What this odd moment was meant to convey about the mind and heart of Barnes, the literary adventurer best known for her spooky modernist 1936 novel, "Nightwood," is hard to say, but its sheer peculiarity did quicken the evening's sluggish tempo. Another sign of Manhattan's cultural decline. But then what is a kipper? Sardinelike? A friend of the herring? How much for a pound of smelts, how are they prepared, and does my Korean deli carry them? It seems doubtful. What are they, actually? In the kipper family, I believe. "What of the Night," a solo show starring Jane Alexander as Djuna Barnes, is a surefire soporific until this arresting segment, when the aged, reclusive Barnes, apropos of nothing, picks up the telephone in her Greenwich Village apartment and reads off a list of necessities topped by mint-flavored milk of magnesia, oranges and smelts. When the most thought-provoking moment in a tribute to a colorful figure of 20th-century letters is the ordering of groceries, it's safe to say that trouble abounds.
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