Drama: An Actor’s Education by John Lithgow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I listened to the author perform this book, and it was a good choice. John Lithgow is fine actor who can, by turns, be serious and funny. And by turns, so is this memoir and hearing a practiced performer read his own interesting and entertaining book as an extra dimension.
This is a book as much about Lithgow’s father as about himself. His father was an actor and theater entrepreneur, though like most entrepreneurs, Lithgow’s father had many downs or wrong turns. Lithgow learned many things from moving from place to place with his peripatetic family: how to be an “actor” to try to fit into his new schools, what it was like to be lonely, the need for approval to the point that you give up maybe too much of yourself, but also discovering his passion for performing, following in his father’s footsteps, and succeeding in many ways that his father did not.
As with most memoirs, it skips over parts of his life, parts, such as his relationship with his older brother, that I wanted to know a little more about. And also, the memoir doesn’t include any experiences involving what many folks may know him best for: the character of Dr. Solomon on Third Rock From the Sun. But even with these omissions, I highly recommend this memoir, and it really deserves 4.5 stars, but I’m not allowed to do half stars. Thank you, Mr. Lithgow for writing this book and for providing the dramatic reading for the audio version.
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