July 3, 2009
TT: He said, she did
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review two West Coast plays, the Los Angeles revival of David Mamet's Oleanna and the La Jolla premiere of Claudia Shear's Restoration. Both are first rate. Here's an excerpt.
* * *
David Mamet shocked a great many people when he declared that he was no longer a "brain-dead liberal." What made him change his stripes? "I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart," he wrote in a much-quoted essay published last year in the Village Voice. That belated conclusion won't come as a surprise to anyone who sees "Oleanna," Mamet's 1992 two-character play about a sexual-harassment case, in the incisive Broadway-bound revival now playing at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum. Whatever else "Oleanna" is or isn't, it's definitely not the work of a playwright who takes a rosy view of human nature.
Bill Pullman plays John, the self-important but well-meaning professor who tries to help Carol (Julia Stiles), a student who is floundering in one of his classes and comes to his office in despair. We see their meeting, at which nothing egregiously offensive happens. Then, in the second act, we learn that Carol has filed an official complaint of harassment by John in which she exaggerates and misrepresents everything that took place in the first act. At first it appears that the complaint arises from a genuine misunderstanding, but Carol turns out to be part of a "group" of female students "who suffer what I suffer." She's been collecting evidence against John on their behalf, and in third act she hints that their real purpose is to control what he teaches in his classes....
What is most impressive about this revival, which Doug Hughes ("Doubt") has directed with an enthralling combination of force and subtlety, is that the actors give both characters their due: Mr. Pullman is so tightly wound that he all but quivers, while Ms. Stiles appears to have strolled directly into the theater from the nearest classroom....
I last saw Claudia Shear on Broadway 10 years ago in "Dirty Blonde," her delightful three-person play about a woman obsessed with the spirit of Mae West. Alas, I haven't heard much of her since then, so I made a point of going to the La Jolla Playhouse to catch the premiere of "Restoration," her fictionalized retelling of the story of the 2003 cleaning of Michelangelo's David. Ms. Shear plays Giulia, a middle-aged scholar-restorer with a redwood-sized chip on her shoulder who becomes obsessed with the statue in part because she believes herself to be physically unattractive: "Beautiful eyes--the catch-all compliment for the plain woman." No doubt this too-neat summary sounds as though Ms. Shear is using a great work of art as the pretext for a three-hankie weeper. Not so: "Restoration" is a beautifully wrought portrait of an unhappy woman who uses her sharp tongue to hold the world at bay...
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too."
W. Somerset Maugham, Strictly Personal
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
July 2, 2009
TT: So you want to see a show?
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.
Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.
BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)
• Avenue Q * (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, closes Sept. 13, reviewed here)
• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, closes Aug. 30, reviewed here)
• Mary Stuart (drama, G, far too long and complicated for children, closes Aug. 16, reviewed here)
• The Norman Conquests (three related comedies, PG-13, comprehensively unsuitable for children, playing in repertory and extended through July 26, reviewed here)
• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)
• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes Sept. 6, reviewed here)IN CHICAGO:
• The History Boys (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, too intellectually complex for most adolescents, extended through Sept. 27, reviewed here)
• A Minister's Wife (musical, PG-13, closes Aug. 2, reviewed here)CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• God of Carnage * (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 19, then reopens Sept. 8 and runs through Nov. 15, reviewed here)CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• The Rivalry (historical drama, G, too complicated for children, closes July 19, reviewed here)CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Waiting for Godot * (drama, PG-13, accessible to intelligent and open-minded adolescents, closes July 12, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY IN HARTFORD, CONN.:
• Dividing the Estate (black comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Coraline (musical, G, possibly too scary for small children and very problematic for twee-hating adults, reviewed here)Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"For my part I have never avoided the influence of others. I would have considered it cowardice and a lack of sincerity toward myself."
Henri Matisse, interview (L'Art Vivant, Sept. 15, 1925)
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
July 1, 2009
TT: Snapshot
Benno Moiseiwitsch plays the first movement of Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto in 1944, accompanied by Constant Lambert and the London Philharmonic:
(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"What makes a poet is, surely, the love of these things, a desperate search for the tiny ray of sunshine which used to flicker on the floor of a child's bedroom."
François Mauriac, Questions of Precedence
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
June 30, 2009
TT: And...they're off!
I'm in downtown Los Angeles, where I'll be seeing Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles in David Mamet's Oleanna tonight. Meanwhile, the cast of The Letter has assembled in Santa Fe, where rehearsals began yesterday morning with a table reading of the libretto. That surprised me, but then I remembered that Jonathan Kent, our director, spends most of his time staging plays, so it stands to reason that he'd start the ball rolling by having the singers read the script out loud.
I know you shouldn't wish time away, but I can't help wishing that I could turn the clock forward to July 13, the day when I report to the Santa Fe Opera House for my first rehearsal. Would that bilocation were possible! For now I'm having to rely on long-distance reports from the members of the cast. I returned home from dinner last night to find an e-mail from James Maddalena, who created the title role of John Adams' Nixon in China and is playing Howard Joyce, a lawyer who bends his code of ethics to save the life of his best friend's wife, in The Letter. "I think this is going to be stupendous!" he said.
Sounds good to me.
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"Critics, as they are birds of prey, have ever a natural inclination to carrion."
Alexander Pope, letter to William Wycherley, Dec. 26, 1704
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
June 29, 2009
TT: Up in the air (I)
In the summer I hit the drama-festival circuit, and I try to get from one town to the next in as uncomplicated and unhurried a way as I can contrive. Not only has experience taught me to travel light and never fly on show days--to do otherwise is asking for trouble--but I also have to give myself sufficient time to write, file, and edit my Wall Street Journal drama columns from the road.
The upcoming premiere of The Letter, however, means that I'll be cramming in more shows than usual between now and then, since I'm flying to Santa Fe on July 12 to attend the last two weeks of rehearsal and the first three performances of the opera. It isn't easy to get from Santa Fe to anywhere else, so I've decided not to try to see any out-of-town shows while I'm there. Instead, I'm stockpiling long-running festival performances that I can write about in July.
I've already seen the three Stratford Shakespeare Festival shows that I'll be reviewing in my July 24 column, and last week Mrs. T and I went to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival to see Much Ado About Nothing and Pericles, about which I'll be writing on July 10. We go to Hudson Valley every summer--it's our favorite outdoor Shakespeare festival--and we have our travel routine down pat. We always stay at Storm King Lodge in Mountainville, a stone's throw away from Storm King Art Center, and we always dine al fresco each night at the Boscobel Restoration, the 1808 house on whose elegantly manicured lawn the Hudson Valley Festival pitches its tent.
Two nights on the Hudson isn't nearly enough to suit me, but it was all the time I could spare this season. America is a big country, and it's never bigger than when you're going directly from the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival with no stops in between. No playgoing stops, that is: on Thursday I ate a hearty breakfast in Mountainville, drove to the train station in Beacon, took a commuter train from there to Grand Central Station, caught a cab from there to LaGuardia Airport, flew to Denver, spent two hours waiting for a thunderstorm to blow over, flew to Oregon, picked up a rental car, drove to the Ashland Springs Hotel, and went straight to bed, having spent a grand total of eighteen hours getting from one coast to the other.
I fell hard for Ashland when I went there for the first time three years ago, and I haven't changed my mind. It's an immaculately kept little town whose business district seems to consist mainly of first-class restaurants, of which Amuse and Chateaulin remain my favorites. You can see all the plays you want in between meals--the Oregon Shakespeare Festival performs in three different theaters--and you can walk just about everywhere without difficulty, though you do need a car to get to Mount Ashland, the 7,533-foot-high peak to whose summit I hiked last Saturday morning.
Really. No fooling.
(To be continued)
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Another little taste
I recently posted a photo of the scale model of Hildegard Bechtler's set for the first and second scenes of The Letter, which take place in the living room of the home of Leslie Crosbie, who shoots her faithless lover dead as the opera begins. Here's the set for the third and sixth scenes, which take place in the Singapore office of Howard Joyce, Leslie's lawyer and her husband's best friend:
Since The Letter plays continuously without a break, the sets are designed to be changed quickly in full view of the audience. The wall unit at downstage left is rolled on from the wings.
* * *
Anne Constable wrote a story for Sunday's Santa Fe New Mexican that tells how the Santa Fe Opera's technical and property crews go about building the sets and props for the company's productions. Needless to say, I was especially interested in the part about The Letter, but the whole piece makes for fascinating reading.
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"Critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes."
George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
June 26, 2009
TT: Heart transplant
Today's Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted in its entirety to a Chicago-area show, Writers' Theatre's premiere production of A Minister's Wife. Here's an excerpt.
* * *
Music was George Bernard Shaw's first love, and he claimed that his plays were operas in disguise. Yet few composers have found inspiration in the chilly glitter of his dialogue, and only one musical version of a Shaw play, "My Fair Lady," has hit the bull's-eye--until now. Austin Pendleton, Josh Schmidt and Jan Tranen have turned "Candida" into a chamber musical called "A Minister's Wife" that is the talk of Chicagoland. No doubt it will find its way to New York in time, though I wouldn't wait for that to happen if I were you. Not only is "A Minister's Wife" the most fully realized piece of musical theater to come along since "The Light in the Piazza," but I can't imagine anyone improving on the quiet delicacy of Writers' Theatre's premiere production....
What the makers of "A Minister's Wife" have added to "Candida" is the warmth that its author left out--yet they have accomplished this transformation without doing violence to the letter of Shaw's play. Mr. Pendleton, the author of "Orson's Shadow," has done a remarkable job of compressing a tightly written three-act play into an even tighter one-act libretto that runs for roughly 90 intermission-free minutes. No less striking are Ms. Tranen's plain-spoken yet poignant lyrics, which heighten the emotions concealed in Shaw's neatly turned prose...
Josh Schmidt first came to the attention of New York audiences two seasons ago with his score for "Adding Machine," a musical so glitteringly crafted that I initially took its self-assurance for glibness. No one will make that mistake about the music that Mr. Schmidt has written for "A Minister's Wife." Atop a crisply chattering minimalist-style instrumental accompaniment that evokes the typewriter used by Morell's secretary to transcribe his sermons, Mr. Schmidt flings long, tender arcs of melody that cling to the ear like phrases from old love letters. The results are at once strongly contemporary and immediately engaging....
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: How dances disappear
Merce Cunningham, who turned ninety this year, has announced that his world-famous dance company will be disbanded after he dies. That's a big story, bigger than you might think if you don't follow dance closely. Most choreographers, after all, do their best to ensure that their companies will outlive them. Why has Cunningham decided otherwise? Because he thinks his dances have a better chance of surviving over the long haul if his associates concentrate on making them available to other companies instead of keeping his own troupe going.
This decision is the subject of my "Sightings" column for Saturday's Wall Street Journal, in which I talk about the inherent fragility of dance--and what choreographers can do to circumvent it. To see what I have to say, pick up a copy of tomorrow's Journal.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.
* * *
An excerpt from Cunningham's "Beach Birds for Camera," danced by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company:
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories."
W. Somerset Maugham, Points of View
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
June 25, 2009
TT: Now's the time
The Letter opens one month from today. Next week Commentary runs an essay by me called "A Critic Takes a Bow." This is the first paragraph:
On July 25, I expect to step from the wings of an opera house perched atop a 6,900-foot-high mesa in New Mexico, walk to center stage, look out at two thousand people and take the first curtain call of my adult life. The occasion will be the premiere of The Letter, an opera by the composer Paul Moravec that is based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play of the same name and for which I have written the words. If all goes well, the members of the audience will be cheering by the time that Paul and I appear on stage. If not, my career as an opera librettist will come to an abrupt and inglorious end.And how do I feel about this fast-approaching set of mutually exclusive alternatives? Pretty good, actually, though I'm sure it helps that I'm too busy to think about it very much. Not so Paul, who is spending the week going through the orchestral parts of The Letter in search of microscopic mistakes. I ran into him at the gym on Monday and asked how he was feeling. "I'm still having a lot of dreams about the opera," he replied, "but they're not as bad as they used to be." On Tuesday the two of us dined together--it'll be the last time we see one another until we meet in Santa Fe--and drew up a list of the ten funniest movies ever made. (We agreed on His Girl Friday, The In-Laws, Some Like It Hot, This Is Spinal Tap, and Tootsie.) Next to nothing was said about The Letter.
As for me, I haven't had a single dream about our opera, good, bad, or indifferent, which may or may not bespeak a certain lack of imagination on my part. I know perfectly well that the whole thing could blow up in our faces--but I don't think it will. No, I'm not sure that it's going to be a hit. I do, however, feel sure of our craftsmanship, by which I mean that I think The Letter is a solid piece of work. Some people will like it, others won't, but I expect that everyone in the opening-night audience, critics included, will take what we've done seriously and respond accordingly.
And after that...what? I haven't a clue, nor do I much care, at least for the moment. "Why are you stingy with yourselves?" George Balanchine used to ask his dancers. "Why are you holding back? What are you saving for--for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now." That's how I feel about The Letter. For me, the clock stops on July 25.
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: So you want to see a show?
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.
Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.
BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)
• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• God of Carnage * (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 19, then reopens Sept. 8 and runs through Nov. 15, reviewed here)
• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)
• Mary Stuart (drama, G, far too long and complicated for children, closes Aug. 16, reviewed here)
• The Norman Conquests * (three related comedies, PG-13, comprehensively unsuitable for children, playing in repertory and extended through July 26, reviewed here)
• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)OFF BROADWAY:
• Coraline (musical, G, possibly too scary for small children and very problematic for twee-hating adults, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)
• The Rivalry (historical drama, G, too complicated for children, reviewed here)
• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, extended through Aug. 2, reviewed here)IN CHICAGO:
• The History Boys (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, too intellectually complex for most adolescents, extended through Sept. 27, reviewed here)CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Waiting for Godot * (drama, PG-13, accessible to intelligent and open-minded adolescents, closes July 12, reviewed here)CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN HARTFORD, CONN:
• Dividing the Estate (black comedy, PG-13, closes July 5, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• Design for Living (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught."
H.L. Mencken, Prejudices, Fourth Series
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
June 24, 2009
TT: A little taste
Here's a photograph of the scale model of Hildegard Bechtler's set for the opening scene of The Letter. The first thing the audience hears is gunfire on a darkened stage. Then the lights come up:
Cool, huh?
Posted at 1:02 PM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Home-style rock
Erin McKeown, the singer-songwriter who has been praised many times in this space, is presenting a series of four live house concerts over the Web in order to raise funds to underwrite the release of her next album, Hundreds of Lions.
Says McKeown:
My new record, Hundreds of Lions, was made on my own dime and my own time, with no influence, input, or manipulation from any outside source. It has meant so much to me to be able to record the music I've written just as I imagined it to sound, with nothing lost in the translation.The series, which McKeown calls "Cabin Fever," will be aired on July 7 at seven p.m., July 16 at noon, July 22 at three p.m., and July 26 at five p.m. All times are EST and all performances will be telecast live from McKeown's home in western Massachusetts. Tickets are $10 per show or $30 for the complete series.
For more information, go here.
* * *
Here's a video trailer for "Cabin Fever":
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Snapshot
Francis Poulenc, Jacques Février, Georges Prêtre and the Orchestra National de la RTF perform the first movement of Poulenc's Two-Piano Concerto. Poulenc is the pianist on the left:
(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)
Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
