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May 31, 2006

TT: Theory of relativity

My new Arnold Friedman lithograph arrived yesterday, just in time for me to drop it off at the framer before leaving for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this morning. It was even more beautiful than I'd expected, so much so that I gasped when I took it out of the package, as did my houseguest.

"Can you believe I only paid $225 for it?" I asked her.

"Omigod," she replied, looking slightly embarrassed. "I've paid more than that for shoes."

Posted May 31, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"Alas, how miserable their good looks made him! The pain of watching beautiful young girls, the isolation of desire! They reminded him of the figures in one of those pictures by Watteau that are instinct with the beauty of the moment, the fugitive distress of hedonism, the sadness that falls like dew from pleasure, as they stand, fixed in the movement of the dance, beneath the elms, beneath the garlanded urn."

Cyril Connolly, The Rock Pool

Posted May 31, 12:00 PM

May 30, 2006

TT: Coming and going

I spent Memorial Day weekend in Philadelphia and Baltimore, seeing Arden Theater's production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and CenterStage's production of Crumbs from the Table of Joy, a 1995 play by Lynn Nottage. I caught up with Nottage (along with most of the rest of the New York critics) in 2004, when two of her later plays, Intimate Apparel and Fabulation, were premiered in the same season. Seeing them in such close succession made me a fan, which is why I went out of my way to catch Crumbs from the Table of Joy in Baltimore.

My travels began with a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I took in Andrew Wyeth: Memory and Magic. Wyeth is an odd case, a self-evidently gifted artist whom few art critics take seriously save as a technician. I am, for the most part, one of their skeptical number, though I do like his splendidly accomplished drybrush watercolors, a few of which are to be found in this crowded (in all senses) retrospective. I don't care at all for the large-scale paintings, which have always struck me as essentially false, all but quivering with an embarrassed romanticism poorly concealed beneath a cloak of pretended austerity. It's the paintings that most people love, though, and I wish I could agree with them. Dr. Johnson said of Gray's Elegy that "I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours." I agree--but not when it comes to Wyeth.

From there I took myself to Old Town, Philadelphia's historical district, which is full of excellent sights to see, most of them very close indeed to the Arden (it's next door to Christ Church, where Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross worshipped, and around the corner from Elfreth's Alley, the oldest residential street in America). It's also full of excellent restaurants, and I had an unusually good meal at one of them, a place called Fork that I commend to your attention should you find yourself in that famous part of town. Alas, I spent an exceedingly disagreeable night at the Independence Park Hotel, which put me up in a room that was hot, stuffy, and noisy, then served me a continental breakfast that bordered on the inedible. I won't be back, save at gunpoint.

As for the two shows, you'll have to wait until Friday to hear about them. In the meantime, I'll be off again very early Wednesday morning, this time to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where I'll be seeing five plays in two and a half days and partaking of whatever other delights the city of Ashland, Oregon, may have to offer me. I plan to bring along my trusty iBook, so it seems fairly likely that I'll be blogging at some point or points during my stay, but don't be surprised if my postings are erratic between now and week's end.

Till...whenever!

Posted May 30, 12:00 PM

TT: Fair play

I spent a good-sized chunk of last week writing a lengthy essay for Commentary about Alice Goldfarb Marquis' Art Czar, the new biography of the art critic Clement Greenberg. Eight years ago I reviewed an earlier book about Greenberg, Florence Rubenfeld's Clement Greenberg: A Life, and it occurred to me that it might be useful for me to revisit my earlier piece. For the most part I stand by what I wrote about Greenberg (and Rubenfeld) in 1998, but there was one passage that jumped out at me:

Greenberg became closely identified with a group of painters known as the "color-field abstractionists," whose work he believed to be the culmination of modernism. He praised the work of Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski in disconcertingly lavish terms, curtly dismissing all competing artists as minor....

Greenberg's critics were right about one thing--his history-driven theory of modernism was too neat by half--just as he himself was mistaken about a great many things, not least the long-term importance of the color-field painters, whose work he loved.

Eight years later, with Olitski's Forward Edge and Noland's Circle I (II-3) hanging on the walls of my living room, I find myself in a what-was-I-thinking mood. Such drastic changes of mind do happen to me on occasion, most recently in the case of the playwright August Wilson, of whom I thought poorly until I was lucky enough to see a very good production of what I'm told is his best play. Whenever that kind of thing happens to me, I try to come clean about it, in public if at all possible.

As I explained in The Wall Street Journal four years ago in a column called "The Contrite Critic":

I've changed my mind about art more than once, and in so doing I've learned that I not infrequently start by disliking something and end up liking it. Not always--sometimes I decide on closer acquaintance that a novel or painting isn't as good as I'd thought. More often, though, I realize that it was necessary for me to grow into a fuller understanding of a work of art to which my powers of comprehension were not at first equal.

The music critic Hans Keller said something shrewd about this phenomenon: "As soon as I detest something, I ask myself why I like it." I try to keep that in mind whenever I cover a premiere. I don't mean to say that critics should be wishy-washy, but we should also remember that strong emotions sometimes masquerade as their opposite.

Brooks Atkinson, for example, panned the original production of Rodgers and Hart's "Pal Joey" in the New York Times, calling it "drab and mirthless." When he saw the 1952 revival, he knew he'd been wrong, and said so in print: "In 1940 ‘Pal Joey' was regarded by its satellites as the musical that broke the old formula and brought the musical stage to maturity. There was a minority, including this column, that was not enchanted. But no one is likely now to be impervious to the tight organization of the production, the terseness of the writing, the liveliness and versatility of the score, and the easy perfection of the lyrics."

More common, alas, is the case of the great art critic Clement Greenberg. In 1945, Greenberg dismissed Monet's late paintings as "mere instances of his style but not works of art." Twelve years later, he proclaimed their revolutionary significance, adding that "the righting of a wrong is involved here, though that wrong--which was a failure in appreciation--may have been inevitable and even necessary at a certain stage in the evolution of modern painting." Excuse me? That's like a politician saying Mistakes were made instead of I blew it.

I yield to no one in my admiration for Greenberg, but I also think the world of art would be a better place if we critics made a point of eating crow from time to time.

(You can read the whole thing here.)

If Clem Greenberg ever sat down to such a dish in his long lifetime, I'm unaware of it. I, on the other hand, try to eat it whenever circumstances warrant. So, if you'll excuse me, I have some chewing to do....

Posted May 30, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"Revelations about a writer's life should not affect our independently formed critical assessment of his work. They may, however, confirm or explain reservations about it."

David Lodge, "The Lives of Graham Greene" (courtesy of Kate's Book Blog)

Posted May 30, 12:00 PM

May 29, 2006

TT: Almanac

"I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can't be won without.

"I wish you could see just one of the ineradicable pictures I have in my mind today. In this particular picture I am sitting among clumps of sword-grass on a steep and rocky hillside that we have just taken. We are looking out over a vast rolling country to the rear.

"A narrow path comes like a ribbon over a hill miles away, down a long slope, across a creek, up a slope and over another hill.

"All along the length of this ribbon there is now a thin line of men. For four days and nights they have fought hard, eaten little, washed none, and slept hardly at all. Their nights have been violent with attack, fright, butchery, and their days sleepless and miserable with the crash of artillery.

"The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.

"On their shoulders and backs they carry heavy steel tripods, machine-gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. Their feet seem to sink into the ground from the overload they are bearing.

"They don't slouch. It is the terrible deliberation of each step that spells out their appalling tiredness. Their faces are black and unshaven. They are young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion make them look middle-aged.

"In their eyes as they pass is not hatred, not excitement, not despair, not the tonic of their victory--there is just the simple expression of being here as though they had been here doing this forever, and nothing else.

"The line moves on, but it never ends. All afternoon men keep coming round the hill and vanishing eventually over the horizon. It is one long tired line of antlike men."

Ernie Pyle, Scripps-Howard dispatch from Tunisia, May 2, 1943

Posted May 29, 12:00 PM

May 26, 2006

TT: Monsters, Inc.

I just got back from the Jazz Standard, where Sarah and I heard Roger Kellaway's first set. It was stupendous.

Kellaway is currently fronting a piano-guitar-bass trio, which he claims to be the fulfillment of a "childhood dream." Oscar Peterson led just such a group in the Fifties, and Kellaway, a lifelong Peterson fan who has always enjoyed playing without a drummer, knows how to make the most of the elbow room afforded by that wonderfully flexible instrumentation. Russell Malone is the guitarist, Jay Leonhart the bassist. The three men opened the set with a super-sly version of Benny Golson's "Killer Joe," and within four bars you knew they were going to swing really, really hard. So they did, with Kellaway pitching his patented curve balls all night long, including a bitonal arrangement of Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash" and what surely must have been the first time that the Sons of the Pioneers' "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" has ever been performed by a jazz group.

Everybody in the band (including vibraphonist Stefon Harris, who joined the trio for "Cotton Tail," "You Don't Know What Love Is" and "52nd Street Theme") was smoking. Kellaway, though, was...well, I really don't have words to describe the proliferating creativity and rhythmic force of his piano playing. Sarah did pretty well, though: "Did you see my jaw drop?" she asked me when it was all over. Russell Malone, with whom I chatted between sets, put it even more tersely. "That man is scary," he said, shaking his head.

After I came home, I looked up my Washington Post review of the last time I heard Kellaway in person, a two-piano gig in 2004 with Bill Charlap at the second keyboard:

I was lucky enough to be at Birdland when Roger Kellaway and Bill Charlap gave the best live two-piano jazz performance I've heard in my entire life. The bedazzlingly eclectic Kellaway, who has been holed up on the West Coast for years, finally decided to head east and show the rest of the world his formidable stuff. For his long-delayed return...he joined forces with Charlap, who usually prefers suave understatement to single combat. Not this time: Kellaway was loaded for bear, and Charlap rose to the occasion. Their version of "Blue in Green" suggested an off-the-cuff collaboration between Bill Evans and Maurice Ravel, while the ferociously competitive "Strike Up the Band" with which they set the evening in motion sounded like two guys shooting roman candles at each other in a locked room. ("Lotta black notes on that page," Charlap said to me afterward, grinning slyly.)

This set was that good.

Kellaway and his colleagues will be at the Jazz Standard through Sunday night. If you're anywhere near New York City between now and then--and I'm talking about a five-state radius--do your damnedest to come hear them. If not, fear not: IPO, Kellaway's new record label, is taping the engagement for release on a forthcoming live CD. In the meantime, go out right this second and get a copy of Remembering Bobby Darin, the first album by the West Coast edition of Kellaway's Peterson-style trio.

What are you waiting for? Get moving!

UPDATE: Here's a link to my Washington Post review of the CD reissue of Roger Kellaway Cello Quartet. Buy that, too.

Posted May 26, 12:00 PM

TT: Putting Falstaff in his place

In today's Wall Street Journal I report on my recent visit to Chicago, where I saw Chicago Shakespeare's production of Henry IV and the Court Theatre's revival of Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage. Both are smashing:

Next month Chicago Shakespeare Theater takes "Henry IV," staged by Barbara Gaines, the company's artistic director, to Stratford-upon-Avon, the Bard's home town, where it will be performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's year-long RSC Complete Works Festival. In preparation for that trip, Chicago Shakespeare is presenting a month-long run of "Henry IV" on its home turf. I rank it among the best Shakespeare productions I've seen in recent years, though it will be interesting to see how Ms. Gaines' no-nonsense approach fares with English critics, most of whom seem to prefer their Shakespeare smothered in political sauce and dished up with a garnish of gimmickry....

Patricia Hodges is best known for having replaced Mary Tyler Moore two seasons ago in Neil Simon's "Rose's Dilemma," an ungrateful task that she brought off with the utmost panache. She is no less satisfying in "Lettice and Lovage," investing her larger-than-life part with a vibrant, stage-filling physicality that pulls laughter out of you like a magnet. Ms. Reiter is equally good as Lotte, the mousy bureaucrat who unexpectedly finds in Lettice a kindred spirit. I don't know whether she and Ms. Hodges have ever acted together before, but they're definitely in tune, and their palpable rapport has much to do with the production's appeal....

No link, of course (megasigh). If you care to read the whole thing, of which there is much, much more, go out and buy a copy of today's Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will provide you with immediate access to the full text of my review, along with Joe Morgenstern's Pulitzer-winning film column and plenty of other worthy art-related copy.

Posted May 26, 12:00 PM

TT: Unrisky business

In my next "Sightings" column, to be published in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, I ask whether "safe art" (to borrow a phrase used recently by a friend of mine) is ever worth experiencing. My answer? You better believe it.

To find out what I have in mind, pick up a copy of tomorrow's Journal, where you'll find my column in the "Pursuits" section.

Posted May 26, 12:00 PM

TT: Memo from the Department of Acquisitions

Envy is the lot of the unwealthy art collector. I picked up a price list at the opening of Hollis Taggart Galleries' Arnold Friedman retrospective on Wednesday, and it reminded me that any hopes I have of owning one of Friedman's oil paintings--even a very small one--are contingent on my selling Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong to Hollywood, or something at least as implausible.

I returned home feeling both elated (having just looked at four roomfuls of exquisite paintings) and depressed (knowing that none of them would ever be mine). Then it occurred to me to see if any Friedman-related bargains were to be found on the Web. I searched for "Arnold Friedman lithograph," and what did I find? This. A few more keystrokes revealed it to be a pencil-signed 1940 Friedman lithograph for sale by the Philadelphia Print Shop for the unlikely-sounding price of $225. "That I can afford," I muttered hopefully, and fired off an e-mail asking if it was still available. Answer came there eight hours later, and now the latest addition to the Teachout Museum is en route to my door via UPS.

The moral? You can't always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find something (A) close enough for jazz and (B) a whole lot cheaper. And yes, I'm feeling incredibly smug....

Posted May 26, 12:00 PM

TT: Proud uncle

My niece graduated from high school on Tuesday. I couldn't be there, but I sent flowers, and spent the evening marveling at how time flies. Only yesterday she was a baby, and now she's a tall, poised young lady about to go off to college. How can such things be?

I am immensely proud of Lauren Teachout, and of my brother and sister-in-law, who raised her right. Nothing I will ever do in my life will be as difficult--or honorable--as that.

Posted May 26, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"There has been a certain amount of self-deception in School of Paris art since the exit of cubism. In Pollock there is absolutely none, and he is not afraid to look ugly--all profoundly original art looks ugly at first."

Clement Greenberg, The Nation, Apr. 7, 1945

Posted May 26, 12:00 PM

May 25, 2006

TT: On the town

Our server was out of commission yesterday, making it impossible for OGIC to post her account of our fun-filled weekend in Chicago. (Yes, it's coming.) I couldn't post anything, either, so I spent the day planning and booking theater-related travel instead. It seems I have quite a complicated summer ahead of me. I'll be seeing a couple of shows in Philadelphia and Baltimore this weekend, followed shortly thereafter by trips to Georgia, Idaho, Oregon, and Utah--and that's just in June and July!

Once my calendar was neat and tidy, I headed over to Hollis Taggart Galleries for the opening of the Arnold Friedman retrospective about which I posted earlier this week. It is a truth universally acknowledged that nobody goes to gallery openings to look at art, but I actually managed to pay close attention to a couple of dozen canvases in between sips of Veuve Clicquot. I also chatted with an interesting assortment of interested parties, including Tommy LiPuma (who collects Friedman's paintings, though he's better known as a record producer), William Agee (who curated the show and wrote the catalogue essay), and Friedman's grandson (who told me that he remembered seeing a copy of Skater and Dog, a Friedman lithograph I bought last year, hanging over the artist's bed). Best of all, I ran into Albert Kresch, another chronically underappreciated American artist about whom I blogged enthusiastically a couple of years ago. Needless to say, I plan to go back again and see "Arnold Friedman: The Language of Paint" under more favorable (i.e., less crowded) circumstances, but I had a good time anyway.

From there I went downtown to 55 Bar, a low-ceilinged Christopher Street hangout where good jazz can frequently be heard, and caught a set by Amanda Monaco's quartet. When not playing guitar with the Lascivious Biddies, of whom she is a charter member, Monaco performs her own very interesting compositions with a tight little band that's always worth hearing (I commend their CD to your attention).

What next? I'll be spending most of Thursday writing a Commentary essay about the new Clement Greenberg biography, after which I plan to meet the beauteous Sarah at the Jazz Standard to hear Roger Kellaway.

Yes, I'm back in business again, and it feels great--but now I need some good old-fashioned shut-eye. See you later.

UPDATE: Here's an online interview with Albert Kresch that's very much worth reading.

Posted May 25, 12:00 PM

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:
- Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
- Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)
- The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
- Faith Healer* (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
- The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)
- Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)
- The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
- Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)
- Slava's Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:
- Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 25)
- Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)
- Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here, closes July 2)
- Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes June 4)
- The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)

Posted May 25, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"The reader must sit down alone and struggle with the writer, and this the pseudo-scholar will not do. He would rather relate a book to the history of its time, to events in the life of its author, to the events it describes, above all to some tendency."

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (courtesy of Kate's Book Blog)

Posted May 25, 12:00 PM

OGIC: Weekend at OGIC's

Everything you've heard is true. There were fancy-pants hot dogs, there were plays, and there was lots and lots of House, viewed with a hunger. Let's look at a few highlights.

Saturday: Brunch at Hot Doug's Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium. I was actually trying to keep this place a secret until the next time the Gurgling Cod pays a visit to Chicago, but the cat's out of the bag now. At Hot Doug's the line on a Saturday afternoon bends around the southwest corner of California and Roscoe and practically out of sight, but I've seldom stood in a more cheerful long line. It's as if the length of the wait guarantees the transcendent goodness of the meal to come, and the patrons take an added pleasure in being part of a little community of good taste and adventure. Of course, the culinary adventures offered at Hot Doug's come with all the comforts of the familiar, presented in the usual trappings of the most quotidian of Chicago foods. Beyond the casing, bun, and toppings, though, anything goes--last weekend it was bacon-cheddar elk sausage with spicy bourbon mustard and stripey jack cheese for Terry and saucisse de Toulouse with anchovy aioli and fromagier d'affinoise for me. The blue cheese pork sausage with pear crème fraiche and toasted hazelnuts was a close second that still has me wondering what could have been, delicious as the saucisse truly was. Hot Doug's is all about the hard choices.

The afternoon was sunny and mild, and we brunched at a booth set up in the narrow alley between Hot Doug's and the apartment building next door, feeling like we were at a city cookout. Did I mention that on Saturday's Doug offers silky french fries cooked in duck fat?

Saturday: An hour or so at the Art Institute. We arrive and wander off half-cocked trying to find our way to the modern painting. But we find ourselves heading backwards in the time machine, from Seurat to Manet to Millet. With the eighteenth century beginning to loom, I ask a lady guard to point us toward modern. "You know that rainy day painting?" she says. Oh, we do. "Turn left there and go through the door behind it." Never thought about it before, but its size, iconic status, and placement at a crux on the second floor of the museum indeed make the Caillebotte picture as good as a trail of bread crumbs. We find modern, and a few surprises.

I have to go to work, folks. Coming soon is Saturday: The longue, bonne durée at Chicago Shakespeare. As well as Sunday: cutting up at Court Theatre.

Posted May 25, 10:18 AM

May 24, 2006

TT: Almanac

"'There is no intermediate existence, Barbara. Short of death, there's no alternative but life.'

"No reply. Barbara was busy at the stove.

"Returning to the kitchen, he said, 'And short of despair, there's no alternative but hope.'"

Jon Hassler, Simon's Night

Posted May 24, 12:00 PM

May 23, 2006

TT: Not too much the worse for wear

Thanks to the vagaries of modern-day air travel, I spent far more time than necessary going to and from Chicago, and am feeling a bit dilapidated as a result. For this reason, I'll leave it to Our Girl to tell you all about our action-packed long weekend, which we spent dining on Chicago-style encased meats (elk sausage, mmmmm!), sitting on the aisle at Chicago Shakespeare and the Court Theatre, and watching the Stanley Cup playoffs and a half-dozen reruns of House, to both of which OGIC thoughtfully introduced me.

Now, if you'll be so kind as to excuse me, I need to do some work for hire. See you tomorrow.

Posted May 23, 12:00 PM

TT: Words to the wise

- "Arnold Friedman: The Language of Paint" opens tomorrow at Hollis Taggart Galleries. Curated by William C. Agee, who also wrote the catalogue, this show is the first full-scale retrospective of Friedman's paintings to be seen anywhere since 1950.

I last wrote about Friedman in a Washington Post review of a 2003 exhibition of Tommy LiPuma's collection of modern American art:

If you've never heard of Friedman, who died in 1946, you're not alone. So far as I know, none of his work is currently hanging in any museum (though the Museum of Modern Art owns a good Friedman, "Sawtooth Falls"), and he almost never gets written up nowadays. Clement Greenberg, long the top handicapper of American art, praised his late paintings to the skies, calling them "an important moment in the history of American painting." Strong words, coming from the critic who put Jackson Pollock on the map--yet even his fervent advocacy wasn't enough to keep Friedman's name alive.

To understand how good Friedman was, take a long look at "Still Life (Petunias)," the prize of the LiPuma collection. In the foreground is a vase of flowers whose vibrantly colored petals all but burst off the canvas. (The thick, crusty surface was heavily worked with a palette knife.) Hanging on the wall immediately behind the vase is the lower half of an abstract painting--Friedman's way of underlining the subtle relationship between abstraction and representation. The juxtaposition of the two genres is both witty and thought-provoking, unveiling fresh layers of implication at every glance.

I was amazed to learn that "Still Life (Petunias)" was owned by Tommy and Gill LiPuma. If their names ring a bell, it's because you probably know Tommy in a different guise: He's a big-time record producer, the man who helped put Diana Krall on the charts. I've met him once or twice, but I had no idea that he and his wife were interested in art, much less that they were true connoisseurs whose independent-minded taste has inspired them to assemble what is almost certainly the largest private collection of Friedmans in the world....

"Sawtooth Falls" and "Still Life (Petunias)," the second of which you can view by going here to read the complete text of my Washington Post piece, are two of the forty-seven paintings included in "Arnold Friedman: The Language of Paint," which is up through June 30.

For more information, go here.

- Roger Kellaway opens Thursday at the Jazz Standard, where he'll be performing through Sunday with an East Coast version of the King Cole Trio-style piano-guitar-bass trio heard on his latest CD, Remembering Bobby Darin. In addition to Russell Malone on guitar and Jay Leonhart on bass, he'll be joined by the splendid vibraphonist Stefon Harris.

Kellaway is one of my all-time favorite jazz pianists. I've written about him many times, most extensively in a 1995 Wall Street Journal profile in which I called him "the greatest unknown pianist in jazz." (You can read that piece here.) That's still true, alas, but a trip to the Jazz Standard will leave no doubt of why Kellaway is universally and extravagantly esteemed by his colleagues.

Sets start at 7:30 and 9:30 each night, with a third set at 11:30 on Friday and Saturday. For more information, go here.

Posted May 23, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"Rain's only value, for Miss McGee, was that it reminded her how precious was good weather. She despised rain. But she knew that to the earth, rain was as necessary as sunshine. Could it be, she wondered, that the vice and barbarism abroad in the world served, like the rain, some purpose? Did the abominations in the Sunday paper mingle somehow with the goodness in the world and together, like the rain and sun feeding the ferns, did they nourish some kind of life she was unaware of?"

Jon Hassler, Staggerford

Posted May 23, 12:00 PM

May 19, 2006

TT: Friendly skies

I'm out of here. In a few hours I'll be in Chicago, where Our Girl and I plan to hang out in extenso (we haven't seen each other since January). Among other things, we'll be seeing Chicago Shakespeare's Henry IV marathon and the Court Theatre's production of Peter Shaffer's Lettice and Lovage, and we might catch a movie or two while we're at it. Weekend updates are possible but not promised.

I'll be flying back to New York on Monday, so don't be surprised if I fail to post anything that day. In fact, blogging next week is likely to be light--I have three back-to-back deadlines, yikes! Didn't I give you enough to read this week?

I'll kiss the Girl for you. See you soon.

P.S. If you want to hear OGIC's Actual Speaking Voice, go here.

Posted May 19, 12:00 PM

TT: Great play, great player

The 2005-06 Broadway season is now officially over (whew!). In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the last two new shows I saw, Faith Healer and Shining City:

If Brian Friel isn't the finest of living playwrights, then he certainly belongs on the shortest possible list of candidates for that supreme honor. We don't get to see his work often enough in New York, but the season just ended has been bracketed by superlative stagings of two of his strongest scripts. Last summer the Irish Repertory Theatre mounted a perfect production of "Philadelphia, Here I Come!," the 1964 play that put him on the map, and now Broadway has imported the Dublin Gate Theatre's revival of "Faith Healer," first seen in this country in 1979.

Unlike the big-name revivals of "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial" (with David Schwimmer) and "Three Days of Rain" (with Julia Roberts) playing next door on 45th Street, though, "Faith Healer," which stars Ralph Fiennes and Cherry Jones, is a winner. In fact, I'll go a giant step further: It's the best show on Broadway....

I came away humbled by the collective mastery of the artists who are bringing "Faith Healer" to blazing life each night. Gifted as they are, though, it is Brian Friel who deserves the highest praise of all. Once again he has proved art's power to narrow the fearful gap that separates soul from soul. Like every great writer, he reveals us to one another--and to ourselves.

Contrary to appearances, Irish playwrights are not infallible. I place in evidence Conor McPherson's "Shining City," which has just been given its American premiere by the Manhattan Theatre Club. Most of my fellow critics raved about this four-character play, but despite the acting of a crack cast led by the irreproachable Brían F. O'Byrne, last seen on Broadway in "Doubt," I found "Shining City" tenuous to the point of nullity....

No link. Those who care to read the whole thing (and please do!) can always buy a copy of today's Journal, or (better yet) go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you instant access to the complete text of my review, plus a plenitude of similarly readable stuff.

Posted May 19, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"'They say that when good Americans die they go to Paris,' chuckled Sir Thomas, who had a large wardrobe of Humour's cast-off clothes.

"'Really! And where do bad Americans go to when they die?' inquired the duchess.

"'They go to America,' murmured Lord Henry.

"Sir Thomas frowned. 'I am afraid that your nephew is prejudiced against that great country,' he said to Lady Agatha. 'I have travelled all over it in cars provided by the directors, who, in such matters, are extremely civil. I assure you that it is an education to visit it.'

"'But must we really see Chicago in order to be educated?' asked Mr. Erskine plaintively. 'I don't feel up to the journey.'"

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Posted May 19, 12:00 PM

May 18, 2006

TT: Elsewhere

It's been far too long since I've trolled the 'sphere, so here goes:

- Firstly, let me introduce you to Ms. Culturegrrl, the most interesting new blogger to come along in ages. Mr. Modern Art Notes calls her blog "an automatic, daily must read." I agree.

- Mr. Playgoer compared the Tony and Obie nominations:

Within 12 hours of each other, the alternate (not even parallel) universes of B'way and "theatre" announced their season's honors. Granted the Tony "awards" proper are still to come. But Obies thankfully don't bother with the two-stage process, so their multiple nominations are in fact their awards.

To compare these lists is (as it is every year) an object lesson in the incredible gulf between theatre as experienced by those who practice and follow it devotedly, and those for whom it is well... tourism, frankly. Or hobby, or industry.

Read the whole thing. It's very tough, and very smart.

- The Mumpsimus speaks words of wisdom:

Theatre audiences and critics have been conditioned to expect plays to deliver messages, and many good playwrights have mangled their art by bowing down to this condition. One of the problems with the messages delivered by most contemporary plays is that they're predictable and shallow--war is bad, love is good, people should be nice to other people who aren't exactly the same as they are, etc. One of the results of ticket prices being so phenomenally expensive is that audiences expect what they see to give them either a lot of spectacle or some sort of education, though if you've just paid $85 for a seat, what you probably most want is a reinforcing of your current ideas under the guise of education, so that way even if you aren't entertained, at least you feel smart and righteous. (Yes, I'm generalizing horribly.)

- I really, really wish I'd written this:

Finishing a great novel is one of those voluminous experiences; your heart races as the pages thin, you struggle to move your eyes faster, to soak it all up more quickly. It's the final lap, and the object is to finish without a drop of energy left. When the last page nears, the temptation to skip sentences, paragraphs, entire pages, pulls like some watery undertow. The final page comes in a rush, the last words arrive like a trampling stampede, there and gone before you can comprehend what's happened. Unlike the end of a movie or a television series, novel time is fluid; you can repeat sentences, skip around on the page. So maybe you read the last line several times, or read it first and then go back and read the paragraph leading up to it. But at some point it hits you: This thing you've lived with for a day, a week, a month--these people and places and words you've submitted yourself to--they're over. There's nothing left to tell....

- Recognize this?

When Saunière pulled down the Caravaggio, the iron gate slammed down and the alarm began to ring. He turned and looked back. The albino was already there, on the other side of the barricade, gun in hand.

It has a Starkly familiar ring, no?

- If you don't read anything else about the publishing business this week, make a point of reading this.

- Speaking of blind items about interesting art-related statistics, take a look at these, please.

- Who is this guy, anyway? He's smart:

Happy endings are not all alike. In fact, they're not always happy. People have many strange ideas about Hollywood movies, and it's not always clear what folks mean by the term. "Hollywood" often seems to mean any movie in English, not the product of a certain system in a certain factory town. Also "Hollywood" is often pejorative, a shorthand for whatever criticism one cares to imply without examining it.

But one of the strangest cliches to plague us is that Hollywood movies have happy endings. This idea leads to contempt, derision and satire. I recall one witty article that imagined Hollywood remakes of classic stories, such as having a centurion ride up to Calvary and announce that Jesus has been pardoned. He and Mary embrace.

There are probably more happy endings today than in the past, and it's because studio executives live under the burden of this false idea--that Hollywood purveys happy endings. Let's disprove this notion once and for all....

- For those who wonder why I'm always raving about Budd Boetticher's Westerns, go here for confirmation of my good taste.

- Speaking of good taste, Mr. Girish pays tribute to one of my all-time favorite movies:

The Fabulous Baker Boys changed my life. Sounds like a hoary old cliché, no? But it's true. I saw it three times the week it opened in 1989, and without ever having touched middle C, walked into a music store and signed up for piano lessons. The piano has been an integral part of my life since; I can't imagine living without it....

I may have said it before, but if so I'll say it again: The Fabulous Baker Boys is the only film I've ever seen that is true to my own experience of playing music (except that I never got to sleep with anybody who looked even slightly like Michelle Pfeiffer).

- In case you've been wondering what Whit Stillman's been up to since The Last Days of Disco, here's the answer--in his own inimitable words.

- Courtesy of Mr. Something Old, Nothing New, here's a fascinating interview with one of the people who puts together DVD box sets of TV shows. Yes, he sounds like a bit of a geekazoid, but so, too, do I....

- Speaking of geekazoidishness, this terrific Washington Post feature story is the absolute last word on stage blood and its makers.

- Ms. Althouse has been listening to Bob Dylan's new satellite-radio show, and thinks it brilliant. I can't wait to rent a car and hear for myself.

- Ms. twang twang twang plays her harp for a brainy audience of Oxfordians, and has an epiphany:

A very clever woman shows it in her face, usually more than a powerfully-minded man. The portraits that line the walls of LMH daily impress this on the students walking by; the first seven minds to penetrate nine hundred years of dreaming ivory towers. Playing the Britten Suite to many such faces today, I suddenly thought, I spend half my life being told to be light, crowd-pleasing, easy on the eye, reassuringly familiar. This is all right (there's a time for everything), but I am never going to apologise for attempting to use the mind I'm lucky enough to have had well-educated, again.

- Mr. Alicublog holds forth on the splendors of demotic speech:

I had a North Carolina girlfriend once, and her mother had no end of lovely expressions. She once referred to spoiled fish as smelling "right boo-booey." Could that be from the French "boue," somehow? In any case I consider myself improved by having heard it. Also by hearing my old Italian landlady say of meeting her husband, "He look at me anna I fell like a pear." And, Texican this, "he got a wild hare," variously "wild hair up his ass"--or "wild hare" up same--never have got that straight....

Me, neither.

- Lastly, I thought you might enjoy seeing a picture of my brother. We look nothing alike, nor are we at all similar, but he's way cool anyway.

Posted May 18, 12:00 PM

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week. (For the third week in a row, however, there are no asterisks.)

BROADWAY:
- Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
- Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)
- The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
- The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)
- Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)
- The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
- Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)
- Slava's Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:
- Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 25)
- Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)
- Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here, closes July 2)
- Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes June 4)
- The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:
- I Love You Because (musical, R, sexual content, reviewed here, closes Sunday)

Posted May 18, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"A moment occurs (or should occur) when the growing artist is able to bequeath his tricks to his imitators. The mature writer rejects the treasured 'originality' and the darling virtuosities of his apprenticeship in art, as well as the showy sorrows and joys of his apprenticeship to life, often just in time. 'How they live at home in their cozy poems and make long stays in narrow comparisons!' Rilke once said, speaking of the run of versifiers who never change or grow. Once youth's embroidered coat is cast aside, what is left? Only imagination, ripened insight, experience, and the trained sense of language, which are usually enough."

Louise Bogan, review of The Collected Poetry of W.H. Auden (1945)

Posted May 18, 12:00 PM

TT: Fair warning

If you missed last night's PBS American Masters documentary on Nat King Cole, don't even think about catching a replay. Not only was the script a dumbed-down, once-over-lightly account of one of the most significant careers in the history of American popular music, but the show contained next to no uninterrupted footage of Cole in performance. In between the snippets was a numbing succession of talking-head interviews with such irrelevant celebrity interlopers as Whoopi Goldberg and Carlos Santana. Rarely have I endured so witless a piece of junk. Avoid it at all costs.

Posted May 18, 1:35 AM

May 17, 2006

TT: The hits just keep on coming

"Critical Edge," ArtsJournal's group blog on the future of criticism in the age of new media, grows livelier by the hour. Here's a snippet from my latest posting:

Good writing justifies its own existence. If you can find people capable of writing stylish, trenchant reviews of blockbuster movies, by all means hire them and let 'em rip--but don't settle for anything less. If, on the other hand, you have to choose between publishing mediocre criticism and solid, informative feature writing...well, there's no choice, least of all nowadays.

Go here to join the fray. The comments section is wide open!

Posted May 17, 12:00 PM

TT: Entries from an unkept diary

- Our Girl's second critical commandment, You shall not critique a tulip by wishing it a rose, especially if you grow roses, echoes a widespread sentiment in the cultural quadrant of the 'sphere. I incline to agree, but not always, and only up to a point.

People are forever telling me that a work of art should be "criticized on its own terms." (Mr. Parabasis, one of my favorite bloggers, got after me a few weeks ago on precisely this count.) Fine--but exactly what does that mean? To extend the metaphor, what if the particular breed of tulip you prefer to cultivate happens to smell like horse manure? Don't I have a right to point that out, and to suggest that roses might possibly smell better?

I'm not a relativist (surprise, surprise!). I think some works of art are better than others, and I think that issues of quality are of the highest relevance to any criticism worthy of the name. At the same time, I don't think I get hung up worrying about the dangers of encroaching relativism, nor do I let my unswerving belief in quality prevent me from enjoying the fruits of popular culture. I draw your attention to something I wrote early in the life of this blog:

I don't think The Long Goodbye is as good a book as The Great Gatsby, and I believe the difference between the two books is hugely important. But I also don't think it's absurd to compare them, and I probably re-read one as often as the other.

The point is that I accept the existence of hierarchies of quality without feeling oppressed by them. I have plenty of room in my life for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Chandler, for Aaron Copland and Louis Armstrong, for George Balanchine and Fred Astaire, and I love them all without confusing their relative merits, much less jumping to the conclusion that all merits are relative.

In case you hadn't noticed, that's part of what this blog is all about--a big part.

It still is.

- Just the other day I was listening to Pandora as I blogged. Allison Moorer's "One On the House" gave way to a single piano chord, and a light instantly flashed in my head: it was Bill Evans playing "Here's That Rainy Day." I didn't have to look at the screen to be sure I was right, any more than I had to think twice in the first place. I knew.

I'll be the first to admit that there once was a time when I was disgustingly vain about my fastest-ear-in-the-west abilities, but subsequent experience has taught me that the world is full of people who can recognize Bill Evans' playing as quickly as I can. That says a lot about Evans, but it says even more about the human brain and its stupendous capacities. To be sure, I do happen to know a little bit about a lot of things (including the life and work of the woman who wrote that line). Put me in a museum without my bifocals and I won't have any more trouble picking out a Stuart Davis or a Kenneth Noland at a hundred yards than I did spotting Bill Evans. Yet such drop-the-needle aptitude, as I say, borders on the commonplace, and that's the real story. How is it possible for so many of us to store so much aesthetic information in our heads, and to retrieve it so quickly and unhesitatingly? If that doesn't strike you as miraculous, then you don't believe in everyday miracles.

I can't help but recall this almanac entry from two years ago. The speaker is the great French composer Olivier Messiaen:

I admit that it would never occur to me to ask a question of an electronic brain, chiefly because I'd be incapable of it. The interrogated electronic brain very quickly generates thousands, if not millions, of responses, and among those thousands of millions of responses, only one is right. Rather than bother with an extremely burdensome apparatus and spend months formulating a question, isn't it quicker to have a stroke of genius and find the right solution right away?

Nice.

Posted May 17, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"I too am not getting enough done, and what I do always seems to require so much time and effort. For the past few days, I don't think I've done anything worthwhile. Believe me, to feel this way at my age is quite sad, since each time we begin, we always think we've understood, that we have all the answers, but we're always starting over again from the beginning."

Giorgio Morandi (quoted in Janet Abramowicz, Giorgio Morandi: The Art of Silence)

Posted May 17, 12:00 PM

TT: Listen up

I recently taped an episode of Radio Deluxe, the new classic-pop radio series hosted by John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey. Among many other things, John, Jess, and I listened to and talked about records by Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Mary Foster Conklin, Bing Crosby, Nancy LaMott, Joe Mooney, George Shearing, and Fats Waller (as well as John himself). It's a nice mix of chat and music, if I do say so myself, and we had a lot of fun putting it together. You'll even get to hear me sing!

This episode hasn't yet aired on terrestrial radio, but you can already hear it on line in streaming audio. Go here, scroll down until you see my name, then click on the successive links (each segment of the show is a separate mp3 file) and listen.

Posted May 17, 10:17 AM

TT: Sign of the times

Earlier today I participated in a public meeting of the National Council on the Arts. It was a teleconference chaired from Washington, D.C., by Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. The other participants were scattered across the country. I took part in the first half of the meeting via cell phone from the Jackson Hole on Eighty-Fifth Street and Columbus Avenue, where I was wolfing down the fast-cooling remnants of a medium-rare hamburger that had arrived at my table ten minutes later than I expected. For the second half, I removed my cell phone and myself to a bench in Central Park, basking in the sunshine as the council went about its collective business.

I'm too old to take cell phones for granted. I still remember the first time I received a call from a car phone, back in the days when such things were far from commonplace. Not long after I moved to New York some two decades ago, I made a special point of calling my mother in Smalltown, U.S.A., from a pay phone on a subway platform, and she was impressed. Now I can't remember the last time I used a pay phone. (In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a phone booth.)

Technology is part wonderful and part terrible, which means it's really neither. It makes it possible for me to sit in Central Park on a sunny May day and talk to anyone in the world who has a phone. Whether or not that's a good thing is, of course, another matter.

Posted May 17, 3:28 AM

May 16, 2006

TT: Still boiling

"Critical Edge," ArtsJournal's group blog on the future of criticism in the age of new media, continues to percolate vigorously. Here's a snippet from my latest posting:

A critic who holds himself at arm's length from the artistic community whose activities he covers is a eunuch in the harem....

Go here to join the fray.

Posted May 16, 12:00 PM

TT: Re: person I knew

Lileks read my recent posting on The Birth of a Nation, and had this reaction:

The inexhaustible Teachout on Monday had a few notes about silent movies, and how they don't speak to him. One of those instances of art that's lost its language, even though the genre remains. Me, I love the stuff, but I understand the impatience, and sometimes I find myself enjoying the films not as a drama or comedy but an unintentional documentary. What suburban street is that? Is that sapling now a towering oak? Who belongs to those ghostly faces that slide past in the streetcar, and what became of them? Is everything in this image of a city street now gone? Surely inside those windows were men and women going about their lives, chewing on a pencil, digesting a sandwich, worried about a lump or a lover, wishing the person on the phone would shut up so they could use the lav.

It's like getting a satellite photo of ancient Rome--it would tell us so much, but it would leave out 99 percent of what we really want to know.

But that one percent still tantalizes and teaches, doesn't it? If nothing else, it tells you what people found funny or sad or shocking....

I think about such things all the time when watching old movies, with or without sound. Even when they're not especially artful--perhaps especially when they're not--they are through-a-glass-darkly windows on the past. Every film shot on location, whether in whole or in part, is a home movie in which bits and pieces of history are embedded, and I find myself growing increasingly fascinated by these snippets of lost time. I can't watch North by Northwest, for instance, without thinking about how Grand Central Station has (and hasn't) changed, or how the Plaza Hotel will never be again as it was.

This is, I suspect, as much a function of my increasing age as anything else. Just the other day, for instance, Backstage Books sent me a copy of the newly revised and updated edition of James Gavin's Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret. (It'll be out May 31.) The earlier edition was one of my favorite books, but I found this version even more interesting, in part because it's the first time I've read a work of history in which someone I used to know well figures prominently. That sort of thing doesn't start happening to you until you've achieved a certain degree of seniority, and I'm there.

The person I knew was, of course, Nancy LaMott, whose all-too-brief reign as the shooting star of cabaret in Manhattan began a few years after the publication in 1991 of Intimate Nights. Alas, I missed out on the scuffling that Nancy endured so bravely and Gavin describes so vividly. I didn't meet her until the spring of 1994, by which time she was already singing at Tavern on the Green and the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel. I entered her life just in time for us to become close friends, though, and our friendship endured until her death in December of 1995, a few weeks after the release of her last studio album, Listen to My Heart.

I've written about Nancy more than once, both on this blog and in a 1996 essay collected in A Terry Teachout Reader. So far as I know, Intimate Nights is the only other book in which Nancy is mentioned, and it was a strange, almost disorienting sensation to read about her in someone else's words:

Nancy LaMott seemed like such a delicate bird that one wondered when she might break. A waiflike, all-American blonde, she sang with the earnestness of a lovestruck teenager who was smiling through tears. People wanted to take her in their arms and protect her--especially when they learned that her struggle for recognition coincided with her fight against Crohn's disease, an intestinal disorder with horribly debilitating side effects. It had struck her in her teens, and would take her life in 1995, when she was forty-three. By then she had recorded six CDs, sung at the White House, and appeared on Regis & Kathie Lee. All this, through her no-frills singing of standards. In LaMott's [New York] Times obituary, Stephen Holden would remember her as "a singularly unaffected voice...in a field typified by showy histrionics."

All true, though I never thought of her as "delicate," perhaps because we shared so many meals. (She knew her way around a kitchen.) Nancy was much tougher than she looked. Still, Gavin has gotten her right in every other particular, which is hugely important, since his revised version of Intimate Nights, which ends in 2005, will undoubtedly replace the first edition as the standard history of cabaret in New York.

It is, as I say, exceedingly strange to read about an old friend in the kind of book that can properly be described as a "standard history," if only because no book, however detailed, can tell the whole story of a human being. History, like biography, is an attempt to tell that which can only be remembered. I know a great deal more about Nancy than you'll find in Intimate Nights, including certain things you won't read in anything I've written about her. I might share them with a biographer someday, or I might not. I just watched a PBS documentary about John Ford and John Wayne, who once made a film together in which one of the characters famously declares that "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." I wouldn't go that far--I am, after all, a serial biographer myself--but I don't think the public has an absolute right to know everything about anyone, no matter who they were or how important they might have been.

Be that as it may, I'm glad that James Gavin did such a good job of sketching Nancy's essential character, though it goes without saying that I don't need to read about my old friend in order to bring her immediately to mind. Stephen Sondheim wrote a song about the persistence of memory called, appropriately enough, "Not a Day Goes By." Nancy recorded it a couple of years before she died, and I listen to her performance from time to time, trying whenever I do to imagine all the years of friendship her death stole from me:

As the days go by,
I keep thinking, "When does it end?
Where's the day I'll have started forgetting?"
But I just go on
Thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
And waking and dying
And no,
Not a day goes by,
Not a blessed day
But you're still somewhere part of my life
And you won't go away.

I'm old enough now to know how true that is.

Posted May 16, 12:00 PM

TT: Isolationist

Ten things I haven't done in 2006:

- I haven't bought a copy of an ink-on-paper magazine or newspaper.
- I haven't watched a first-run episode of a TV series.
- I haven't been to a movie theater (though I'm planning to break my fast by seeing Art School Confidential).
- I haven't rented a DVD.
- I haven't read a new novel.
- I haven't seen a ballet.
- I haven't been to an orchestra concert.
- I haven't written a book review.
- I haven't gone to a party.
- I haven't visited my home town.

Not yet, anyway.

Posted May 16, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"Anybody can write a short story--a bad one, I mean--who has industry and paper and time enough; but not every one may hope to write even a bad novel. It is the length that kills."

Robert Louis Stevenson, "My First Book: Treasure Island" (courtesy of Kate's Book Blog)

Posted May 16, 12:00 PM

TT: For what it's worth

This year's Tony Award nominations were just announced. Here are the major categories. My personal picks are in bold, followed by my predictions:

- BEST PLAY:
Rabbit Hole
Shining City
The History Boys
The Lieutenant of Inishmore

I'm not with the majority on this one: The History Boys is a sure thing.

- BEST MUSICAL:
Jersey Boys
The Color Purple
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Wedding Singer

A tough call. My guess, though, is that Jersey Boys will beat out The Drowsy Chaperone, if only because it's the only crowd-pleasing superhit of the season that also got good reviews, my furious pan excepted. (The Drowsy Chaperone is doing very well, too, but it's so idiosyncratic that critics and theater buffs are sharply divided over its merits.)

- BEST REVIVAL OF A PLAY:
Awake and Sing!
Faith Healer
Seascape
The Constant Wife

An easy call: Faith Healer has this category sewed up tight. (Yo, where's The Odd Couple? Do I detect a whiff of Lane-Broderick-Mantello backlash among the electorate?)

- BEST REVIVAL OF A MUSICAL:
Sweeney Todd
The Pajama Game
The Threepenny Opera

Oh, wow, beats me. Sweeney Todd was definitely the critics' choice, but then we all loved The Pajama Game, too. If I had to bet on the winner, I'd probably go for Sweeney Todd, but I wouldn't put up a whole lot of money either way.

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY:
Ralph Fiennes, Faith Healer
Richard Griffiths, The History Boys
Zeljko Ivanek, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
Oliver Platt, Shining City
David Wilmot, The Lieutenant of Inishmore

Probably Fiennes, but Griffiths is a contender, and should be.

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY:
Kate Burton, The Constant Wife
Judy Kaye, Souvenir
Lisa Kron, Well
Cynthia Nixon, Rabbit Hole
Lynn Redgrave, The Constant Wife

This is the weakest category overall, though Cynthia Nixon will doubtless win for all sorts of reasons, none of them relevant. (Note the conspicuous absence of J-l-- R-b-rts from the roster.)

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:
Michael Cerveris, Sweeney Todd
Harry Connick, Jr., The Pajama Game
Stephen Lynch, The Wedding Singer
Bob Martin, The Drowsy Chaperone
John Lloyd Young, Jersey Boys

No contest--it's Connick. Sometimes star power counts, and sometimes it should, if not necessarily in this case. (Martin's performance is delightful, but it's a non-singing part.)

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL:
La Chanze, The Color Purple
Sutton Foster, The Drowsy Chaperone
Patti LuPone, Sweeney Todd
Kelli O'Hara, The Pajama Game
Chita Rivera, Chita Rivera: The Dancer's Life

Everyone was good, the first three nominees exceptionally so. I can see La Chanze winning, if only because none of the voters will want to shut out so successful and Oprah-certified a show, lame though it was. (Me, I would have given it to Nellie McKay for The Threepenny Opera.)

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:
Samuel Barnett, The History Boys
Domhnall Gleeson, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Ian McDiarmid, Faith Healer
Mark Ruffalo, Awake and Sing!
Pablo Schreiber, Awake and Sing!

McDiarmid had the better part, but Ruffalo is deserving, too. Not to worry--his time will come.

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY:
Tyne Daly, Rabbit Hole
Frances de la Tour, The History Boys
Jane Houdyshell, Well
Alison Pill, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Zoë Wanamaker, Awake and Sing!

Houdyshell might as well go ahead and dust off her mantlepiece.

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL:
Danny Burstein, The Drowsy Chaperone
Jim Dale, The Threepenny Opera
Victor Dixon, The Color Purple
Manoel Felciano, Sweeney Todd
Christian Hoff, Jersey Boys

Dale. They've got to give Threepenny something.

- BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL:
Carolee Carmello, Lestat
Felicia P. Fields, The Color Purple
Beth Leavel, The Drowsy Chaperone
Megan Lawrence, The Pajama Game
Elisabeth Withers-Mendes, The Color Purple

Lawrence deserves it, and with Fields and Withers-Mendes splitting the vote for The Color Purple, she'll probably get it.

- BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY:
Nicholas Hytner, The History Boys
Wilson Milam, The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Bartlett Sher, Awake and Sing!
Daniel Sullivan, Rabbit Hole

Hytner or Milam, probably the former.

- BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL:
John Doyle, Sweeney Todd
Kathleen Marshall, The Pajama Game
Des McAnuff, Jersey Boys
Casey Nicholaw, The Drowsy Chaperone

All are worthy, Doyle most likely, especially if The Pajama Game wins for Best Revival of a Musical.

- BEST CHOREOGRAPHY:
Rob Ashford, The Wedding Singer
Donald Byrd, The Color Purple
Kathleen Marshall, The Pajama Game
Casey Nicholaw, The Drowsy Chaperone

Byrd. (See "Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical.")

- BEST ORIGINAL SCORE (MUSIC AND/OR LYRICS) WRITTEN FOR THE THEATRE:
The Color Purple
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Wedding Singer
The Woman in White

The Drowsy Chaperone, definitely, as a consolation prize for Jersey Boys' Best Musical win.

- BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL:
The Wedding Singer
Jersey Boys
The Drowsy Chaperone
The Color Purple

Likewise, I'm sure.

Posted May 16, 9:55 AM

May 15, 2006

TT: Escape artist

I flew the coop last Wednesday morning, having seen too many plays and feeling the urgent need to be somewhere else. By mid-afternoon I was sitting on the terrace of Ecce Bed and Breakfast in Barryville, a microscopic river town not far from the spot where New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania meet. Longtime readers may recall my previous visit to this refuge, located on a wooded bluff some three hundred feet above the Delaware River. It's one of the most relaxing places I know: the scenery is gorgeous, the hosts considerate, the food delicious, the décor not even slightly chintzy. Rarely is a B&B as satisfying as its Web site so enticingly promises, but every time I go to Ecce, it turns out to be even better than advertised.

What did I do there? Just about nothing. I listened to music, I read Alice Goldfarb Marquis' Art Czar: The Rise and Fall of Clement Greenberg and Elijah Wald's Escaping the Delta: Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues, I watched a bald eagle swoop lazily over the river, and I drove to Narrowsburg, another small town fifteen minutes up the road, where I ate a superlative dinner at a brand-new restaurant that I commend to your attention. Peter Schott, the chef and owner of Restaurant 15 Main, used to cook in Manhattan but has now set up shop in the country, where he turns out such sumptuous dishes as green garlic soup with frogs' legs and the best gnocchi I've ever tasted, the latter accompanied by locally grown, lightly sauteed fiddlehead ferns. Yum. (The 15 Main Web site is still under construction, but should you find yourself anywhere near Narrowsburg, call 845-252-6562 to make a reservation. You won't be sorry.)

I would have been content to spend the rest of the week driving between Barryville and Narrowsburg. Instead I returned to New York on Friday afternoon, unpacked my bags, and headed for Joe's Pub, where Deidre Rodman and Steve Swallow were celebrating the release of Twin Falls, their new CD, with a gig at which they played so beautifully that I wasn't sorry to have come back home. When not making pellucidly lyrical music with Swallow or her own quintet, Rodman is the pianist for the Lascivious Biddies, about whom I've written from time to time in this space (as well as in my liner notes for their latest CD, Get Lucky). All three of her fellow Biddies showed up to cheer Rodman on, and I was as pleased to see them again as I was to hear her.

The next morning I awoke at nine-thirty and remembered that two museum shows I'd been meaning to see, Goya at the Frick Collection and David Smith at the Guggenheim, were about to close. I threw my clothes on, jumped in a cab, and went straight to the Frick, where I found a line of hopeful art lovers stretching halfway around the block. The word on the street was that I'd have to wait two hours to get in. Not caring to fritter away so pretty a morning in so tiresome a fashion, I walked up Fifth Avenue to the Guggenheim, where I stood in line for fifteen seconds before being admitted.

Needless to say, David Smith isn't as popular as Goya, nor do I claim to like his welded-metal abstract-expressionist sculptures as much as Goya's paintings. In fact, I've never liked Smith very much at all, but most of my fellow critics think him a master, so I felt obliged to take him on yet again, though I didn't change my mind this time around. Except for the "Cubis" sculptures, which rarely fail to bowl me over, I continue to find most of Smith's work a fussy, derivative amalgam of surrealism and ill-digested biomorphism (though I did like Steel Drawing I, one of the smaller pieces in the show, very much). So be it. You can't like everything that's good, and you shouldn't pretend to like anything. In the wise words of Kingsley Amis, "All amateurs must be philistines part of the time. Must be: a greater sin is to be coerced into showing respect when little or none is felt."

I left the Guggenheim with my bell unrung, crossed Fifth Avenue, and plunged into Central Park, where the Great Lawn was packed with ecstatic children taking advantage of a lovely day. No show tonight! I told myself happily, and took my sweet time strolling home.

Posted May 15, 12:00 PM

TT: A little traveling music

Here are the CDs I took with me on my trip to Barryville:

- The Best of Blind Blake (Yazoo)

- Whiskey Is My Habit, Good Women Is All I Crave: The Best of Leroy Carr (Columbia/Legacy)

- Paul Desmond, Pure Desmond (CTI)

- Donald Fagen, Morph the Cat (Reprise)

- Lyle Lovett, Joshua Judges Ruth (MCA/Curb)

- Mitchell's Christian Singers, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Vol. 1: 1934-1936 (Document)

- Weslia Whitfield, Lucky to Be Me (Landmark)

If you've never heard of Mitchell's Christian Singers--and most people haven't--go here to read what an anonymous critic for Time wrote about them in 1939. It is, not surprisingly, more than a little bit condescending, but I bet it'll pique your curiosity anyway.

Posted May 15, 12:00 PM

TT: Simultaneity

In my biweekly "Sightings" column, which appeared in the "Pursuits" section of Saturday's Wall Street Journal, I played Bill Safire avant la lettre--sort of:

Not long ago I was chatting with three gifted musicians who were looking for a new way to describe what they do. All are widely thought of as "jazz musicians," even though that venerable phrase is no longer a good fit for the increasingly uncategorizable music they make. Luciana Souza, who came to this country from Brazil, sings everything from bossa nova to American pop standards to her own settings of the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Pablo Neruda. Maria Schneider leads a big band for which she writes large-scale compositions structured along classical lines into which she weaves flamenco, Latin American music and jazz improvisation. Theo Bleckmann is an uncompromisingly avant-garde vocalist whose latest album, "Las Vegas Rhapsody: The Night They Invented Champagne," is a collection of show tunes accompanied by the Basel Chamber Orchestra.

How do you sum up such artists in a well-chosen word or two? You don't--and that's one of the problems with which they grapple as they try to find an audience for their music. This is why I was so struck when one of the three musicians (I can't remember who) casually used the phrase "shuffle play" in an attempt to describe the stylistic multiplicity of their work. The others agreed at once: That's what they do.

I wouldn't have been nearly as impressed by their on-the-spot consensus were it not for the fact that I'd already heard the same phrase used in the same way by other artists of like inclination. Suddenly it hit me: I'd been watching a new cultural metaphor take shape....

The new music I have in mind isn't random, but it definitely goes out of its way to take the listener in surprising directions. The Bad Plus, for instance, specializes in bracingly quirky jazz versions of such decidedly unjazzy tunes as Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and the theme from "Chariots of Fire." Nickel Creek plays bluegrass-flavored music that owes as much to the synthesized technopop of Radiohead as it does to the high, lonesome sound of Bill Monroe. "Observatory," Julia Dollison's debut CD, contains songs by Jerome Kern, Duke Ellington and Rufus Wainwright, sung in a richly imaginative, pigeonhole-eluding style that lies somewhere in the no-man's-land separating jazz from pop.

Michael John LaChiusa's See What I Wanna See and Adam Guettel's The Light in the Piazza are operalike "musicals" whose kaleidoscopic scores reflect their composers' passions for an extraordinarily wide variety of music. Osvaldo Golijov writes "classical" music into which he stirs Afro-Cuban percussion, gospel-style choral writing, even the keening wail of a klezmer clarinet.

What to call this new kind of music-making? At first glance it resembles postmodernism, but the self-consciously wide-ranging eclecticism of postmodern artists is always tinged with irony, whereas the musicians of whom I'm thinking embrace many different styles in a wholehearted way that has nothing in common with the cool detachment of the postmodernist. Their new approach thus requires a new label, and "shuffle-play music" might be in the early stages of catching on....

No link, so if you want to read the whole thing--of which there's a good deal more--I suggest you avail yourself of one of these alternatives:

(1) Head for the nearest library, where you'll find a copy of the Saturday Journal and (presumably) a comfy chair.

(2) Subscribe to the Online Journal by going here. Doing so will give you immediate access to the full text of this week's "Sightings" column, plus a plethora of other good stuff.

Posted May 15, 12:00 PM

TT: Group grope

Douglas McLennan is the resident genius behind ArtsJournal. In addition to providing an indispensable daily digest of English-language news stories and commentaries on the arts, ArtsJournal also hosts "About Last Night" and a dozen other artblogs (all of which you can visit by scrolling down to the bottom module of the right-hand column). Now Doug has put together a special group-discussion blog called "Critical Edge: Critics in a Critical Age."

Here, in his words, is what "Critical Edge" is all about:

Everyone's a critic. And now that anyone has access to an audience through the internet, our computers have become a cacophony of people with opinions. Clearly not all opinions are equal. Traditionally, the influence of an opinion was closely tied to the venue in which it was published--how widely it was disseminated or how prestigious the publication was thought to be. With a growing flood of opinions available to all, some suggest that the influence of the traditional critic is waning, that the opinions of the many will drown out the power of the few. But in a time when access to information and entertainment and art seems to be growing exponentially, more than ever we need ways to to sort through the mass and get at the "good" stuff. The question is how? Where is the critical authority to come from? Some suggest that new social networking software that ranks community preferences and elevates some opinions over others will supplant the formerly powerful traditional critics. So what is to be the new critical currency? Stripped of traditional legitimacies, how will the most interesting critical voices be heard and have influence?

Doug has put together a wide-ranging list of participants, many of whose names will be familiar to you:

- Misha Berson, theatre critic, Seattle Times
- Larry Blumenfeld, jazz critic, The Wall Street Journal
- Caryn Brooks, writer
- Jeanne Carstensen, managing editor, Salon.com
- Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor, Rolling Stone
- Enrique Fernandez, critic, Miami Herald
- Tyler Green, art critic, Modern Art Notes
- Joseph Horowitz, author/orchestra consultant
- Chris Lavin, arts editor, San Diego Union Tribune
- Ruth Lopez, art and design editor, Time Out Chicago
- Maud Newton, book critic, MaudNewton.com
- Claude Peck, fine arts editor, Minneapolis Star-Tribune
- Inga Saffron, architecture critic, Philadelphia Inquirer
- Andras Szanto, former director, National Arts Journalism Program
- Jerome Weeks, book critic, Dallas Morning News

I'm participating, too.

"Critical Edge" is now open for business and will be up and running through Wednesday. To read our collective discussion of the prospects for criticism in the age of the Web, go here and start scrolling.

Posted May 15, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"I believe the great human change into a new world should be expressed, but I also believe that when the Soviet arbiters say that Hamlet is foolish, they are talking nonsense, and destructive nonsense at that. And I hope the human race will never be purged of those types, who, like Shakespeare, are victims all their mature life of the most dreadful form of morbid jealousy, or of unconscious homosexuals like Hopkins and Housman, or of perfectly batty people, who drive themselves into extreme fits over the fact that the landlady looked at them sideways, like Beethoven. God keep me from a world, even without poverty and human degradation, in which there were no delicate sensibilities that could produce a remark like Margaret, are you grieving; or An expense of spirit in a waste of shame; that could not feel horror over mutability and an excess of joy over the facts of perfectly physical passion, or pity for the maladjusted or horror over the senseless cruel."

Louise Bogan, letter to Rolfe Humphries, July 6, 1935

Posted May 15, 12:00 PM

TT: The joint is jumping

ArtsJournal's group blog on the future of criticism in the age of new media (about which more here) has already come to a rolling boil. It's even attracting the attention of other bloggers. What's more, the comments are as interesting as the postings.

Go here to jump in.

Posted May 15, 11:34 AM

May 12, 2006

TT: Tarzan has two mommies

The Broadway season is now officially over, and I'm sweeping up the debris in my Wall Street Journal drama column. This week I lower the boom on Tarzan and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial:

You guessed it: "Tarzan," the new Disney musical, is chockful of actors who swing around the theater on artificial vines. Talk about easy calls! But, then, there aren't many surprises in this leaden stage version of the 1999 cartoon version of the 1912 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs about a shipwrecked foundling raised by apes. The only surprising thing about "Tarzan," in fact, is that so much of it is so tiresome....

Culprit No. 1 is Phil Collins, whose score, some of which is new and some recycled from the movie, is a plodding bore, monotonously paced and unenlightened by the faintest glimmer of wit....

Culprit No. 2 is David Henry Hwang, the author of "M. Butterfly" and a notorious purveyor of PC. His book is a seemingly unending string of ham-handed Disney-style public-service announcements for tolerance, lightly sprinkled with flat punch lines. Jane: "Tarzan's not a gorilla, he's a human being. Honestly, that's not even his real family." Daddy: "Do you know of any families that aren't real, my dear?" I bet you didn't know "Tarzan" was a parable about non-traditional families, did you?...

Herman Wouk's 1953 stage adaptation of the last part of his blockbuster World War II novel is a nuts-and-bolts courtroom drama that all but plays itself--if you let it. Jerry Zaks, familiar on Broadway for his stagings of such musicals as "Little Shop of Horrors" and last year's short-lived revival of "La Cage aux Folles," evidently thinks otherwise, for he has directed the first act of this thoroughly grim play as if it were an episode of "Hogan's Heroes," pumping up the occasional moments of comic relief and encouraging the cast to resort to noisy caricature....

No link. Your alternatives remain unchanged: (1) Buy a copy of today's Journal. (2) Subscribe to the Online Journal by going here, which will give you immediate access to the full text of my review and lots of other good stuff.

Posted May 12, 12:00 PM

TT: Shuffle-play music

In my next "Sightings" column, to be published in Saturday's Wall Street Journal, I take a look at a freshly coined name for the "new eclecticism" of such contemporary musicians of polystylistic inclination as the Bad Plus, Theo Bleckmann, Julia Dollison, Adam Guettel, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael John LaChiusa, Nickel Creek, Luciana Souza, and Maria Schneider.

Might the phrase "shuffle play" be taking on broader cultural significance? To find out--maybe--pick up a copy of tomorrow's Journal, where you'll find my column in the "Pursuits" section.

Posted May 12, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"To an extent the theater will always be a magnet for hobbyists, people who are drawn like trainspotters or matchbox fans to compare different performances of Hamlet. They form, if you like, a core audience, who survive over the years. Their overriding interest is in the maintenance and improvement of their collections, and so they will direct their attention not so much at what is said, as to the skills which are being used to say it."

David Hare, Obedience, Struggle and Revolt

Posted May 12, 12:00 PM

TT: Due to circumstances beyond our control

If you've been wondering why "About Last Night" looked a little funny today, the reason is that our server went kaplooie on Thursday night. We weren't able to publish any of our regular Friday postings for the same reason. They're up now, so if you missed them, scroll down and you'll find them in the usual place.

Posted May 12, 11:27 AM

May 11, 2006

TT: So you want to see a show?

Courtesy of Our Girl in Chicago, here's my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week. (Once again, there are no asterisks this week!)

BROADWAY:
- Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
- Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)
- Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)
- Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here)
- The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
- The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)
- Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
- The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)
- The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
- I Love You Because (musical, R, sexual content, reviewed here)
- Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)
- Slava's Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:
- Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, extended through June 25)
- Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes June 4)
- The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)

Posted May 11, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"The Evening Pulpit was supposed to give daily to its readers all that had been said and done up to two o'clock in the day by all the leading people in the metropolis, and to prophesy with wonderful accuracy what would be the sayings and doings of the following twelve hours. This was effected with an air of wonderful omniscience, and not unfrequently with an ignorance hardly surpassed by its arrogance. But the writing was clever. The facts, if not true, were well invented; the arguments, if not logical, were seductive."

Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now (courtesy of Clive Davis

Posted May 11, 12:00 PM

May 10, 2006

TT: Almanac

"As soon as he'd discovered that the object of bowling was to learn how to do exactly the same thing every time, he'd lost interest."

Brian Garfield, Hopscotch

Posted May 10, 12:00 PM

May 9, 2006

TT: Survivor

On Saturday afternoon I saw my last show of the 2005-06 season, Tarzan. The New York Drama Critics Circle, of which I am a member, votes this Thursday on the best plays of the year, and the names of the winners will be released immediately after the ballots are tallied (the news will be posted here).

All this means that Broadway is quiescent until August, when Martin Short's new musical comes to town. I have a couple of weeks to catch my breath before I hit the road and start seeing out-of-town shows, and I'm going to need it. It's been a long, grueling season, full of the good, the bad, and the ugly, though I suppose in the long run that I'll remember it above all for the fateful night when I had to be helped into a cab by a kindly press agent, followed a few hours later by my admission to Lenox Hill Hospital.

Amazingly enough, I only skipped a single drama column last December, and I was back on the aisle two days after coming home from the hospital, marveling at the Irish Repertory Theatre's revival of Mrs. Warren's Profession. In retrospect I suppose it was stupid of me to get back on the horse so quickly (though I left New York the very next day to spend a couple of weeks convalescing in Smalltown, U.S.A., which was a bit smarter). Nevertheless, I did it, and I'm not sorry: I had something to prove to myself, and I managed to prove it without doing any damage to my weakened heart.

Having done so, though, I scaled back my playgoing, restricting myself to two shows a week. It wasn't until the spring rush started that I opened up the throttle, and even then I took care to husband my energy. As regular readers of this blog are well aware, I stopped going to nightclubs, and I haven't been to a single movie since I got out of the hospital.

So has the time come for me to resume normal activities? Yes and no. I have no intention of reviving the Old Me, the fellow who never spent an evening at home when he could be anywhere else. I was already growing more reflective in the weeks just prior to my collapse, and I mean to stay that way. On the other hand, I'm feeling better than ever, and now that I've survived the spring rush, I'm inclined to test myself still further--within limits. The past six months have taught me a number of valuable lessons, the most important of which is to be unafraid of doing nothing.

Just the other day I spent the morning writing my Wall Street Journal drama column, then decided on the spur of the moment to stroll across Central Park to the Guggenheim Museum to see the David Smith retrospective. It was an eat-your-spinach self-assignment: I've never warmed to Smith's welded sculptures, but every art critic I respect says he's the real deal, so I figured I ought to give him yet another try and hope that the scales would fall from my eyes.

I hadn't yet eaten lunch, so I bought a couple of dirty-water dogs from the pushcart at Eighty-First Street and Central Park West, then perched myself on a convenient rock and dined al fresco. After that I headed east--but not for long. No sooner did I pass under Winterdale Arch than I spotted an empty park bench, and in an instant my high-minded resolve evaporated. Instead of spending the afternoon with David Smith, I spent it sitting on the bench. The sun warmed my skin, the breeze cooled it, and though I gave brief thought to taking an improving book out of my bag, I ended up doing nothing at all but listening to the birds and looking at the passers-by.

Midway through my reverie, an anxious-looking pedestrian politely interrupted me. "Pardon me for bothering you," she asked, "but will I get to the East Side if I stay on this path? These roads are awfully curvy, and I seem to be going in circles."

"I know what you mean," I replied, "but if you go this way and keep an eye on the skyline, you're bound to end up on the East Side sooner or later."

She thanked me and moved on, leaving me to ponder the lovely implications of the phrase sooner or later. I make my living by going to performances and hitting deadlines, so when I'm off duty, I try to let things happen when they happen instead of insisting that they happen at this time or that. I doubt the Celestial Accountant really means for us to account for every second of wasted time, but should it turn out that He does, I intend to tell Him that I couldn't think of a better way to spend a cloudless summer afternoon than sitting on a park bench, reveling in the passing moment. I didn't spend enough afternoons that way in the first part of my life, and now that I know better, I have every intention of wasting every second I can spare.

* * *

I've decided to play hooky for the rest of the week. I'm leaving you in the capable hands of Our Girl, who will post my regular theater-related items on Thursday and Friday, along with whatever else she may have in mind. See you Monday!

Posted May 09, 12:00 PM

TT: Almanac

"Punctuality is the virtue of the bored."

Evelyn Waugh, diary, March 26, 1962

Posted May 09, 12:00 PM

May 8, 2006

OGIC: Feast your eyes

Kentucky Derby photos, replete with characters, wit, and color, color, color.

Posted May 08, 12:28 PM

OGIC: Critical liberties

An informal catalogue of cardinal critical sins, with fresh and glaring illustrations from some of today's Most Favored Critics, seems to be underway this month. Just yesterday Terry