About Last Night

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review two premieres, John Guare’s Nantucket Sleigh Ride and Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Here’s an excerpt.

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Now that Edward Albee and Horton Foote have left us, John Guare would seem to have emerged as the unofficial dean of the American stage. He certainly deserves the title, and not merely because of his seniority: Mr. Guare long ago established himself as one of the most important playwrights of the postwar era. Yet “dean” is an oddly formal-sounding word to apply to a man who may be old—81, to be exact—but is nonetheless best known for such theatrical roller-coaster rides as “The House of Blue Leaves” (1971), “Landscape of the Body” (1977) and “Six Degrees of Separation” (1990), which are as dark as it’s possible to be but whose essential energy is comic to the point of outright zaniness. 

“Nantucket Sleigh Ride,” Mr. Guare’s latest play, is all of a piece with its predecessors, a blackish farce about an aging playwright-turned-businessman who steps on a spiritual banana peel and finds himself flung back into the past. It’s the first full-scale play that Mr. Guare has written in some time, and in light of his protracted silence, it’s fair to wonder whether he still has his fast ball. Not to worry, though: “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” is as good as anything he’s given us. Indeed, it strikes me on first viewing that he might possibly have produced a bonafide old-age masterpiece…

“Ain’t Too Proud,” the new Temptations jukebox biomusical, is a Broadway musical for people who don’t like Broadway musicals—or maybe for people who like only jukebox biomusicals. The score, which includes such chart-topping hits of the Sixties and Seventies as “My Girl” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” is terrific, as are the singing and pit band, but Sergio Trujillo’s choreography is way too slick—the real-life Temptations moved like street-corner kids from Detroit, not glammed-up 42^ndStreet gypsies—and the projection-heavy set design is ploddingly dull. As for Dominique Morisseau’s book, it sounds as though a roomful of ad executives wrote it.…

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To read my review of Nantucket Sleigh Ride, go here.

To read my review of Ain’t Too Proud, go 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.

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ON BROADWAY:

• Be More Chill (musical, PG-13, many shows sold out this week, reviewed here)

• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Ferryman (drama, PG-13, Broadway transfer of London production, 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, reviewed here)

• The Prom (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

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OFF BROADWAY:

• Marys Seacole (drama, PG-13, closes Apr. 7, reviewed here)

• The Shadow of a Gunman (tragicomedy, PG-13, closes May 25, reviewed here)

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CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, closing Apr. 7, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)