The Miracle of Long Johns is a hilarious and kind of deep tale of a professional appreciator. Theater critics (and critics in general) can be pretty nasty. I'm sure a bunch of them are just nasty to be nasty, but the really great critics, i.e. Lefkowitz, adore the theater to no end. They're like parents who practice tough love. If something stinks, they say it does and why. Likewise, if something is lovely, they say so and why. Like Lefkowitz says, they're on a quest to find the one magic play out of 600 that electrifies, that is sublime.
The first act, in many hilarious tangents, illustrates how Lefkowitz took his critiquing job so seriously. The unbreakable contract between the critic and the play is so sacred to Lefkowitz that it is unfathomable to leave mid-way. The audience cringes, but understands, in the second act, that it is better to literally poop in your pants than to leave a play prematurely. Funny that such a gross, frank account of poo could serve as such a lovely love letter to the theater.
I sat between a 50-something-year-old grandmother and a high school boy. Both of them were rolling, as I was, when we saw Lefkowitz contort his body in discomfort to transport us to that night in the One Dream Theater and when we heard him describe in painstaking detail the damage he left behind. Everyone in the room, from middle-aged librarians to teenagers, all connected to The Miracle of Long Johns. You can't say that about many plays.
