Writing about the perhaps desperately over the top attempts of Broadway theaters to transport its audience to a world more in line with the subject at hand than the privileged bland Americana in which they live their daily lives,  Isherwood writes: The drawback to this kind of immersive décor is that it can border on the theme park-ish, turning the specific into the ersatz and treading dangerously close to kitsch. We may be on Broadway, but we are still hip, the furnishings all but scream.

via Theater Talkback: The Exploding Art of Set Design – NYTimes.com.

I think the trend is less alarming for its potential aesthetic abuse than it is, well… hilarious. People are paying big bucks to be transported into a safe simulation … supposedly authentic (but not) of the world as others know it. Or knew it. This is an essential function of art. To improve upon reality. To take the foreign that we fear and make it easier to digest.

Broadway is lactose free skim milk? Whatever that is.

-ag