Criticism comes from some unexpected places when you’re a playwright attempting to star in your own play. That much is true for New York playwright Sam Forman, whose play The Rise and Fall of Annie Hall opened in preview last night at the Vineyard Playhouse (official opening night is Saturday). He’s seen the central role of Henry played by others in the three years since the play was written, and he has heard the actors lodge lighthearted complaints about the challenges posed by the dialogue. But before now, he’s never experienced it firsthand.

Clifton Athearn helped liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Curtis Jones spent 26 months as a prisoner of war. Nelson Smith was a member of the Navy’s construction battalion, building pontoon barges. These are just a few of the stories and people honored for their roles in World War II last Thursday evening at the 12th annual Evening of Discovery to benefit the Martha’s Vineyard Museum.

Memories of Walter Cronkite — as both a sailor on the Vineyard waterfront and as the nation’s favorite television journalist — were shared Sunday night at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown. Titled A Celebration of the Life of Walter Cronkite, it was an evening of stories, pictures, tributes of Mr. Cronkite and a look toward the leaders of tomorrow.

When Boston College Law School professor Ray Madoff set out to write a book about the legal rights of the dead in America, she only intended to include one chapter on the law itself, devoting the rest of the book to a philosophical, psychological, sociological and even religious interpretation. But as she began prying into the more remote and cobwebbed corners of the legal system, she stumbled upon a bizarre legal world of grave robbing, posthumous procreation and cryogenic preservation that was too rich a topic; in the end, she devoted the entire book to this world.