LIBRARY NOTES
Sam Waterston
An Evening with Sam Boswell
Thursday, May 11, 1995 at 7:00 PM
Weill Hall, Carnegie Hall
A dramatic reading by Sam Waterston from a new play, An Evening with James Boswell, by Richard Goodyear, will be the Library's first benefit. This reading, produced by the Library for one evening only, will be held at Weill Hall (part of Carnegie Hall) on Thursday, May 11, at 7:00 p.m. The event will be introduced by Library Member Dick Cavett and will conclude with a champagne-and-strawberry reception. Invitations will be sent out early in March.
The curtain opens on a scene of some disarray ... Boswell, now in his mid-fifties (played by Sam Waterson), is sitting in his study late at night, working his way through a bottle of port and reading reviews of his Life of Johnson that has just been published. All around him are sheaves from his journal, which he now has to put away in his ebony cabinet... offering an opportunity to put his own life in order at the same time.
The reviews, though generally laudatory of the Life, are less than enthusiastic about the author: "The eccentricities of Mr. Boswell, it is useless to detail" or "Mr. Boswell, with some exceptions on the score of egotism..." "Yes...well," Boswell mutters, reading aloud to the audience with some discomfort. The reviews put him in a reflective and melancholy frame of mind, as he picks up scraps of his journal, reading sections to the audience... passages about death, about hangings, about his recently deceased wife, about many things...
The play is more than just a series of excerpts; it takes us on an idiosyncratic path through Boswell's life, attaining a life of its own. Its author, Richard Goodyear, is (like Boswell) a lawyer in his fifties, though rather more successful as a lawyer than his subject, and (also like Boswell) a long-time Boswell aficionado. At Yale, Goodyear acted at the Dramat with Sam Waterston. Sometimes called "the thinking man's actor," Waterston is familiar to Library members from many New York Shakespeare Festival roles; films, "The Killing Fields"; Broadway, "Abe Lincoln in Illinois"; and television, "Law and Order". Dick Cavett, also a Yale graduate, has been, since 1968, the host of highly acclaimed television talks shows as well as a Broadway actor. Save the date!
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