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February 28, 2010

THE MIDDLEBROW ON SUNDAY NIGHT

Posted February 28, 7:32 PM

February 26, 2010

TT: Get the guests

In today's Wall Street Journal column, I review the Transport Group's superb off-Broadway revival of Mart Crowley's The Boys in the Band, plus Sam Mendes' Bridge Project production of The Tempest and a new play by Douglas Carter Beane, Mr. and Mrs. Fitch. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

If I had to draw up a list of the most effective American plays of the past half-century, Mart Crowley's "The Boys in the Band," in which a group of unhappy gay men gather for a birthday party and spend the night picking at one another's psychic scabs, would be on it. Mr. Crowley's best-remembered play may not be a masterpiece, but it's exceptionally well constructed and as compelling as a fist fight, and the Transport Group's Off-Broadway revival--only the second in New York since "The Boys in the Band" opened in 1968--does it near-complete justice.

The Transport Group is presenting "The Boys in the Band" in a site-specific "environmental" production directed with taut fervor by Jack Cummings III, designed by Sandra Goldmark and set in an actual penthouse space in midtown Manhattan, with the 99 members of the audience scattered throughout the living room. The results are unnervingly intimate--the nine actors are in your lap all evening long--and so believable that you'll flinch when the insults start flying....

Does Sam Mendes really like Shakespeare? The staging of "The Tempest" that he's mounted under the auspices of the Bridge Project, in which Brooklyn's BAM Harvey and London's Old Vic Theatres jointly produce a pair of classics each season performed by binational casts, makes me wonder. Like last year's "Winter's Tale," it's so cluttered and idea-ridden that the play comes close to getting lost in the shuffle...

Douglas Carter Beane's latest, "Mr. and Mrs. Fitch," is the tale of a pair of washed-up gossip columnists (John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle) who rejuvenate their careers by publishing a scandalous story about an imaginary person. Even if the premise were less trite, the play would still be a bore, consisting as it does of several thousand bitchy one- and two-liners lined up in a row, few of which are funny....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted February 26, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Great ladies cultivate those occupied with the arts as in former times they kept buffoons."

W. Somerset Maugham, preface to The Plays of Somerset Maugham, Vol. 3

Posted February 26, 12:00 AM

February 25, 2010

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:
• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• South Pacific (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)
• A View from the Bridge * (drama, PG-13, violence and some sexual content, closes Apr. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Orphans' Home Cycle, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, now being performed in rotating repertory, closes May 8, reviewed here, here, and here)
• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)
• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, sexual content, closes Mar. 28, reviewed here)

IN LENOX, MASS.:
• Les Liaisons Dangereuses (drama, R, violence and sexual content, closes Mar. 21, reviewed here)

IN MANALAPAN, FLA.:
• Sins of the Mother (drama, PG-13, violence and adult subject matter, closes Mar. 7, reviewed here)

IN ORLANDO, FLA.:
• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Mar. 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING FRIDAY IN FORT MYERS, FLA.:
• You Can't Take It With You (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN ORLANDO, FLA.:
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (serious comedy, PG-13, far too complicated for children, reviewed here)

Posted February 25, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

But little people are so difficult.
They're lousy snobs, the lot of them.
Talk like an Englishman, they think you're Jesus Christ.

Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (courtesy of Mary Foster Conklin)

Posted February 25, 12:00 AM

February 24, 2010

LINCOLN CENTER BUYS BRITISH

Posted February 24, 10:53 AM

TT: Snapshot

Donald E. Westlake (a/k/a Richard Stark) talks about the creation of Parker:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

Posted February 24, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is God."

E. M. Cioran, All Gall Is Divided: Gnomes and Apothegms

Posted February 24, 12:00 AM

February 23, 2010

CAAF: DIY Gumption-Reviver machine

Among the fascinating tidbits in David Grann's The Lost City of Z. is a mention of a "Gumption-Reviver machine" used by Francis Galton -- Darwin's cousin and an adventurer, statistician, and inventor (later in life he would expand on and warp Darwin's theories to create eugenics) -- while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge.

I've been putting in a lot of writing time at my desk lately and the idea of a Gumption-Reviver is infinitely appealing. A couple sources credit Galton with the machine's invention, but in the same letter excerpted below he mentions that a tutor recommended it to him so it may have already been in use at the college. The basic idea: A portable funnel suspended overhead drips a steady stream of water on your head to keep you awake. As Galton writes, "We generally begin to use this machine about 10 at night and continue it till 1 or 2; it is very useful."

Should you want more specific instructions to create your own, I direct you to Galton's letter to his father on the subject, found in Karl Pearson's Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton. All you'll need is a funnel with graduated stopcock, a supporting apparatus, a napkin and a servant to keep the funnel filled with water!

My dear Father, I should have sent a letter to you yesterday if it had not been that the one that I had written was spoilt by an accident in my Gumption-Reviver machine which covered it with water. This machine as it has perhaps come into use since your time I describe to you.

[Sketch of the Gumption-Reviver machine: a student sits reading at a table, elbows on table and hands support head, lamp in front to right; funnel dripping water which runs off a cloth bound round head to left. Additional sketches of gallows to carry funnel and of method of arranging cloth.]

A large funnel is supported on a double stand about 6 ft. high, it has a graduated stopcock at the bottom by which the size of the aperture can be regulated. This as you read is placed above your head and filled with water. Round the head a napkin is tied, dependent on one side where the bow and end is so [arranged] that the water may drop off. Now it is calculated that as the number of hours of study increases in an arithmetic ratio, so will the weariness consequent on it increase in a geometrical ratio, and the stream of water must in that ratio be increased...

Posted February 23, 12:05 AM

TT: Almanac

"Celebrity is what a democratic society has instead of aristocrats."

John Leonard, Smoke and Mirrors: Violence, Television and Other American Cultures

Posted February 23, 12:00 AM

February 22, 2010

TT: Unserious money

I wrote the first paragraph of my next book yesterday morning. The working title, subject to change without warning, is Black Beauty: A Life of Duke Ellington. I'm not going to share it with you just yet--I want to wait until I've got at least a couple of dozen pages under my belt and can see whether or not I'm really off to a convincing start--but the fact that I'm now officially at work on a book for which I'll be signing the contracts later today strikes me as propitious enough to pass along.

I wanted to get started on Black Beauty right away in order to capitalize on the psychic momentum generated by the events of the past year. A colleague remarked to me at breakfast the other day that 2009 must have been the most eventful year of my professional life to date, and I couldn't argue with him. The twin successes of Pops and The Letter have left me with an exhilarating sense of possibility, a feeling that I can do anything to which I set my mind.

When you're feeling that way, it's a good idea to pinch yourself blue at regular intervals, though life usually gets around to doing that for you sooner or later. I got just such a pinch in the mail the other day. A couple of years ago I blogged about an alleged cat-related quote of mine that turned out, much to my surprise, to be authentic. It first came to my attention when it popped up on a cat calendar, and not long after that I got a letter from the Borealis Press, a greeting-card company, asking if they could use it on one of their cards.

Though Borealis wasn't offering much money--I was invited to choose between a small flat fee and a royalty--I was amused by the idea of seeing my name and words on a greeting card, so I opted for a royalty, signed the contract, and sent it back. A few weeks later I received a boxful of cards, and a few months after that I got my first check. If memory serves, I think it was for eight or nine dollars. Ever since then I've received four embarrassingly small checks each year from Borealis. When I got back from Florida, all full of myself and ready to pass miracles, I went through my snail mail and found yet another check, this one for the grand and glorious sum of $6.45.

I was tempted to frame the check as a reminder to stay humble, but then I thought of an even more profitable spiritual exercise: I went down to the bank last week, made out a deposit slip, took the check to a teller, and deposited it in my account.

The teller, bless her, didn't crack a smile...but I did.

Posted February 22, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Some critics are like chimney-sweepers: they put out the fire below, or frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Drift-Wood (courtesy of Michael Greenspan)

Posted February 22, 12:00 AM

February 19, 2010

TT: Five angry men

My playgoing travels are just about over for the current season--Broadway beckons--but I managed to work in two more out-of-town openings in this week's Wall Street Journal drama column, Florida Stage's Sins of the Mother in Manalapan and Shakespeare & Company's Les Liaisons Dangereuses in Lenox, Massachusetts. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

Israel Horovitz was a fixture on the New York theater scene throughout the '60s and '70s. In recent years, though, he's shifted his base of operations northward to the Gloucester Stage Company, the Massachusetts troupe for which the prolific playwright-director has penned a cycle of 14 plays set in and around his adopted home. "Sins of the Mother," an all-male four-hander first seen in its entirety in Gloucester last summer, is now being performed by Florida Stage in a production directed by the author. It's an unpretentious yet memorable piece of work, a concise, sharp-edged snapshot of working-class life that packs the dramatic punch of "A View from the Bridge" or "August: Osage County." The cast is ideal, the staging ferociously right. This is a show with no weak links, one that in a better-regulated world would now be playing on Broadway.

"Sins of the Mother" is the kind of play that hinges on a series of genuinely startling revelations, so I'll say only that four of the five characters (Brian Claudio Smith plays an ungimmicky double role) are New England stevedores trapped in a dying trade. They return to the waterfront each week to pick up their unemployment checks and talk about days gone by--and few of their memories are happy. Before long their tough-guy banter gives way to real, raw anger, and suddenly the surface of the play splits open and you tumble into a world driven by resentment and the long-simmering desire for vengeance....

Few stage versions of great novels are more effective than Christopher Hampton's 1986 adaptation of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 tale of a sadistic pair of pleasure-seeking French aristocrats who step into a bottomless pit of humiliation that they dug for somebody else. The Roundabout Theatre Company's 2008 Broadway revival was dismayingly unstylish, so it's a pleasure to report that Shakespeare & Company is performing it with terrific skill and intelligence in the Berkshires. In Tina Packer's staging, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" is played as a witty farce for most of its length--but one that ends in heartbreak, catastrophe and bloodshed. This twist adds immeasurably to the production's force. Even if you already know what's going to happen to the Marquise de Merteuil (Elizabeth Aspenlieder) and her cold-hearted chum the Vicomte de Valmont (Josh Aaron McCabe) at play's end, you'll still be shocked when the trap is finally sprung....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted February 19, 12:00 AM

TT: Lincoln Center buys British

Lincoln Center Festival has announced plans to bring the Royal Shakespeare Company of Stratford-upon-Avon to New York next summer for a six-week season of five Shakespeare plays--and to build a replica of the auditorium of the RSC's nine-hundred-seat Courtyard Theatre inside the Park Avenue Armory, where the season will take place.

Charles Isherwood of the New York Times likes this idea, but he thinks the replica auditorium should be left in place permanently at the armory and used as the home of a new resident classical theater company. I have a different idea: I'd like to see a half-dozen of America's best regional theaters invited to perform on the RSC stage as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2012.

Both ideas, needless to say, have their merits. But why is Lincoln Center Festival undertaking so spectacular and costly a venture in the first place? Is it solely because the RSC is artistically deserving of such lavish treatment? Or are other, less admirable factors in play? These questions are the subject of my "Sightings" column in Saturday's Wall Street Journal. To find out what I think about the RSC's coming New York residency, pick up a copy of tomorrow's paper and see what I have to say.

UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.

Posted February 19, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."

Jane Austen, letter to Cassandra Austen, Dec. 24, 1798

Posted February 19, 12:00 AM

February 18, 2010

OGIC: Straight story

I just finished reading Straight Man, the Richard Russo novel that centers around the life of a regional college English department and that is often mentioned in the same breath as Mary McCarthy's The Groves of Academe, Randall Jarrell's Pictures from an Institution, David Lodge's novels, and the granddaddy of the genre, Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim. I didn't find Russo's book of a piece with these others; it's too well-meaning. It's funny and perceptive, but ultimately soft on all its characters, its barbs a breed apart from Amis's and Jarrell's skewering glee. By comparison to them, it's positively affectionate.

While I appreciate that quality in a book, I never entirely warmed up to Russo's warm-hearted satire, except for isolated strands within an densely populated, highly eventful plot. For instance: the main character, English professor William Henry Devereaux Jr., is haunted through the book by the suicide of a local who shares his name:

Within sight of where we sit waiting to turn onto Pleasant Street, a man named William Cherry, a lifelong Conrail employee, has recently taken his life by lying down on the track in the middle of the night. At first the speculation was that he was one of the men laid off the previous week, but the opposite turned out to be true. He had in fact just retired with his pension and full benefits. On television his less fortunate neighbors couldn't understand it. He had it made, they said.

Later the narrator voices his "deep conviction that when William Cherry's severed head was borne up the tracks by a train in the direction of Bellemonde, no one, not even his loved ones, suspected what was in it." And finally:

After all, not far from where I sit, a man my age, a man named William Cherry has recently surrendered his life by lying down on the track and allowing something larger and more powerful than himself to bear away and out of this world some pain I will never know.

That's a gorgeous, powerful sentence, if also a disturbingly seductive brief for the ameliorative power of suicide. It moved me as much as anything in the novel.

Also very wonderful is a thread that proves the linchpin of the narrator's relationship with his imposing, distant father--a prominent literary critic of his time who, toward the end of the book, returns to his family after decades apart. In midcareer the father, William Henry Devereaux Sr., had rescued himself from a late-onset fear of speaking that threatened to derail his career by, in part, delivering an especially impassioned indictment of Charles Dickens.

The class was on Dickens, a writer my father particularly despised for his sentimentality and lack of dramatic subtlety, and never did a scholar lay more complete waste to a dead writer than my father to Charles Dickens that day....He had given the same lecture before, but never like this. In a fit of unplanned dramatic ecstasy, he read Jo's death scene from Bleak House to such devastating comic effect that by the time he'd finished the entire class was on the floor. Then they got up off the floor and gave him a standing ovation. This was what they'd paid their money for. Finally, they felt themselves to be in the presence of greatness, as they slammed Bleak House shut with contempt.

Perhaps you can sense what's coming. On his father's return to his wife and son, the two men go for a walk.

"You may find this strange," he says, "but I've started rereading Dickens."
Clearly he imagines he's paying the author a compliment by returning in his final years to a writer whose mawkishness he's derided over a long career. 'Much of the work is appalling, of course. Simply appalling," my father concedes, genuflecting before his previous wisdom on the subject. "Most of it, probably. But there is something there, isn't there. Some power...something"--he searches for the right word here--"transcendent, really."
...
"I feel almost," he says, "as though I had sinned against that man."

This remarkable passage doesn't end here, but I don't want to spoil it entirely for any of you who may yet read this book. The book's main story of small-campus egos and professional politics run amok is amusing enough, nicely observed, and deftly written. But these minor moments made the book worthwhile for me.

Posted February 18, 9:05 AM

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:
• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• South Pacific (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)
• A View from the Bridge * (drama, PG-13, violence and some sexual content, closes Apr. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Orphans' Home Cycle, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, now being performed in rotating repertory, extended through May 8, reviewed here, here, and here)
• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)
• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, sexual content, newly extended through Mar. 28, reviewed here)

IN FORT MYERS, FLA.:
• You Can't Take It With You (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, closes Feb. 26, reviewed here)

IN ORLANDO, FLA.:
• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Mar. 13, reviewed here)
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (serious comedy, PG-13, far too complicated for children, closes Feb. 28, reviewed here)

Posted February 18, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"The power of the Latin classic is in character, that of the Greek is in beauty. Now character is capable of being taught, learnt, and assimilated: beauty hardly."

Matthew Arnold, Schools and Universities on the Continent

Posted February 18, 12:00 AM

February 17, 2010

TT: Snapshot

Paul Robeson talks about playing the title role in Othello in 1943:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

Posted February 17, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Every neurotic is partly in the right."

Alfred Adler, Problems of Neurosis

Posted February 17, 12:00 AM

February 16, 2010

CAAF: Morning coffee

• Patti Smith on Bolaño Bolaño Bolaño part 1 and part 2 .

• Werner Herzog talks about the blending of fact and fiction in his films:

Facts per se are not so interesting for me. Facts do not illuminate; they create norms. The Manhattan phone directory has 4 million entries which are factually correct, but as a book it doesn't really illuminate you. I've always said we have to look beyond realism, beyond facts.

Earlier in the interview Herzog mentions that students at his Rogue Film School receive a "mandatory reading list" but alas no specific titles are mentioned. (Via.)

Posted February 16, 12:08 AM

CAAF: Rings like silver, shines like gold

Our house is on the east side of Asheville, near the area known as Swannanoa. There's a bluegrass song called "Swannanoa Tunnel" I like because it sounds like an aural transcription of the landscape around here: Winding, mountainous, gray-topped. I had thought the song was an instrumental but yesterday I came across a nice article, written by Lyle Lofgren and originally published in Inside Bluegrass, that contained lyrics for it. Lofgren notes that the song's a variant on the work song "Nine Pound Hammer." The Swannanoa iteration developed during the construction of the Swannanoa Tunnel, one of the railway tunnels that connected Asheville, then a raw scrap of city, to the rest of the country. Tunnel-digging was dangerous work. According to Lofgren, 300 men lost their lives during the project (another source places the number at 125).

As Lofgren recounts, the song was first transcribed by the Englishman Cecil Sharp and his protégé Maud Karpeles. But "[w]ithout a recording machine, they had to transcribe the words and tunes while people were singing them, and the North Carolina accents misled them badly on this song: 'Tunnel' became 'town-o' and 'hoot owl' was transcribed as 'hoodow.'" (The two were also reportedly perplexed by the song's oft-repeated chorus, "blinded by the light / wrapped up like a douche in the middle of the night.")

Here are the lyrics:

I'm going back to that Swannanoa Tunnel,
That's my home, baby, that's my home.
Asheville Junction, Swannanoa Tunnel,
All caved in, baby, all caved in.
Last December, I remember,
The wind blowed cold, baby, the wind blowed cold.
When you hear my watchdog howling, somebody around,
When you hear that hoot owl squalling, somebody dying,
Hammer falling from my shoulder all day long,
Ain't no hammer in this mountain outrings mine
This old hammer, it killed John Henry, it didn't kill me,
Riley Gardner, he killed my partner, he couldn't kill me,
Riley Rambler, he killed Jack Ambler, he didn't kill me,
This old hammer rings like silver, shines like gold,
Take this hammer, throw it in the river,
It rings right on, baby, it shines right on.
Some of these days I'll see that woman, well, that's no dream.

The instrumental version of the song I know best is Martin Simpson's, which is available on iTunes. Or you can listen to this version, different than Simpson's, on YouTube.

Posted February 16, 12:05 AM

TT: Almanac

"Contrary to what I'd been told in the entertainment industry, people everywhere have a common shy hunger for literature."

Charles Laughton (quoted in Time, Mar. 31, 1952)

Posted February 16, 12:00 AM

February 15, 2010

TT: Home alone

I left Mrs. T behind in Tampa last Thursday (she'll be keeping warm in Florida and Los Angeles for another couple of weeks) and flew north to New York. It wasn't easy to say goodbye to her, or to give up being a visiting scholar-in-residence at Rollins College and return to the land of dirty snow, and it didn't help that I had to jump on the merry-go-round right away. On Saturday I drove up to Massachusetts to review Shakespeare & Company's production of Dangerous Liaisons, then returned home the next morning and gave myself a night off--the night of Valentine's Day, alas--before plunging back into my everyday life. No doubt I'll be up to speed by week's end, but for the moment I'm finding it hard to shift gears.

It's not that I've been goofing off. In addition to lecturing, teaching, giving interviews, hitting deadlines, and seeing shows all over the state, I wrote the first draft of a one-man play about Louis Armstrong in my spare time. Yet all these things somehow seemed less stressful in Florida, partly because of the (mostly) pleasant weather and partly because of the change of scene, of which I was in desperate need. I was too busy with Pops and The Letter to take any noticeable amount of time off in 2009, and spending six weeks working in Winter Park was as close as I managed to get to putting my feet up.

I know I can't go on like this, nor do I want to. After spending several hours last week working on my summer theater calendar, I managed to hack out enough time for a no-fooling pull-the-plug two-week vacation at the end of May. No shows, no deadlines, and maybe even no e-mail! Mrs. T insisted on it, and she didn't have to do much pushing. I can't wait to go up the spout three months from now. All I have to do is keep moving until then, and I think I'm equal to the task. Unlikely as it sounds, it's going to help that so many shows are opening in New York during the second half of the theater season. I won't be able to squeeze in any more out-of-town playgoing trips from now to the end of April, so instead of bouncing from coast to coast and back again, I'll content myself with bouncing between New York and Connecticut.

For the moment, though, I've got three shows to see, three weeks' worth of mail to open, and two Wall Street Journal columns to write, so excuse me if I disappear. I'll be back next week. Until then, take it away, OGIC and CAAF! Your trusty co-blogger is about to be otherwise occupied.

Posted February 15, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Our intentions make blackguards of us all; our weakness in carrying them out we call probity."

Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (trans. P.W.K. Stone)

Posted February 15, 12:00 AM

February 12, 2010

TT: Hamlet & Co.

In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I report on three shows that I saw in Florida while the snow was falling up north: Orlando Shakespeare's Hamlet, Mad Cow Theatre's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Florida Rep's You Can't Take It With You. All are excellent. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

The Orlando Shakespeare Theater's "Hamlet" looks on paper like a standard-issue high-concept production, transplanted from ancient Denmark to Victorian England. But Richard Width and Bob Phillips, the director and set designer, have stirred in a cupful of spooky horror-show populism, pumping the stage full of mist and making eye-catching use of a stategically positioned trap door. One might almost be watching an unusually literate vampire flick aimed at a youthful audience, an impression reinforced by Avery Clark's flamboyantly physical performance of the title role....

All this makes for one of the most theatrically potent "Hamlets" I've seen in a good many seasons, far fresher than last year's Jude Law-powered Broadway production and, I suspect, more accessible to boot....

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" is being performed to similarly fine effect across town by Mad Cow Theater, a small but ambitious company that specializes in contemporary fare (Tracy Letts' "Superior Donuts" opens there next month). Performed in a black-box theater on a set consisting of seven doors in a curved white wall, this production discreetly underlines the debt owed by Mr. Stoppard to the Samuel Beckett of "Waiting for Godot." Michael Marinaccio and Timothy Williams play the title characters like a cross between Vladimir-and-Estragon and Abbott-and-Costello, which is just right...

The Pulitzer Prize for drama, like the best-picture Oscar, rarely goes to uncomplicatedly funny plays, but in 1937 the judges made a welcome exception and gave it to "You Can't Take it With You," the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy about an extended family whose variously eccentric members have all chosen to renounce worldly ambition and (as the saying goes) follow their bliss. A year later Frank Capra's film version knocked down a best-picture Oscar, thereby sealing the original play's long-standing reputation as a classic of American comedy.

Alas, the last Broadway revival of "You Can't Take It With You" opened more than a quarter-century ago, and professional productions have become comparatively rare. This is mainly because the play calls for a cast of 19, thus putting it out of the reach of cost-conscious regional companies, though the fact that Capra's film was so portentously windy doesn't help. Not so the Florida Repertory Theatre's festive new staging, which is as light and sweet as fresh-spun cotton candy....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted February 12, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"There are no child actors. There are child performers."

Charles Laughton (quoted in Preston Neal Jones, Heaven and Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter)

Posted February 12, 12:00 AM

February 11, 2010

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:
• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• South Pacific (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)
• A View from the Bridge * (drama, PG-13, violence and some sexual content, closes Apr. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Orphans' Home Cycle, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, now being performed in rotating repertory, extended through May 8, reviewed here, here, and here)
• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)
• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, sexual content, extended through Mar. 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEDNESDAY IN SARASOTA, FLA.:
• Life of Galileo (drama, G, accessible to well-read older teenagers, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Ernest in Love (musical, G, a bit too complicated for children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO, ILL.:
• American Buffalo (drama, PG-13/R, violence and very strong language, reviewed here)

Posted February 11, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"How mixed people are--how mixed and nice!"

Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Posted February 11, 12:00 AM

February 10, 2010

TT: Snapshot

Leonard Bernstein talks about "The World of Jazz" on Omnibus in 1955:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

Posted February 10, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"But most of the time, I just thought. And what I thought about most was luxury. I had never realized before that it is more than just having things; it makes the very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing that air: relaxed, lazy, still sad but with the edge taken off the sadness. Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don't notice it if you are born to it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.

"And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any luxury I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit wrong in it. Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable."

Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Posted February 10, 12:00 AM

February 9, 2010

TT: Almanac

"The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon."

Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Posted February 09, 12:00 AM

February 8, 2010

TT: By the sea with Mrs. T

Taken at breakfast this morning in South Palm Beach:

Posted February 08, 10:07 AM

TT: Reluctant to relocate

I've been too busy to write much about it lately, but for the past few weeks Mrs. T and I have been living in Winter Park, Florida, where I'm serving as a visiting scholar-in-residence at Rollins College's Winter Park Institute. My duties include giving public lectures, teaching a seminar in arts criticism, and popping up as often as possible in unexpected places. Last week, for instance, I sat in on a rehearsal of the splendid chorus of the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park, at which I sightread the bass part of the Mozart Requiem with rather more aplomb than my rustiness had led me to expect. I had even more fun giving a lecture about Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong that was accompanied by a seven-piece band of local jazzmen who tore up the joint. I've never been happier to have a show stolen out from under me!

I won't deny that the weather here was part of the draw--they tell me it's been snowing elsewhere in America--and so was the close proximity of Rollins College to Disney World. Mrs. T and I paid our first visit to Epcot Center last Sunday, accompanied by my brother and sister-in-law, who drove out from Smalltown, U.S.A., to spend the weekend with us. To wear short sleeves in February is no small thing for a New Yorker whose patience with cold weather is growing shorter with every passing year. But even if I had to pull on a sweater from time to time, I have no doubt that I'd still be enjoying myself. Not only is Rollins an exceedingly good school and Winter Park a beautiful town full of interesting people and excellent restaurants, but Florida, as I learned last year and rediscovered last month, is no less full of first-class theater. The only disappointing aspect of my stay here is that I've had to pack a bag and fly north most weekends to cover Broadway openings and peddle Pops.

All this came to pass because John Sinclair, an old college classmate of mine, is now the chairman of Rollins' music department and the artistic director of the Bach Festival. He lured me to Winter Park last March to give a lecture, and the experience was so mutually satisfactory that John's wife Gail, who runs the Winter Park Institute, asked if I'd like to come back the following year as a visiting scholar. I said yes in a heartbeat, not realizing that I'd still be up to my ears in Pops when January rolled around. Fortunately, we were able to reconcile most of the resulting schedule conflicts, and Mrs. T and I flew down to Florida a month ago.

Just when the fun is starting/Comes the time for parting. My tenure at the Winter Park Institute ends this week, and on Friday I head north to Lenox, Massachusetts, where I'll be seeing Shakespeare & Company's production of Dangerous Liaisons. I'm looking forward to my visit to Lenox very much, but less so to the consequent change in climate, and though I know that Mrs. T and I will be glad to return in due course to our cozy little apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I also know that we're going to miss what we've grown in the past few weeks to think of as our new home away from home.

Posted February 08, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Do you know, I believe we should all behave quite differently if we lived in a warm, sunny climate all the time. We shouldn't be so withdrawn and shy and difficult."

Noël Coward, screenplay for Brief Encounter

Posted February 08, 12:00 AM

February 7, 2010

A TOUR OF "HELL" IN EVENING DRESS

Posted February 07, 10:43 AM

February 5, 2010

TT: Your town, too

Today's Wall Street Journal drama column is a double-barrelled rave in which I praise to the skies the third and last installment of Horton Foote's Orphans' Home Cycle and Venus in Fur, a new play by David Ives. Here's a excerpt.

* * *

Now that I've seen all three installments of "The Orphans' Home Cycle," Horton Foote's dramatic portrait of a small-town Texas family, I can say with certainty what I suspected from the outset: Foote, who died last March, left behind a masterpiece, one that will rank high among the signal achievements of American theater in the 20th century. We owe it to Michael Wilson, the director of this joint production of New York's Signature Theatre Company and Mr. Wilson's own Hartford Stage, that the nine plays on which "The Orphans' Home Cycle" is based, which were originally written between 1974 and 1997, are being presented as a unit at last--and that they are being performed with such sympathy and sensitivity as to make their virtues instantly manifest....

"The Orphans' Home Cycle" is "Our Town" in macrocosm, a giant canvas on which Foote has portrayed everyday American life so knowingly that all of us can find ourselves somewhere in his great mural.

Mr. Wilson, working in the closest possible collaboration with the members of his design team, has given this production the easy flow of a movie--except that it's far more intimate. Scene dissolves into scene so naturally that you feel less like a spectator than a member of the family, sitting at the kitchen table and watching real life run its course....

David Ives used to specialize in witty one-act comedies. In recent years, though, he's expanded his canvas, and "Venus in Fur," like "New Jerusalem" and "Polish Joke" before it, shows that the author of such surreal sketches as "Philip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread" and "Variations on the Death of Trotsky" has grown into a playwright of considerable consequence--which doesn't mean that he's lost his sense of humor. "Venus in Fur," a 90-minute two-hander performed on a single set, actually feels a bit like one of Mr. Ives' one-act plays writ large, though it cuts much deeper, both intellectually and emotionally....

Though "Venus in Fur" is deadly serious, much of it is also madly funny, and Mr. Ives strews one-liners in every direction with prodigal generosity. Nina Arianda, who has most of the best ones, detonates them with the accuracy of an atomic clock. This is her first professional role of any consequence--she graduated from New York University last year--and I have no doubt whatsoever that we're going to be seeing a whole lot more of her. She has star quality oozing from every pore....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

* * *

Trailers for the first two installments of The Orphans' Home Cycle:

Posted February 05, 12:00 AM

TT: Captain Bligh's good turn

I've written quite a bit in recent years about what I call the "middlebrow moment," the period in the Fifties and Sixties when the mass media--especially TV--made a concerted attempt to introduce highbrow fare to their viewers and readers, presenting it in an accessible and engaging way and operating on the assumption that ordinary people wanted to expand their cultural awareness.

In tomorrow's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I take a look back at one of the most fascinating of all such ventures, the First Drama Quartette's touring version of George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. This production, in which Charles Laughton, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke, and Agnes Moorehead donned evening dress and read Shaw's play on a bare stage, played from coast to coast from 1949 to 1952. It was performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall to small-town high-school gymnasiums, and a half-million Americans came to see it. Laughton, who directed the production, made the cover of Time on the strength of the show's success.

In 1952 Columbia Masterworks made a complete original-cast recording of Don Juan in Hell that was issued as a two-LP set. It went out of print four decades ago and had never been reissued in any format until Saland Publishing, an audiobook outfit, released it without fanfare as an mp3 download. (You can purchase it here.) When I ran across this reissue a couple of weeks ago while doing online research on Laughton's career, I resolved to bring it to the attention of the general public. Hence Saturday's column, in which I tell the story of how Laughton and Paul Gregory, his producing partner, got the idea to take Don Juan in Hell on the road--and how American audiences responded. All in all, I can't think of a more illuminating and exemplary chapter in the story of America's middlebrow moment.

If you're curious, pick up a copy of Saturday's Journal and see what I have to say.

UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.

Posted February 05, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"And I regret to say that there were moments when my deep and loving pity for her merged into a desire to kick her fairly hard."

Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Posted February 05, 12:00 AM

February 4, 2010

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:
• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• South Pacific (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)
• A View from the Bridge * (drama, PG-13, violence and some sexual content, closes Apr. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Orphans' Home Cycle, Parts 1 and 2 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, now being performed in rotating repertory with third part of cycle, extended through May 8, reviewed here and here)
• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Ernest in Love (musical, G, a bit too complicated for children, closes Feb. 14, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO, ILL.:
• American Buffalo (drama, PG-13/R, violence and very strong language, closes Feb. 14, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN SARASOTA, FLA.:
• Life of Galileo (drama, G, accessible to well-read older teenagers, closes Feb. 17, reviewed here)

Posted February 04, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"The structure of a play is always the story of how the birds came home to roost."

Arthur Miller (quoted in Harper's, August 1958)

Posted February 04, 12:00 AM

February 3, 2010

TT: Snapshot

John Betjeman interviews Philip Larkin for the BBC in 1964:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

Posted February 03, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"I think that every novelist ought to entertain before he does anything else. And that's very difficult. It's much easier to be serious and to seem important, or to seem serious rather than to entertain."

Kingsley Amis (quoted in Conversations With Kingsley Amis)

Posted February 03, 12:00 AM

February 2, 2010

OGIC: The illustrious Edward

I'm about to write way too much about something whose chief virtue is its unlabored concision. Forgive me. I am really excited.

The wonderful Kate Beaton has posted a great set of comic strips suggested by some of Edward Gorey's well-known pocket book cover illustrations. I recommend to you Beaton's entire body of work (fully archived on her Web site), but none of it more than these inspired little vignettes.

By now some of the drawings Gorey made for Anchor and Vintage in the 1950s have achieved iconic status themselves. Beaton's spontaneous but thoughtful spinoffs inventively pay homage while illuminating the choices Gorey made, which turn out to be so interesting. She reminds one that--far more so than almost any cover on a work of classic literature one sees today--his drawings were a pretty high form of interpretation.

Posted February 02, 7:39 PM

TT: Something old under the sun

When Mrs. T and I visited the China Pavilion at Disney World's Epcot Center, we were transfixed by the music of Ann Yao, who plays an ancient zither-like instrument called the zheng with supreme virtuosity. She is a truly remarkable artist, and the zheng is worthy of her sensitive musicianship.

No sooner did we get home from the park than I booted up my MacBook and embarked on a search for information about Yao and her instrument. Among other things, I found several videos of her playing on YouTube, two of which I want to share with you:

Isn't she amazing? And isn't the zheng a gorgeous-sounding instrument?

Posted February 02, 12:44 AM

TT: Almanac

"As Judeo-Christians we must avow that the critic is the equal of the artist in the sight of God--as, indeed, he is--if God can't read."

David Mamet (quoted in Chris Jones, Theater Loop, Jan. 27, 2010)

Posted February 02, 12:00 AM

February 1, 2010

TT: You heard it here first (or second)

For those who haven't seen my C-SPAN interview with Brian Lamb, I announced last night that my next book will be a biography of Duke Ellington that will be published by Gotham Books.

More as it happens....

Posted February 01, 10:04 AM

THE RHYMING RADICAL

Posted February 01, 12:44 AM

TT: Finally!

Here's the C-SPAN interview in which Brian Lamb talked to me about Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong:

You might also be interested in these two Pops-related links:

• This is a story by Debra Levine published last week in the Santa Fe New Mexican in which I discuss, among other things, Armstrong's magical 1931 recording of Hoagy Carmichael's "Star Dust."

• To download a podcast of a CBC radio interview in which I talk about Pops, go here.

UPDATE: Four hours after my C-SPAN interview aired, the Amazon sales rank of Pops had jumped from #1,607 to #509--and it's still going up! Not too shabby for a serious biography that went on sale more than two months ago.

Posted February 01, 12:00 AM

TT: So you want to get reviewed

If you read the Friday Wall Street Journal or this blog with any regularity, you probably know that I'm the only drama critic in America who routinely covers theatrical productions from coast to coast. As I wrote in my "Sightings" column a few years ago:

The time has come for American playgoers--and, no less important, arts editors--to start treating regional theater not as a minor-league branch of Broadway but as an artistically significant entity in and of itself. Take it from a critic who now spends much of his time living out of a suitcase: If you don't know what's hot in "the stix," you don't know the first thing about theater in 21st-century America.

But suppose you run a company I haven't visited? How might you get me to come see you? Now's the time to start asking that question, because I'm starting to work on my reviewing calendar for the summer and fall of 2010. So here's an updated version of the guidelines that I use for deciding which out-of-town shows to see--along with some suggestions for improving the ways in which you reach out to the press:

• Basic requirements. I only review professional companies. I don't review dinner theater, and it's unusual for me to visit children's theaters. I'm somewhat more likely to review Equity productions, but that's not a hard-and-fast rule, and I'm strongly interested in small companies.

• You must produce a minimum of three shows each season... That doesn't apply to summer festivals, but it's extremely rare for me to cover a festival that doesn't put on at least two shows a season.

• ...and most of them have to be serious. I won't put you on my drop-dead list for milking the occasional cash cow, but if The Underpants is your idea of a daring revival, I won't go out of my way to come calling on you, either.

• I have no geographical prejudices. On the contrary, I love to range far afield, particularly to states that I haven't yet gotten around to visiting in my capacity as America's drama critic. Right now Arizona and Colorado loom largest, but if you're doing something exciting in (say) Mississippi or Montana, I'd be more than happy to add you to the list as well.

• Repertory is everything. I won't visit an out-of-town company that I've never seen to review a play by an author of whom I've never heard. What I look for is an imaginative mix of revivals of major plays--including comedies--and newer works by living playwrights and songwriters whose work I've admired. Some names on the latter list: Alan Ayckbourn, Brooke Berman, Nilo Cruz, Liz Flahive, Brian Friel, Athol Fugard, John Guare, Adam Guettel, David Ives, Michael John LaChiusa, Kenneth Lonergan, Lisa Loomer, David Mamet, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Itamar Moses, Lynn Nottage, Peter Shaffer, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Stoppard.

I also have a select list of older shows I'd like to review that haven't been revived in New York lately (or ever). If you're doing The Beauty Part, The Cocktail Party, The Entertainer, Hotel Paradiso, The Iceman Cometh, Loot, Man and Superman, Rhinoceros, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Visit (the play, not the musical), or anything by Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, Horton Foote, William Inge, Terence Rattigan, or John Van Druten, kindly drop me a line.

Finally, I'm very specifically interested in seeing large-cast plays that no longer get performed in New York for budgetary reasons. One of the reasons why I came to Florida this January was to see Life of Galileo and You Can't Take It With You.

• BTDT. I almost never cover regional productions of new or newish plays that I reviewed in New York in the past season or two--especially if I panned them. Hence the chances of my coming to see your production of Time Stands Still or In the Next Room or the vibrator play are well below zero. (Suggestion: if you're not already reading my Journal column, you probably ought to start.)

In addition, there are shows that I like but have written about more than once in the past couple of seasons and thus am not likely to seek out again for the next couple of seasons. Some cases in point: American Buffalo, Arcadia, Awake and Sing!, Biography, Blithe Spirit, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Glass Menagerie, Heartbreak House, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, Our Town, Private Lives, Speed-the-Plow, A Streetcar Named Desire, Waiting for Godot, and West Side Story. (I am, however, going to keep on reviewing What the Butler Saw until somebody gets it right!)

• I group my shots. It isn't cost-effective for me to fly halfway across the country to review a single show. Whenever possible, I like to take in two or three different productions during a four- or five-day trip. (Bear in mind, though, that they don't all have to be in the same city.) If you're the publicist of the Lower Slobbovia Repertory Company and you want me to review your revival of Amadeus, your best bet is to point out that TheaterSlobbovia also happens to be doing Lettice and Lovage that same weekend. Otherwise, I'll probably go to San Francisco instead.

• Web sites matter. A lot. A clean-looking home page that conveys a maximum of information with a minimum of clutter tells me that you know what you're doing, thus increasing the likelihood that I'll come see you. An unprofessional-looking, illogically organized home page suggests the opposite. (If you can't spell, hire a proofreader.) This doesn't mean I won't consider reviewing you--I know appearances can be deceiving--but bad design is a needless obstacle to your being taken seriously by other online visitors.

If you want to keep traveling critics happy, make very sure that the front page of your Web site contains the following easy-to-find information and features:

(1) The title of your current production, plus its opening and closing dates.

(2) Your address and main telephone number (not the box office!).

(3) A SEASON or NOW PLAYING button that leads directly to a complete list of the rest of the current and/or upcoming season's productions. Make sure that this listing includes the press opening date of each production!

(4) A CALENDAR or SCHEDULE button that leads to a month-by-month calendar of all your performances, including curtain times.

(5) A CONTACT US button that leads to an updated directory of staff members (including individual e-mail addresses, starting with the address of your press representative).

(6) A DIRECTIONS or VISIT US button that leads to a page containing directions to your theater and a printable map of the area. Like many people, I now rely on my GPS unit when driving, so it is essential that this page also include the street address of the theater where you perform. Failure to conspicuously display this address is a hanging offense. (I also suggest that you include a list of recommended restaurants and hotels that are close to the theater.)

This is an example of a good company with an attractive, well-organized Web site on which most of the above information is easy to find.

• Please omit paper. I strongly prefer to receive press releases via e-mail, and I don't want to receive routine Joe-Blow-is-now-our-assistant-stage-manager announcements via any means whatsoever.

• Write to me here. Mail sent to me at my Wall Street Journal e-mail address invariably gets lost in the flood of random press releases. As a result, I no longer recommend that anyone write to me there. I get a lot of spam at my "About Last Night" mailbox, too, but not nearly as much as I do at the Journal. Any e-mail sent to me at the Journal that contains attachments will be discarded unread.

Finally:

• Mention this posting. I've come to see shows solely because publicists who read my blog wrote to tell me that their companies were doing a specific show that they had good reason to think might interest me. Go thou and do likewise.

Posted February 01, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"It may be gratifying to watch one's moral superiors fall on their faces, but it is also a good idea to look around and see whether there is anyone left to lean upon."

Louis Auchincloss, Honorable Men (courtesy of Kevin Mims)

Posted February 01, 12:00 AM