About Last Night

I mentioned in this space the other day that Satchmo at the Waldorf is currently being performed down in New Orleans. A friend sent me a photo taken after Saturday’s show in which Barry Shabaka Henley, the star of this and two previous productions of Satchmo, is seen chatting with a group of audience members. They were, my friend said, members of the Karnofsky family. As I looked at their happy faces, my eyes filled with tears.

If you’ve seen Satchmo or read Pops, my Armstrong biography, I expect that name will ring a bell. Among other things, the Karnofskys figure prominently in one of my favorite scenes from Satchmo:

Here, now, looka this.

He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a Star of David hanging on a pendant around his neck.

Star of David. Jewish star. Mr. Glaser, he done give it to me. (As if revealing a secret) He Jewish, you know. I wear it every day cause the Jews, they been so good to me. Maybe that’s why I trusted Mr. Glaser.

Down in New Orleans there was this Jewish family, the Karnofskys. They was junk peddlers done come over from Russia. I worked for them when I was seven years old. Did odd jobs. And they didn’t treat me like no butler or nothing. Pat me on my head, tell me I’m a good boy, treat me warm and kind. Like family. Use to sit at they table like I was one of they own. Eat that good Jewish food, teach me them pretty Jewish songs….

We’d bring the junk wagon in and they’d say, “Little Louis, you worked hard today, gonna be too late for you to get your supper when you get home, so you just sit right down here and eat with us.”

A pause.

They even loaned me the money to buy my first horn. Beat-up little cornet down at the pawn shop. Thought it was the prettiest thing I ever saw.

Back in 2009, shortly after Pops was published, I met a Karnofsky at my first book-tour appearance in Boston, and was deeply touched by the encounter. Nevertheless, it means even more to me—more than mere words can begin to say—to know that another group of Karnofskys saw Satchmo at the Waldorf in Armstrong’s home town (and that other family members will be seeing the show later in the run). I like to think that Satchmo himself would have been touched to learn that the descendants of the Jewish immigrants who treated him “like family” more than a century ago continue to revere his blessed memory, as he did theirs to the very end of his long and beautiful life.

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To see rare period photographs of the Karnofskys and read a piece by Alan Smason about their relationship with Louis Armstrong, go here.

Armstrong and the All Stars perform Irving Berlin’s “Russian Lullaby” in 1950. The band includes Cozy Cole on drums:

Armstrong and the All Stars perform “Basin Street Blues” on The Bell Telephone Hour in 1964:

A scene from Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company 2009 revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo, directed by Amy Morton and starring Francis Guinan, Tracy Letts, and Patrick Andrews:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“Now every last thing stunned him into immobility: if it was better to light a cigarette or not, or have a cup of coffee, or go to the office, or leave the office. He remembered being able to decide these things, but not being unconscious of the choice.”

David Mamet, Chicago: A Novel

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review the American premiere of Conor McPherson’s Girl from the North Country. Here’s an excerpt.

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Conor McPherson is Ireland’s greatest living playwright, give or take Martin McDonagh. Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan. On paper they look like the oddest of couples, but the notion of Mr. McPherson’s writing a jukebox musical based on Mr. Dylan’s songs is just crazy enough to be brilliant.

“Girl from the North Country,” which has transferred to the Public Theater after successful runs at London’s Old Vic and in the West End, is a musical as powerful and unsettling as any of Mr. McPherson’s plays. It adds a rich new layer of meaning to the songs, some familiar (“I Want You”) and others obscure (“Slow Train”), that he has woven into its theatrical fabric. It won’t send you home happy—it’s not meant to—and the results are far from perfect. But the show’s flaws are as forgivable as its originality is profound…

“Girl from the North Country” is an “Our Town”-like group portrait of the tenants of a Depression-era boarding house in Duluth, Minnesota, Mr. Dylan’s birthplace (though no other obvious reference is made to the songwriter’s life). The dozen-odd characters have all been wounded in ways that no New Deal could ever hope to heal, above all Elizabeth (Mare Winningham), the wife of the boarding-house proprietor (Stephen Bogardus), who appears to be suffering from dementia but soon proves to be Mr. McPherson’s Shakespearean fool. She utters his bleakest truths with the absolute conviction that only terrible suffering can supply…

Mr. McPherson has made no attempt to choose songs that fit neatly into his dramatic scheme, the customary modus operandi of the jukebox musical. Instead, he’s followed the lead of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth in “Company,” a series of related but mostly free-standing sketches about a group of friends in which the songs typically comment on the sketches instead of propelling the dramatic action of the show….

What Mr. McPherson does with Mr. Dylan’s songs is infallibly right. I’m not so sure, though, about the way that the songs themselves are sung and played by the cast and onstage band. While some of the actors, Ms. Winningham and Luba Mason in particular, sing with an appropriately raw edge, most of the others sound too smoothly theatrical…

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the London production of Girl from the North Country:

The twentieth episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s an excerpt from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings:

This week [the panelists] celebrate a happy first birthday—or, as Terry says incredulously in this episode, “Have we really been doing this for a year?” Yes, they have! To celebrate the show’s one-year anniversary, our hosts take on a favorite punching bag of theatre criticism: the jukebox musical. Is it pure populism or can it be brilliant? Or both? They discuss that in relation to a new Bob Dylan jukebox musical currently playing at the Public Theater, Girl from the North Country (it made two of our critics cry!).

Then the critics discuss another recurring theatrical theme: the British invasion of the American theatre. Girl from the North Country originated in London, and so did The Nap, The Ferryman, and others currently running and still set to open on Broadway….

This episode closes with a tally of shows the critics love and want you to see…

To listen, download the latest episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

“Giacometti,” a 1966 documentary featurette about Alberto Giacometti, the great Swiss sculptor, directed by Michael Gill and made in collaboration with David Sylvester for the Arts Council of Great Britain:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved.”

C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about the current plight of the Metropolitan Opera—and its wider implications. Here’s an excerpt.

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After James Levine, what? When the Metropolitan Opera’s music director emeritus was fired earlier this year after the company charged him with “sexually abusive and harassing conduct” toward younger artists, it was clear that some kind of change had to come. And sure enough, plenty is happening at the post-Levine Met, which has announced a roster of forthcoming innovations, many of which sound promising—on paper. Yet the more things change, at the Met and at other major American opera companies, the more they seem to stay the same.

The Met’s widely reported plans, which started with bringing in a youngish music director, 43-year-old Yannick Nézet-Séguin, now include commissioning operas from two female composers, Missy Mazzoli and Jeanine Tesori. In addition, the American premiere of Nico Muhly’s “Marnie,” a stage version of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Marnie,” opens on Oct. 19. In the pipeline for the future are a new “Hamlet” opera and revivals of Philip Glass’ “Akhnaten” and Jake Heggie’s “Dead Man Walking”…and my eyes are already glazing over.

For openers, why on earth is the Met importing an opera based on one of Hitchcock’s biggest and most notorious disasters? And what makes Mr. Gelb think that Ms. Tesori, the composer of such Broadway hits as “Fun Home” and “Shrek the Musical,” is capable of turning out a score that has the size and weight necessary to go over in a king-sized house that was purpose-built for grand opera? (Her two previous ventures into opera are a small-scale one-act piece and a children’s show.) As for “Aknahten” and “Dead Man Walking,” they’re “innovative” only in the sense that they’re new to the company, whose repertory for the current season includes, as usual, “Aida,” “La Bohème,” “Carmen” and “La Traviata,” the four most frequently performed operas in the Met’s history….

I’m already on record as believing that Mr. Gelb’s protracted failure to deal with Mr. Levine’s alleged misconduct makes it impossible for him to lead the Met into the future, and that he should resign or be fired. (Granted, Mr. Levine has consistently denied the charges, but the Met has made it perfectly clear that it doesn’t believe him.) Nor was I impressed by his unsure stewardship of the company prior to Mr. Levine’s long-overdue dismissal. At the same time, though, I’ve been giving much thought to a 2014 interview in which Mr. Gelb claimed that grand opera is “a dinosaur of an art form….what I’m doing is fighting an uphill battle to try and maintain an audience in a very difficult time.”

Was Mr. Gelb right to bemoan what he called the “cultural and social rejection of [grand] opera as an art form”? And is the Met the canary in the coal mine of American opera?…

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Read the whole thing here.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Uncle Romeo Vanya Juliet (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 28, reviewed here)
• Uncle Vanya (drama, G, not suitable for children, extended through Oct. 28, reviewed here)

“It’s an interesting story with a great many good things in it, but I’m afraid we’re not quite persuaded by the tour-de-force ending.”

Robert Henderson, letter to Elizabeth McKie, Flannery O’Connor’s literary agent, rejecting “Good Country People” for The New Yorker (April 6, 1955)