Seriocomic extravaganza …

… Chicago kid makes good | About Last Night. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

… “Augie March” is a stage version of a major novel, a bastard genre notoriously difficult to bring off. As John Simon put it in an apothegm known to drama critics as Simon’s Law, “There is a simple law governing the dramatization of novels: if it is worth doing, it can’t be done; if it can be done, it’s not worth doing.” Mr. Simon was stretching it a bit, as Kate Hamill has proved in recent seasons with her witty adaptations of “Pride and Prejudice,” “Sense and Sensibility” and “Vanity Fair.” Even so, he was onto something, for great novels don’t need to be dramatized—they are by definition sufficient unto themselves. And that’s the loophole through which Mr. Auburn has slipped with Bellow’s picaresque tale of a poor young Jewish immigrant who girdles the world in search of his “purest feelings”: “Augie March” is not really a great novel, much as it strains to be. Sprawlingly long and over-lush in diction, it lacks the artistic self-discipline necessary to hit the pinpoint bull’s-eye of true greatness. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Mr. Auburn has improved on the novel, imposing on it a welcome tautness and pruning its self-consciously exuberant verbal excesses….