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When Frank Rich was an anxious, unhappy kid marooned in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., the fact his parents were divorced was discussed "only in the whisper that Grandma Ross used when talking about being Jewish or having cancer." Like so many others who feel painfully different, Frank found refuge in the theater, particularly the classic musicals of Broadway's golden age. After an enchanted trip to see Bells Are Ringing in 1956 when he was 7, Rich writes, "I was now destined to trace my childhood almost exclusively through an accelerating progression of plays, good and bad, that would captivate and kidnap me." Many of the tickets came from his stepfather, who was sometimes generous and fun but often frighteningly abusive. Once again, the theater helped him cope: when Frank saw Gypsy, its portrait of troubled family relations "made me feel less lonely." Similarly, when chronicling his attendance at such legendary shows as Bye Bye Birdie, Fiddler on the Roof, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, among many others, Rich concentrates on his responses rather than the productions themselves. What interests him most here is the theater's power to shape lives. Paying tribute to the men who both shared and cultivated his passion for the theater, Rich draws touching portraits of Scott Kirkpatrick, manager of Washington's National Theatre, who hired young Frank as a ticket taker, and of Clayton Coots, a company manager who befriended him. Those who admired (or excoriated) Rich's work as drama critic for The New York Times will find Ghost Light an intriguing look at the personal history that lies behind his critical judgments. --Wendy Smith

Two intertwined themes propel this evocative memoir of growing up in the 1950s and '60s by a former drama critic and current op-ed columnist for the New York Times. The first is the pain and confusion of being the child of divorced parents at a time when most families remained intact. The second is how the allure of theater softened that pain and gave the author a new way of understanding the world. Rich's world changed radically when his middle-class Jewish parents divorced in 1956, and the comfortable everyday routine of The Mickey Mouse Club and family dinners disappeared. It was during this time that Rich's parents introduced him to Broadway musical comediesAPajama Game, Damn Yankees, Most Happy FellaAwhich became both a passion and a private imaginative world for him. Rich's prose can revel in nostalgia, as when he conjures up his anticipation of going to his first Broadway show or meeting Jack Benny in a restaurant. It can also be effectively frightening, as when he recounts physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his new stepfather. Rich offers some wonderful insights, for example when he realizes, upon seeing and reading Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, that the American theater is maturing along with him; or when he writes about how his older gay male mentor (who eventually died of AIDS) prepared him to face problems in his personal life as well as to embrace his life in the theater. In the end, Rich's story resonates with the pain and triumph of everyday life. (Oct.)
Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.

Many know Rich through his fine theater reviews that appeared in The New York Times from 1980 to 1994, but his love for the stage developed much earlier. From the time his parents brought home cast recordings of South Pacific and The Pajama Game to the day he attended his first show, Damn Yankees, at Washington's National Theatre, Rich increasingly hungered for bigger doses of this magical world. After his parents' divorce, the theater offered solace. It was a common interest he shared with his mother and the only real bridge between himself and an abusive stepfather. The young Rich reconstructed theater sets in miniature, collected discarded Playbills from garbage baskets, dreamed of the stories and the music, reveled in New York theater trips, and studiously devoured Variety from an early age. Set in the Fifties and Sixties, this engrossing memoir is threefold: the story of a boy who found refuge in the theater during family turmoil, a mini-history of contemporary productions, and an informal observation of events and culture of the day. Readers will be enchanted with the young Rich. The tale of his early life, with its personal distresses and theatrical passions, is astonishing, and it is well toldDas haunting as the specter that the "ghost light" left on at the theater all night is meant to dispel. For circulating libraries, particularly those with large theater collections.
-DCarol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ  Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
The title refers to the lamp that dimly illuminates a theater stage when all other lights are out. It means to suggest that the theater haunts the author, a former New York Times drama critic. Apparently he and his publishers feel that the public will take an interest in this memoir of the first 20 years of his overprivileged life. As a theater professional of 30 years, this reviewer cannot get excited about a critic's personal life, except perhaps for his obituary. He lisps through his own adventures with little expression but enough speed and enthusiasm to keep things moving. Nothing in his delivery or his writing distinguishes an important critic, except for a capacious, selective, and discreet memory. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Every critic kicks up controversy--it comes with the job. Rich, dubbed the "butcher of Broadway" by his enemies, inspired plenty of it as chief drama critic at the New York Times, 1980^-93. Through it all, Rich's reviews were marked by grace, dignity, and an overriding passion for the theater. That he remained cool under fire and devoted to theater is evident on every page of this memoir. Here is the young Rich, infatuated with theater, musicals in particular, slowly developing from a kid who listened over and over to original cast recordings to a young man who had to see every new show that passed through his hometown, Washington, D.C. Rich's love of theater was deeply rooted, for both his parents were theater aficionados, and so were a handful of aunts and grandparents. When, to Rich's shame and confusion, his folks' marriage broke up in the mid-'50s, theater became an important outlet for the preadolescent, a vehicle to express and experience many conflicting feelings, which Rich now discusses with remarkable and disarming candor. Moreover, it is hard to read, for example, the description of his preadolescent enthusiasm for Damn Yankees without being ensnared by the show, too. Even more impressive is how well Rich re-creates the world of his youth in the '50s and '60s and the turmoil he felt as an oversensitive, smart, nonathletic kid from a broken home. Rich dares to show the human being behind the critic. Dare we hope he will dare again, and write of his years at Harvard and, after them, at the New York Times? Jack Helbig
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"This is an absolutely marvelous memoir, the best I have read in recent years. It recounts, passionately and often painfully, the story of an endearing young child from a broken home who finds refuge and finally redemption in the world of theater. It is a thoroughly absorbing tale, told beautifully and without a hint of self-pity. It is everything a literary memoir ought to be." --Doris Kearns Goodwin

"Ghost Light is not so much a memoir as an exorcism. Frank Rich revisits those defoliated battlegrounds we call family and childhood, picks his way through the still live booby traps of memory, and returns if not at peace then at least with the shards of understanding."
--John Gregory Dunne

"Frank Rich's Ghost Light is a stunning book. He manages to weave memories of childhood and theater into a complicated and deeply touching pattern. For anyone who remembers or still believes that their true lives begin when the curtain goes up, Ghost Light will illuminate their passion. This is a beautifully written, honest book. As in the best of theater, any reader will laugh, cry, and be very moved by the end."
--Wendy Wasserstein

"Ghost Light is a superb memoir--rich in anecdote, dense in theme. It's a spellbinding coming-of-age tale, a meditation on art and youth in the '60s, a horror story of urban family life. Deft, raucous, occasionally terrifying--you applaud Frank Rich for his journey and his brilliant skill in delineating it."
--James Ellroy --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Inside Flap Copy
There is a superstition that if an emptied theater is ever left completely dark, a ghost will take up residence. To prevent this, a single "ghost light" is left burning at center stage after the audience and all of the actors and musicians have gone home. Frank Rich's eloquent and moving boyhood memoir reveals how theater itself became a ghost light and a beacon of security for a child finding his way in a tumultuous world.

Rich grew up in the small-townish Washington, D.C., of the 1950s and early '60s, a place where conformity seemed the key to happiness for a young boy who always felt different. When Rich was seven years old, his parents separated--at a time when divorce was still tantamount to scandal--and thereafter he and his younger sister were labeled "children from a broken home." Bouncing from school to school and increasingly lonely, Rich became terrified of the dark and the uncertainty of his future. But there was one thing in his life that made him sublimely happy: the Broadway theater.

Rich's parents were avid theatergoers, and in happier times they would listen to the brand-new recordings of South Pacific, Damn Yankees, and The Pajama Game over and over in their living room. When his mother's remarriage brought about turbulent changes, Rich took refuge in these same records, re-creating the shows in his imagination, scene by scene. He started collecting Playbills, studied fanatically the theater listings in The New York Times and Variety, and cut out ads to create his own miniature marquees. He never imagined that one day he would be the Times's chief theater critic.

Eventually Rich found a second home at Wash-ington's National Theatre, where as a teenager he was a ticket-taker and was introduced not only to the backstage magic he had dreamed of for so long but to a real-life cast of charismatic and eccentric players who would become his mentors and friends. With humor and eloquence, Rich tells the triumphant story of how the aspirations of a stagestruck young boy became a lifeline, propelling him toward the itinerant family of theater, whose romantic denizens welcomed him into the colorful fringes of Broadway during its last glamorous era.

Every once in a while, a grand spectacle comes along that introduces its audiences to characters and scenes that will resound in their memories long after the curtain has gone down. Ghost Light, Frank Rich's beautifully crafted childhood memoir, is just such an event. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover
"This is an absolutely marvelous memoir, the best I have read in recent years. It recounts, passionately and often painfully, the story of an endearing young child from a broken home who finds refuge and finally redemption in the world of theater. It is a thoroughly absorbing tale, told beautifully and without a hint of self-pity. It is everything a literary memoir ought to be." --Doris Kearns Goodwin

"Ghost Light is not so much a memoir as an exorcism. Frank Rich revisits those defoliated battlegrounds we call family and childhood, picks his way through the still live booby traps of memory, and returns if not at peace then at least with the shards of understanding."
--John Gregory Dunne

"Frank Rich's Ghost Light is a stunning book. He manages to weave memories of childhood and theater into a complicated and deeply touching pattern. For anyone who remembers or still believes that their true lives begin when the curtain goes up, Ghost Light will illuminate their passion. This is a beautifully written, honest book. As in the best of theater, any reader will laugh, cry, and be very moved by the end."
--Wendy Wasserstein

"Ghost Light is a superb memoir--rich in anecdote, dense in theme. It's a spellbinding coming-of-age tale, a meditation on art and youth in the '60s, a horror story of urban family life. Deft, raucous, occasionally terrifying--you applaud Frank Rich for his journey and his brilliant skill in delineating it."
--James Ellroy
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author
Frank Rich served from 1980 to 1993 as the chief drama critic of The New York Times, and is now an op-ed columnist at the paper as well as senior writer for The New York Times Magazine. He lives in New York City with his wife, the writer Alex Witchel.

Book Description
Ghost light, in theater parlance, is that single light left burning at center stage after the audience, actors, and musicians have gone home. Superstition says that without it, a ghost will take up residence in the dark theater. Frank Rich's compelling chronicle of his youth tells how theater itself became his ghost light, a beacon of security for a child finding his way through a tumultuous world. Struggling with his parents' divorce and the universal trials of childhood, Rich took refuge in the spectacle and emotional power of the great musicals - South Pacific, Carousel, The Music Man - and eventually found a second home at Washington's National Theatre, where he worked as a ticket-taker. The author writes lovingly of how his favorite songs, shows, and actors became a lifeline, leading him from the terrors of daily life to the tinsel dreams of Broadway, whose denizens welcomed him into its last golden era.