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March 31, 2006
TT: Go south, young woman
Today's Wall Street Journal drama column is an off-Broadway triple-header: A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, and Grey Gardens. Two I liked, one I didn't:I've never understood why Amy Irving's film career failed to pan out. All I know is that she made some good movies in the '80s, married and divorced Steven Spielberg, moved to Brazil and pretty much dropped off the scope. Now she's back in Manhattan, giving a dynamite performance Off Broadway in a one-woman play about an American artist who, like Ms. Irving, changed course and went south.
Marta Góes' "A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop" is one of those fact-filled shows about a real-life character that feels at times less like a full-fledged play than a canned bio. Fortunately, Bishop's life was interesting enough to make the facts worth seeing....
The original production of "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," which ran for 1,847 performances at the Village Gate starting in 1968, is one of Off Broadway's all-time success stories, as well as a prototype of today's jukebox musicals. Now a new team of producers has revived it, this time at the Zipper Theatre, a charmingly run-down cabaret-like dump south of the theater district. Lightning isn't supposed to strike twice in the same place, but I won't be surprised if they get lucky, because this revival is the best-performed musical revue to hit New York in ages....
Whenever I hear the words "cult classic," I look for the nearest exit. Alas, my duty as a critic kept me rooted in my aisle seat throughout "Grey Gardens," the musical version of the 1975 cinéma-vérité documentary that is currently packing them in at Playwrights Horizons. According to the program, the film, which told the creepy story of two impoverished society ladies who spent their sunset years living in a crumbling, cat-infested Long Island summer house, is much admired by gay men. I never saw it, but the stage version, whose book is by Doug Wright, the author of "I Am My Own Wife," made me feel as though I'd sat through a play written in a foreign language....
No link, so get thee to a newsstand, buy a copy of today's Journal, turn to the "Weekend Journal" section, and read the whole thing there. Or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with instance access to the complete text of my review, along with plenty of other art-related coverage.
Posted March 31, 2006 12:00 PM
