The Mercury offers a first look at Dave Eggers’ play, Sacrament (adapted from You Will Know Our Velocity), concluding that “the playwright and director have not yet found a way to tether the show’s considerable emotional impact, its wry humor and acute sense of loss, to the concept of giving and receiving sacraments.” But Robert Hurwitt gives it a rave.

Among several award winners, Christopher Bram has won the Gay Men’s Fiction Award a Lamda for Lives of the Circus Animals, a comedy set in the New York theatre world. Nina Revoyr’s Southland took home the Lesbian Fiction Award.

Apologies for corrupting Return of the Reluctant business with the play business. We will have a separation between church and state firmly in place next month.

But if you are an actor in the San Francisco area, and you’re looking to be involved with a nutty Beckettesque kind of play (with bad puns and unapologetic jokes about Preparation H), then please note that we will be holding auditions for Wrestling an Alligator on July 17 and July 18, with callbacks to be held on July 24. We have four roles, two male and two female. (To the Demolishing Crew: Yes, that’s right, a character’s gender has changed over the last couple of days, along with several other things, thanks in part to your valuable input. But please keep the feedback coming.) Feel free to email me at ed@edrants.com for details.

Also, we will be looking for crew volunteers for the months of August and September. More details to come.

Under Tanenhaus’s firms hands, it appears that the NYTBR has begun issuing corrections. The corrections, as usual, are laced with the kind of minutiae that will prevent merely a handful of fulminating fanboys from slashing their wrists. However, given the pedantic obsessions, we here at Return of the Reluctant encourage Tanenhaus & Friends to continue. Here are a few that we suggest:

“A review by Michael Kinsley suggested that David Brooks be bitch-slapped three times. Mr. Kinsley actually intended for Brooks to be bitch-slapped four times, not three. In addition, Kinsley would like to kick Brooks’ ass while he is being simultaneously humiliated by a Girl Scouts troop.”

“When pressed by editor Sam Tanenhaus for an ‘innovative’ idea for her column, Laura Miller referred to ‘lingering headaches’ and turned out a silly column about spy stories. She followed this up with an epileptic fit and demanded a Ritalin prescription. The Times regrets any misinterpretations caused by Miller’s histrionics.”

“Lizzie Skurnick intended to use ‘fuck’ in her review, but it was gently suggested to Ms. Skurnick that the Times was a family newspaper. The Gray Lady hopes to let down her guard, however, in the event that Mr. Bush is re-elected in November.”

Andrea Levy has won for Small Island.