America's sense of humor, I used to think, was its saving grace. We might throw our weight around recklessly as a nation, but at least we could laugh at ourselves. That was before the collision of global media marketing and the right-wing hegemony knocked out our sense of humor and left it for dead in the sandbox of nostalgia. The last few decades have been pretty drought-stricken in the laugh department. So I expected little as I squared my ever-slumping shoulders to face the week's roster of openings: a satire on political correctness by David Henry Hwang, an 1898 curio dug out of Mark Twain's literary leavings, and a play by an unknown with an enigmatic title. Doesn't exactly sound like a pile of smiles, does it? Well, it fooled me. Having started out glum, I spent most of my theatergoing time grinning in slightly... More >>>