John Simon: 80 and still ornery as hell

Ousted New York theater critic John Simon has the last word in this week’s Time Out New York, with a frank and unrestrained interview. Known and loved for his acerbic, cutting reviews (and by “loved” we mean “viscerally loathed by many show people including a certain Huffie with a longstanding grudge”), Simon doesn’t hold back, reminiscing about how he was once censored for writing that “Barbra Streisand was the sort of thing that starts pogroms” (meanwhile, a thousand hearts just stopped in Chelsea) and mistily recalling a time when it was okay to refer to a show as a “faggoty Jewish musical” (at this point our hearts stopped; we love faggoty Jewish musicals!).