About the Book:

RARE BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

In Show and Tell, the The Tony-winning author and theatre critic John Lahr reinvents the celebrity profile to get at the essence of performance. His utterly winning and incisive profiles probe some of the most compelling, elusive, and irresistible public personas of our time, among them: Woody Allen, David Mamet, Ingmar Bergman, Frank Sinatra, Roseanne, Irving Berlin, Bob Hope, Mike Nichols, Wallace Shawn, Arthur Miller, and Neil LaBute. In these, and the moving autobiographical portraits of his father, Bert Lahr, who was the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, and his mother, a former Ziegfeld girl, John Lahr charts the geography of fame.

His gift is to get inside both the art and the artist, to show how the work and the life intersect. He has had unusual access to his subjects, who talk to him with rare candour. In prose "as lively as good conversation" (Robert Brustein), he arrives at truths of uncommon clarity, a claim seconded by Arthur Miller, who said that Lahr's essay on him is "by far the best thing about my stuff I've ever read." These very special profiles, the product of eight years' work at The New Yorker, deepen our understanding of their subjects and the culture that they profoundly reflect. Show and Tell, like the icons whose lives and work it so meticulously chronicles, corrupts an audience with pleasure.

What people say:

"John Lahr's love of theater, his knowledge, his intelligence, his lucid prose, are all exhilarating. Even when you disagree with him you are forced to reexamine the views you hold." — Edward Albee

"Lahr is the greatest drama critic of my generation, indeed the best I've read here or in America since Tynan…. Not since Tynan published his celebrated accounts of Richardson and Gielgud (and of course Nicol Williamson at Nixon's White House) has there been showbiz writing on this level of quirky insight and brilliant observation." — Sheridan Morley, biographer, theatre critic and broadcaster for The Literary Review

"A dazzling collection … Lahr's craftsmanship is awesome." — Sunday Times

"A compilation of John Lahr's insightful and highly readable profiles for The New Yorker magazine, among them pieces on Arthur Miller, Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman." — Financial Times (UK)

"What a talented, wonderful, and complete writer." — Mel Brooks

"By far the best thing about my stuff I've ever read." — Arthur Miller

"These are wonderful portraits." — Edna O'Brien

"The high-water mark of theatrical reportage. Exhilarating! Smart! Lahr gives as much thunderous pleasure as the great entertainers he writes about." — Richard Avedon

"There's never been an American critic like John Lahr. His writing exalts, honors, and dignifies the profession and, more importantly, the art." — Tony Kushner

About the Author:

John Lahr was the hugely respected Senior Drama Critic at The New Yorker for more than two decades and touted as "the most intelligent and insightful writer on theatre today" by The New York Times. Now a regular contributor to The New Yorker, he is also the author of 18 books, including two novels, several best-selling biographies —the subject of one being his vaudeville comedian father, Bert Lahr — and numerous adaptations, which have been staged in England and the U.S. Among his honours is becoming the first critic ever to win a Tony for co-writing the one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty.