Silent Movies and Live Music at Lyric Hall, Sunday, 7 pm

OK, so it's not, strictly speaking, literary. But neither, strictly speaking, are we. Ladies and gentlemen! The New Haven Review announces its first evening of silent movies, accompanied by live music, this Sunday evening at 7 pm. It will take place in the gorgeous old vaudeville theater inside Lyric Hall, at 827 Whalley Avenue—which, if you haven't seen it too recently, has been renovated so beautifully that it looks like something from czarist Russia. It is worth the $5 admission just to spend time inside that room.

The evening will consist of two short movies—each of them about 10 minutes long. The first one is a Georges Melies film called The Doctor's Secret; the second is an unbelievably collapsed version of Alice in Wonderland. You want to come just to see these movies. The music is provided by Dr. Caterwaul's Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps, which sounds like this. (Full disclosure: Your correspondent is a member of this band.)

But wait, there's more! In addition, there will be some live music performed by the Claptraps and Tyler Bussey, a quietly soulful CT singer who reinterprets old songs in a style reminiscent, to this correspondent, of Sam Amidon. It's great stuff. Probably there will be a brief intermission, making for a thoroughly pleasant evening's entertainment. And if we really get our act together, we may bring appropriate refreshments.

Hope to see you all there!

We partied like it was ten years ago

1999, to be exact. On Saturday, the New Haven Review took over Lyric Hall, the antiques and restoration house on Whalley Avenue. Owner John Cavaliere has retrofitted the old vaudeville space in the back, and so what choice did we have but to throw a party to celebrate issue #5? First, we ate and drank for an hour. The mango champagne punch was swell. Then the 75 or so guests retired to the theater, where NHR editor Brian Slattery (violin, guitar, piano), Craig Edwards (violin, guitar), and Joe DeJarnette (upright bass) played backup music as local notables (“locables”) read stories by their favorite authors. (Thanks to Laurel Silton for taking the pictures.)

Actor Bruce Altman read from Philip Roth’s Indignation and The Breast.

Alice Mattison read Grace Paley.

Janna Wagner read Lorrie Moore.

Nora Khan read James Salter.

And Lisa Sanders read Ian Frazier.

And then we drank again. And we ate more. Arlene Ghent catered, with pastries by Manjares. Have you had their brownies? I ask you—have you had their brownies?

We raised some money in pledges—low four figures, since you asked—but that wasn’t the point. The point was seeing people, meeting people. Tom Gogola was there. New Haven native Darius James, late of New York Press, was there. Katharine and Nicholas Fox Weber were there. My mom was there. Pang-Mei Chang was there, seeing John Cavaliere for the first time since high school. Bruce Tulgan and Debby Applegate were there. Betty Lockhart was there.

You were there. And if you weren’t, you should have been.

Or were you home watching this?