE YUPPIE?
In 1979, an article by Blake Fleetwood in the Times Magazine reported a surprising phenomenon: young people were moving to big cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
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Abject Naturalism + Sarah Braunstein
The baby's father left before the Cesarean incision had fully healed, when it was still a raised red line, tender to the touch, glistening with Vitamin E oil. Perfidy!
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THE BRINK OF WAR
Will Hezbollah's border fight with Israel lead to a wider conflict?
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A YOUNG ARTIST
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WRITING PROMPTS
Take a walk in your neighborhood while pushing your baby who refuses to nap in a stroller.