Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

A.G.’s journalistic triumphs over 25 years at The New York Times include drinking with Bea Arthur (at a Trump hotel), Wendy Wasserstein (at an Italian restaurant) and Peter O’Toole (in his trailer on a mini-series set near Dublin). It is sheer coincidence that these people are now dead.

At The New York Times, she has been Arts & Leisure television editor and co-film editor, a theater reviewer on WQXR Radio, a film columnist for the Times TV Book and an editor in the Culture, Book Review, Travel, National, Foreign and Metro sections. Her first theater review for The Times appeared in 1997, assessing “Mrs. Cage,” a one-act about a housewife suspected of shooting her favorite supermarket box boy. The review was mixed.

Outside The Times, A.G. has been the author of four nonfiction books; a longtime writer for travel magazines, women's magazines and travel guidebooks; a lecturer at universities and for women’s groups; and a moderator for theater, book, film and television panels at the 92nd Street Y and the Paley Center for Media.

If she were a character on “Mad Men,” she’d be Peggy.

How I Learned to Drive at ‘How I Learned to Drive’

Anita Gates

IT WAS MY FIRST real theater outing in ages. In a wheelchair. A motorized wheelchair. Which lent new meaning to the play’s title.

Seeing “How I Learned to Drive” this time was very important to me. I’d missed it in 1999, though I can’t remember why. And now it was coming back, with the original stars, Mary-Louise Parker and David Morse, in their original roles, a young girl called Little Bit and her uncle, who volunteers to teach the girl how to handle a car but takes a few major liberties along the way.

I’d envisaged these characters side by side, staring straight ahead in the front seat of their pretend-car onstage. And some of the time they were. But I was extremely glad to see other angles, real and metaphorical — how the sexual abuse began, why Little Bit agreed, how the relationship evolved and finally was snuffed out, what other people told Little Bit about sex and women and men and power (and drinking), what shampoo she used (Herbal Essence) and how the abuser and his victim ended up.

My “How I Learned to Drive” need was filled, although I always feel I need to see it again to really get it. Maybe I’d just read the script and reflect. “Nothing is going to happen until you want it to,” Uncle Peck assures her. As he orders her a second martini. Which is no reassurance at all.

Meanwhile I had to drive the monster wheelchair. On the sidewalk, in the theater lobby, in the inner lobby and right up to the last row of the orchestra, where the wheelchair seating was. And back again. You steer the thing with a joystick, for God’s sake. Which is a personal affront to all baby boomers, those of us who are still around, whose video game knowledge begins and ends with Pac-Man.

You hope you guess correctly about how long it takes to stop the damned thing, because otherwise you’ll be mowing down innocent pedestrian theatergoers who are just trying to find the “In This Theater” section of the Playbill and don’t necessarily deserve to die.

I’m happy to report that there were no fatalities or serious injuries during this outing.

But my eyes aren’t what they used to be. Mary-Louise Parker could have really been 15 years old, for all I knew. Sometimes suspension of disbelief is pretty easy.

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