Submitted by Rick Beck, Feb 22, 2007 14:25

Dear Mr. Grode---I happened to read your critique of Salvage only an hour before attending its performance. I must still agree with your original comments on the triology as a stunning event in the NY theater world, but would dispute the last sentence in your review of Salvage. Indeed, Stoppard does intend the audience to feel the melancholy, disillusionment, disappointments, physical ailments, etc. that accompany the aging process of mankind--and of Herzen and co. Sure, the boundless optimism of Youth (Voyage), and the potency of Prime Age (Shipwreck) are most attractive and enticing----but Stoppard also deals with Older Age (Id bet that you are not over 60!) and its problems of alienation from new societal trends/moral values, the deaths or illness of ones closest friends and family members, the aches/pains (minor or major) of the body---once the source of much pleasure--all of these are very much part and parcel of the process of "maturation." (Bear in mind that 55 yrs of age 150 years ago is the physical equivalent of 65 yrs or more in our day). Perhaps that is the tragedy of life, the human condition with which all of us who must live on amidst the flotsam and jetsam of our personal world will experience---and Stoppard, with his usual wit, is making just that point in Salvage.

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