About Last Night

In this week’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I ask the following question: can summer concerts and other public performances in large outdoor spaces help bolster the flagging morale of America’s struggling performance-arts organizations? Here’s an excerpt.

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Caramoor, a 90-acre estate in New York’s Westchester County that has long been the site of a distinguished music festival, recently announced plans for a shortened summer season including both livestreamed indoor concerts and four outdoor performances that will take place in front of socially distanced “low-density audiences.” What makes this announcement so noteworthy is that for the past couple of months, larger music festivals have been scrapping their entire in-person seasons. Tanglewood, Ravinia, Ojai: All are shut down until 2021, mostly streaming archival videos of old concerts instead of presenting new ones onstage….

I don’t blame any arts organization for giving up on the summer of 2020, least of all theater companies, whose rehearsal schedules would have necessitated that their actors and production teams go into rehearsal well in advance of their opening nights. What William Goldman said about Hollywood in “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” after all, was applicable to the pandemic until recently: When it came to the coronavirus, nobody knew anything. Extreme caution was thus the only prudent course, not least because pollsters warn us that a high percentage of audience members say they won’t be ready to attend indoor performances for months to come. 

On the other hand, we do know a lot more than we did. It now appears, for instance, that it will be safe to attend outdoor performances this summer so long as social distancing and other protective measures are scrupulously enforced….

But what about concerts? New York’s Lincoln Center, for example, has long presented outdoor summertime performances both in its central plaza and in the 3,000-seat Guggenheim Bandshell of Damrosch Park, located in between the Metropolitan Opera House and the David H. Koch Theater. Henry Timms, Lincoln Center’s president, recently told the New York Times that he hopes to give outdoor performances “as soon as that is allowed.” In addition, a few other classical-music groups are starting to make similar plans of their own…

It will be a long time before music, theater and dance organizations are in a position to resume regularly scheduled public performances. Most likely it won’t happen anywhere in the country until October or November, if then. In the meantime, the pandemic will continue to put even the biggest and most solidly established performing-arts organizations in jeopardy. Everyone in the business fears for their future. Never has there been greater need to fly the flag of hope…

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Read the whole thing here.

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the online world premiere of Anno Domino, a new audio-only play by Alan Ayckbourn. Here’s an excerpt.

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One by one, drama companies on both sides of the Atlantic are asking themselves: What now? Even those companies that have announced their 2020-21 seasons are shying away from committing to firm opening dates for the productions they’re planning—and after they’re allowed to reopen, social-distancing requirements could make it impossible for them to seat enough playgoers to pay the bills….

I’ve been touting streaming video in this space as a short-to-medium-term solution to the problem. But there is a second option, one whose potential has been demonstrated to richly satisfying effect by the world premiere of “Anno Domino,” the 84^thplay by Alan Ayckbourn, the director emeritus of England’s Stephen Joseph Theatre and one of the greatest playwrights of the postwar era. It’s a two-ac tor, eight-character play originally intended for the stage but newly adapted by Mr. Ayckbourn for audio-only production, and it’s being performed by the 81-year-old author, who hasn’t acted since 1964, and Heather Stoney, his wife and a noted stage actor in her own right. Directed by Mr. Ayckbourn, “Anno Domino” was recorded by the couple in their home—they even supply their own sound effects—and the Stephen Joseph Theatre is making it available for free on the company’s website.

Most of Mr. Ayckbourn’s plays are what I call sad comedies, studies of the difficulties of middle-class life that crackle with farce-charged laughter but also have unnervingly dark moments. While some of them are predominantly light in tone, “Anno Domino” occupies his usual middle ground. It takes place before and after a party thrown to celebrate the silver wedding anniversary of Sam and Milly, who have a surprise for their guests. In Milly’s blunt words, “Sam and I are splitting up…We’ve done the sex, had the kids, seen them both off the premises. We’ve had enough. We’re sick to death of each other’s company and frankly, there has to be more to life than this.” No sooner is this grenade tossed than the other characters start rethinking their own lives….

According to the author, “The inspiration for ‘Anno Domino’ came from the idea that all relationships ultimately, however resilient they appear to be, are built on sand.” That’s a well-worn theme for Mr. Ayckbourn, but it is his special genius to be able to ring perpetually fresh changes on it…

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Read the whole thing here.

Jack Mangan interviews Graham Greene about The Third Man on board the S.S. Queen Mary. This clip was originally telecast in 1950 by WJZ-TV as part of Ship’s Reporter, a TV series in which Mangan interviewed celebrities returning from abroad:

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

“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.”

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

“People don’t like reality,. They don’t like common sense. Until age forces it on them.”

Graham Greene, Loser Takes All

A scene from The Third Man, written by Graham Greene, starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles, and directed by Carol Reed:

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

“It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.”

Graham Greene, The Ministry of Fear

From 2006:

Fame is intense but fleeting in a TV-driven culture, which is one of the many reasons why I love watching the old What’s My Line? kinescopes that air at three-thirty each morning on the Game Show Network. Most of the celebrities who appeared on the show between 1950 and 1967, when CBS cancelled it to make way for Mission: Impossible, are now dead, but a few are very much with us, though many of them are long forgotten. I saw an episode a couple of nights ago in which Mitch Miller was the mystery guest. The audience all but tore the roof off when he came on stage—yet who now remembers him save for pop-music historians and retired oboe players? On the other hand, Jerry Lewis, a guest panelist on another of last week’s episodes, is both alive and well remembered, so much so that I’m actually giving serious thought to reading his new book, unlikely as it may sound.

The difference, of course, is that Lewis was a movie star….

Read the whole thing here.