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January 31, 2011

TT: She stumbled when she saw

In the Greater New York section of today's Wall Street Journal, I review the Irish Repertory Theatre's off-Broadway revival of Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

Why is is that American productions of the works of Brian Friel, the greatest playwright of the English-speaking world, are so hard to come by? It's been two years since I last saw one, which is far too long. So it is good news indeed that the Irish Repertory Theatre, my favorite Off-Broadway company, is performing "Molly Sweeney," a three-person show about a 41-year-old woman who undergoes an operation to regain the sight she lost as a baby. "Molly Sweeney" is one of Mr. Friel's most remarkable plays, yet it hasn't been presented in New York since 1996, which I find even harder to fathom. Fortunately, this revival, staged by Charlotte Moore, the company's artistic director, is immensely persuasive, and I have no doubt that anyone who sees it will be converted on the spot to Mr. Friel's cause.

"Molly Sweeney" is a three-person play constructed along the same "Rashomon"-like lines as Mr. Friel's "Faith Healer," in which the characters speak to the audience but not to one another, telling their collective tale from their own sharply different perspectives. The personalities here are no less varied. Molly (Geraldine Hughes) is a strong, serene woman who long ago came to terms with her disability and now fears--with good reason--the unknowable consequences of regaining her sight. Her husband Frank (Ciarán O'Reilly) is a garrulous ne'er-do-well who sees in Molly's operation the possibility that his own life will be changed, only for the better. And Mr. Rice (Jonathan Hogan), the small-town opthalmologist who performs the surgery, is a man of squandered promise who is sure that operating on Molly will restore to him the high hopes of his lost youth.

What follows is a devastating parable of disappointment in all its terrible forms, one that is vastly more powerful because it is so understated....

Never do you feel as though Ms. Moore's three fine actors are "performing." They appear instead to be real people who are telling you about something that happened to them. All the art is carefully concealed--but don't be deceived, for this production is artful in every aspect....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted January 31, 12:00 AM

TT: Curtain going up

Just because I'm in Florida doesn't mean I'm taking it easy. Here's what I did last week:

• I wrote a 2,500-word essay about Eugene O'Neill and the first 8,100 words of the fourth chapter of Black Beauty: A Life of Duke Ellington.

• On Friday I saw the opening night of Orlando Shakespeare's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

• I flew up to New York on Saturday morning and saw two shows, the Irish Rep's Molly Sweeney and Classic Stage Company's Three Sisters. Then I returned to Winter Park on Sunday, having written and filed my review of Molly Sweeney for today's Wall Street Journal, arriving just in time to pick up Mrs. T and go hear an afternoon concert by the Brazilian Guitar Quartet.

• I rehearsed my first play.

Regarding the last of these items, I have big news: if you're going to be anywhere near Winter Park, Florida, on Tuesday night, you have a chance to come see the first forty minutes or so of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man show about Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his manager. Not only is this the plays first performance anywhere, but it'a also my debut as a theatrical director. The amazing Dennis Neal is playing Armstrong and Glaser. The performance is at Rollins College and admission is free.

Here's part of the press release:

Teachout started writing his first play, a one-man show based on Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, during his 2010 visit to the Winter Park Institute. Now Satchmo at the Waldorf is moving toward its first commercial production. In collaboration with the drama department of Rollins College, Teachout will present the first public performance of staged excerpts from Satchmo at the Waldorf and talk about the process of transforming a best-selling biography into a one-man play....

Go here for more details.

Posted January 31, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Only the skilled can judge the skilfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result."

C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

Posted January 31, 12:00 AM

January 28, 2011

TT: To believe, or not to believe?

In today's Wall Street Journal drama column, I review Palm Beach Dramaworks' superb production of Freud's Last Session. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

In the cash-strapped but quality-conscious world of regional theater, a smart small-cast show about a famous personage of the past is about as close as you can get to a sure thing. It stands to reason, then, that Palm Beach Dramaworks, whose slogan is "Theatre to Think About," should have rushed to put "Freud's Last Session," Mark St. Germain's two-man play about an imaginary meeting between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, onto the tiny stage of its 84-seat theater. This show, which was originally developed in West Palm Beach, has since had highly successful runs Off Broadway, where it just reopened after a seven-week hiatus, and before that at Massachusetts' Barrington Stage Company, where it received its official premiere two summers ago. Now that I've seen the Florida version, I know why: Mr. St. Germain has written one of the most stimulating plays of its kind to come my way.

In "Freud's Last Session," Professor Lewis (Christopher Oden), the bluff Oxford don turned Christian apologist, pays a visit to the office of Dr. Freud (Dennis Creaghan), the religion-hating inventor of psychoanalysis, who has fled to London to escape Nazi persecution. What ensues is a cross between an urbane conversation piece and a knock-down-drag-out debate over the existence of God. Such plays often lack dramatic momentum, but this one is tautened by its shrewdly calculated setting. The date is September 3, 1939. Not long after Lewis arrives, Freud switches on the radio to hear Neville Chamberlain announcing that a state of war exists between England and Germany--and the air-raid sirens start to wail....

This production, which has been lucidly staged by William Hayes, the company's artistic director, is a good example of Palm Beach Dramaworks' brainy approach. The acting is sharp, sympathetic and detailed. Mr. Creighan has been made up to look exactly like Freud, and Michael Amico's set is a fabulously precise evocation of the Viennese doctor's cluttered consulting room, right down to the shawl on his clients' couch. Even the BBC broadcasts sound believable. Yet nothing that we see or hear onstage is allowed to shift our attention from the play itself, and the fact that no one in the theater is more than a few feet from the stage makes you feel as though you're part of the conversation....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The voice of Sigmund Freud, recorded by the BBC in 1938:

The voice of C.S. Lewis, recorded by the BBC in 1944:

Posted January 28, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Everybody's private motto: It's better to be popular than right."

Mark Twain, undated memorandum

Posted January 28, 12:00 AM

January 27, 2011

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:
• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, extended through July 3, reviewed here)
• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 27, reviewed here)
• 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)
• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

IN SARASOTA, FLA.:
• Twelve Angry Men (drama, G, closes Mar. 26, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 13, transfers to Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, reviewed here)

Posted January 27, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it--namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to obtain."

Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Posted January 27, 12:00 AM

January 26, 2011

TT: Tentative axioms of a novice stage director

• Directing is mainly listening. The director's first job is to ensure that the actor speaks the text in such a way as to make it intelligible to members of the audience who have not already seen it on the printed page.

• When you're talking, you're not listening.

• If you're working with good actors, let the performance emerge naturally from them, then shape and edit it.

• Don't give line readings to professional actors. Your main concern should be to make sure that the point of emphasis in every sentence is correct--i.e., that it helps make the sense of the sentence self-evident to the listening audience. You can do that without "acting" the line out, and should.

• Insofar as possible, let actors do what feels natural to them. If you are the author of the play that you're directing and the actors find it insurmountably difficult to speak the lines on the page exactly as written, then change them. If they're well cast, then their instincts are probably sound and should be taken seriously.

• Try not to interrupt. Always give an actor the chance to get things right without being told.

• If, on the other hand, he says or does something really wrong twice in a row, fix it on the spot. Otherwise he'll learn it incorrectly and will find it harder to change later on.

• Let the actor work out his own blocking in the first couple of rehearsals. Once it starts to gel, that's the time to edit it and--usually--to simplify it.

• All movement on stage must be relevant and motivated. If it isn't, it will look fussy. If the lines are interesting, standing still is always an option.

• Actors want and need to know that what they're doing is pleasing to you. If it is, say so. Don't assume that they can read your mind.

UPDATE: A friend writes: "Now, just wait until you're directing multiple personalities along with a big production team!" Er, yeah....

Posted January 26, 3:23 PM

TT: Snapshot

Miklós Rózsa talks briefly about his film scores with André Previn, then conducts an excerpt from Ben-Hur:

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

Posted January 26, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."

Mark Twain, notebook entry, January/February 1894

Posted January 26, 12:00 AM

January 25, 2011

TT: Almanac

"He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie."

Mark Twain, "Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington"

Posted January 25, 12:00 AM

January 24, 2011

TT: For Floridians only (cont'd)

If you should happen to be in or near the Winter Park-Orlando area of Florida, I'll be speaking about Danse Russe, the new opera that I'm writing with Paul Moravec, tomorrow night at seven p.m. under the auspices of the Winter Park Institute. Here's part of the press release:

In 2009, the Santa Fe Opera premiered The Letter, an opera by Teachout and Pulitzer-winning composer Paul Moravec based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play. Now the two men are collaborating on Danse Russe, a backstage comedy about the creation of The Rite of Spring that will be premiered by Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater in the spring of 2011. In collaboration with the music department of Rollins College, Teachout presents a sneak preview of excerpts from Danse Russe and talks about the challenge of writing his first original opera libretto....

For more details, go here.

Posted January 24, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices whatsoever."

Mark Twain, "Answers to Correspondents"

Posted January 24, 12:00 AM

January 21, 2011

TT: Twelve superior actors

In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I sing the praises of a show in Sarasota, Florida, Asolo Rep's revival of Twelve Angry Men. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

Great character actors make the world of theater go round. Florida's Asolo Repertory Theatre is proving the point with its exceptional revival of "Twelve Angry Men." Reginald Rose's popular jury-room drama is better known as a movie than a play--it was originally written for a CBS telecast in 1954, then filmed in 1957, and only made it to Broadway a half-century later--and the film version starred Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb, two of Hollywood's best-known faces. In most of its incarnations, though, "Twelve Angry Men" has served as a vehicle for unfamous performers who look and sound (as Jack Webb said of the character actors whom he cast in "Dragnet") "as real as a guy pouring a cup of coffee." That's what Asolo Rep is giving us, and the results are truly inspiring.

Mr. Rose's 1964 stage version of his original "Studio One" teleplay is an astonishingly well-made piece of work. The mechanism that propels the stage action, which is played out in real time, couldn't be simpler--one juror gradually persuades his 11 colleagues not to send a slum kid to the electric chair--but often the simplest devices are the best ones...

The script also contains more than its share of high-minded heavy-handedness, however, and there are more than a few moments when you can all but see "APPLAUD" and "BOO" signs flashing over the proscenium. Not only is the never-seen slum kid who's been accused of killing his father a member of an (unspecified) minority group who Never Had a Chance, but Juror No. 10 (played here by Douglas Jones) is an eye-rollingly self-evident bigot who telegraphs his bad-guy status right at the top of the play by making a clanking reference to "those people." As for Juror No. 8 (Jud Williford), the lone holdout, he's so damn noble that Fonda actually wore a white suit when he played the part in Sidney Lumet's film.

But since I last saw "Twelve Angry Men" in the Roundabout Theatre Company's excellent 2004 Broadway premiere, I've had two eye-opening experiences: I saw a kinescope of the original live-TV version, which was performed much more straightforwardly than Lumet's film, and I served as the foreman for a New York jury. No, I didn't wear a white suit, nor was I especially noble, but I did get to see how seriously my fellow jurors took what we were doing, and I realized in the process was that "Twelve Angry Men" is for the most part surprisingly true to life in its portrayal of what happens in a jury room. So is Asolo Rep's production, which has been staged with bracing clarity by Frank Galati, a member of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company ensemble....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted January 21, 12:00 AM

TT: Afraid of the dark

The you-can't-say-that brigade has been out in force lately, and I take on the forces of silence in today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

In an age of political correctness run amok, defenders of free speech can never let their guard down. The past couple of weeks, however, have seen a string of particularly egregious incidents:

• In Alabama, Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Montgomery's Auburn University, has edited a sanitized version of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," the greatest of all American novels, in which the word "nigger" is replaced with "slave."

• In Canada, "Money for Nothing," a song by Dire Straits that was a hit single in 1985, has now been banned from the airwaves by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) because Mark Knopfler's lyrics make ironic use of the word "faggot," putting it in the mouth of an envious working-class lout who uses it to refer to a rock star "with the earring and the make-up."

• In Connecticut, David Snead, Waterbury's superintendent of schools, is trying to stop that city's Arts Magnet School from putting on a student production of August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" because the characters, all but one of whom are black, make repeated use of the word "nigger."

Since these three incidents were the work of cultural bureaucrats who not only believe in mincing words but want to force you to mince yours as well, I'll put it as bluntly as possible: Messrs. Snead and Gribben and the members of the CBSC are pusillanimous boobs who deserve to be fired. And while one expects such monstrosities these days, what happened in Waterbury is specifically deserving of your attention, embodying as it does a moral cowardice unworthy of anyone who claims to be a teacher....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted January 21, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is."

Kingsley Amis, Jake's Thing

Posted January 21, 12:00 AM

January 20, 2011

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:
• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)
• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, closes Mar. 6, reviewed here)
• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 27, reviewed here)
• 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)
• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 13, transfers to Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN FORT MYERS, FLA.:
• Sylvia (comedy, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here)

Posted January 20, 12:00 AM

TT: Just because

Courtesy of Isaac Butler, one of the most unintentionally funny commercials ever filmed:

Posted January 20, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children."

Kingsley Amis, One Fat Englishman

Posted January 20, 12:00 AM

January 19, 2011

TT: It's real

For the most part I've only talked about it in passing on this blog, but a year ago I started writing a one-man play about Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his longtime manager. (The same actor plays both parts.) The play, which grew out of the research I did for my recent biography of Armstrong, is called Satchmo at the Waldorf, and a couple of weeks from now it will become more than just a furtive gleam in the author's eye.

As part of my current residency at Rollins College's Winter Park Institute, where I wrote the first draft of Satchmo at the Waldorf last year, I'm going to be taking part in a public presentation of the play's opening section, the first time that any part of the script has been performed, either in public or in private. I'm staging the scenes that we're doing--it'll be my directing debut--and Dennis Neal, a seasoned actor who lives in Orlando, not far from Winter Park, will be playing the double role of Armstrong and Glaser. He's mainly a stage actor, but the chances are good that you've seen him on screen, since his list of credits includes Tim Robbins' Dead Man Walking and John Sayles' Sunshine State.

I met Dennis yesterday afternoon at our first rehearsal, and within minutes I was floored. Not only is he quick and brilliantly responsive, but he instinctively sensed what I was looking for, gave it to me, then made it better than I could ever have imagined myself. It's not my place to talk about the quality of the play, much less my staging of it, but I can absolutely guarantee you that Dennis is going to be a knockout and a wow.

The play itself is probably not what you'd expect. Most one-man shows about famous people are unchallenging, sweet-tempered exercises in hagiography. Not Satchmo at the Waldorf. I've tried to show Armstrong as he really was and make him speak the way he really spoke--this is absolutely not a show for kids, unless you're the kind of parent who'd take your kids to see American Buffalo--and I've also tried to suggest the knotty complexity of his quasi-filial relationship with Glaser, an ex-gangster from Chicago who ran his career with an iron hand. To put it another way, I wanted to write a real play, not a piece of fawning fluff, and now that I've seen some of it in the rehearsal studio, I feel pretty good about the results.

I'm also enjoying my first shot at directing. Dennis says that I'm giving him what he needs in the way of guidance, and he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd say a thing like that just to be polite. Be that as it may, directing a play seems to feel natural to me, at least so far, and I can't wait for the two of us to roll up our sleeves and really get down to work next week.

And after February 1...what? That remains to be seen. For the moment I can't say any more than that I've acquired a theatrical agent and that a number of people in the business have expressed interest in the script. But now that Dennis has showed me what Satchmo at the Waldorf looks and sounds like, I'm starting to feel as though something good may come of my maiden voyage into the deep waters of playwriting.

* * *

For more information about the first performance of scenes from Satchmo at the Waldorf, go here.

Posted January 19, 12:00 AM

TT: Snapshot

This week's video: Louis Prima and Keely Smith sing "That Old Black Magic":

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

Posted January 19, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to Leopold Mozart, Sept. 11, 1778

Posted January 19, 12:00 AM

January 18, 2011

TT: For Floridians only

If you should happen to be in or near the Winter Park-Orlando area of Florida, I'll be speaking about Duke Ellington at Rollins College tonight at seven p.m. under the auspices of the Winter Park Institute. Here's part of the press release:

Teachout started writing his sixth book, Black Beauty: A Life of Duke Ellington, in the spring of 2010. The finished manuscript is due in 2013. What happens between now and then? In this exclusive progress report on the writing of Black Beauty, Teachout takes you inside his workshop and tells the inside story of how he is sculpting the public and private lives of a great artist into a large-scale narrative biography....

For more details, go here.

Posted January 18, 12:00 AM

TT: Just because

Duke Ellington and his orchestra perform "Satin Doll" in 1962:

Posted January 18, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"If I have gone higher than others in advertising, or done more, the fact is not due to exceptional ability, but to exceptional hours. It means that a man has sacrificed all else in life to excel in this one profession. It means a man to be pitied, rather than envied, perhaps."

Claude C. Hopkins, My Life in Advertising

Posted January 18, 12:00 AM

January 17, 2011

TT: Adventures of a peripatetic librettist

After spending two happy weeks in Florida, I headed up to Delaware on Saturday morning to attend back-to-back staged workshop performances of Danse Russe, the new opera about the making of The Rite of Spring that Paul Moravec and I are writing for Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater. The first one took place on Saturday evening at the rehearsal studios of OperaDelaware in Wilmington, the second on Sunday afternoon in the auditorium of the Ethical Society of Philadelphia on Rittenhouse Square. As if that weren't enough activity for one frenzied weekend, I also squeezed in a fast side trip to Philadelphia's Arden Theatre to see their new revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten, which I'll be reviewing for The Wall Street Journal in a couple of weeks.

Part of the process of writing an opera for Center City Opera Theater involves presenting public workshop performances at which the members of the audience are invited to comment on what they've just seen. We got quite a few valuable suggestions after both performances of Danse Russe. A playwright who saw the show in Wilmington told me, for instance, that the character of Sergei Diaghilev, the legendary ballet impresario who commissioned The Rite of Spring, wasn't active enough--everybody in the opera talks about him, but you never see him at work backstage. This was an astute comment, and precisely the kind of mistake that an inexperienced playwright (i.e., me) is prone to make.

A minute or two after the playwright spoke up, the light went on and I said to Paul, "It just hit me--Diaghilev doesn't have an aria of his own, and I think he really needs one." I blush to confess that I made the same mistake in writing the libretto for The Letter: we didn't give Pat Racette's character an all-alone-on-stage moment at any point in the first draft of the opera. As soon as Pat pointed that fact out, I saw our mistake, and Paul and I went straight to the studio and wrote her big aria.

The point of this story is, of course, that theater in all its forms is both empirical and collaborative. An opera or play must work on stage. Furthermore, you don't know what works or doesn't work until you get the show in front of an audience, and it's essential at that point that you be open to other people's ideas about how to make it work better. If you bring a my-way-or-the-highway attitude into the rehearsal studio, you're going to crash and burn. Paul and I, by contrast, are completely comfortable about being frank with one another, and when smart people make suggestions, we listen--hard. That's why we're getting so much out of Center City's workshop-and-talkback process, which has already made Danse Russe a much better piece and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

I'm pleased to say, though, that we also got our fair share of praise as well. The compliment I appreciated most came from Lena Ryepkina, our excellent and exceedingly nice pianist, who was born in Kiev. Lena told me that I'd gotten all the Russia-related details right, and asked in all innocence whether I spoke Russian. I confessed to being a hopeless monoglot, to which she replied, "Then how did you know to make Diaghilev say 'сукин сын'?" (That's Russian for "son of a bitch.") I confessed, much to her amusement, that I'd gotten it out of a James Bond novel.

I'd accumulated quite a pile of notes by the time that Sunday's performance was over, as had Paul. Alas, I've not yet had any time to go to work on them. In fact, I didn't even have time for dinner on Sunday: I went straight to the hotel, checked in, walked over to the Arden to see A Moon for the Misbegotten, then grabbed a quick bite to eat after the show and returned to the hotel for a much-needed night's rest.

Wilmington, by the way, has a first-class downtown hotel, and Paul and I both had the good fortune to stay there on Saturday night. The Hotel du Pont is, to put it mildly, no ordinary hotel: it shares a building with DuPont's corporate headquarters and a Broadway-sized theater called, logically enough, the DuPont Theatre. After dining on the hotel's much-praised Sunday brunch, we were given a tour of the facilities, which also include a Versailles-style ballroom and a dining room on whose walls hang a half-dozen or so museum-quality Andrew Wyeth watercolors. I'm still trying to ratchet my jaw back into place. The life of an itinerant opera librettist and drama critic is full of unexpected pleasures!

By the time you read these words, I'll be on my way to Winter Park, Florida, where it's warmer--a lot warmer, I'm glad to say. I'll be giving a talk about my Duke Ellington biography tomorrow night at Rollins College, about which more here, then driving down to West Palm Beach to see yet another show, about which more in due course. As always, watch this space for details!

Posted January 17, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"But of course acting is not truth. You can't pretend that it is. An effect is an effect, whether you like it or not."

John Gielgud (interviewed by John Miller in John Gielgud: An Actor's Life)

Posted January 17, 12:00 AM

January 14, 2011

TT: She's a real dog

In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I report on a show I saw last week in Fort Myers, Florida Rep's revival of Sylvia, and take note of the Broadway transfer of The Importance of Being Earnest, which I was supposed to see on Wednesday afternoon. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

Cleverness, like cuteness, is in the eye of the beholder, so let me start by saying that A.R. Gurney's "Sylvia," which is being performed with terrific comic energy by the Florida Repertory Theatre, is both clever and cute in all the right ways. First seen in New York a decade and a half ago, Mr. Gurney's droll tale of a dog who comes between a middle-aged man and his frustrated wife has long since become a regional-theater staple, as well it should be. Not only is "Sylvia" one of the funniest small-cast plays of the past quarter-century, but just beneath the surface it has serious things to say about the travails of what one of the characters calls "the dangerous years...the years between the first hint of retirement and the first whiff of the nursing home." Moreover, Mr. Gurney says them so amusingly that you almost fail to notice the sharp bite of the medicine of truth.

The trick to "Sylvia" is that the title character, a stray poodle-Labrador mix, is played by a young woman (Michelle Damato) who is capable of conversing with her master (Gordon McConnell) and mistress (Carrie Lund) when no one else is around to eavesdrop. Greg, who found her in the park one day, is deep in the throes of a work-related midlife crisis. Accordingly, he falls for Sylvia in much the same way that another man might fall for a younger woman, much to the horror of Kate, his wife, who didn't want a dog in the first place and really doesn't want one on whom her husband dotes to the exclusion of everyone else, Kate included. Stir in a third actor (Chris Clavelli) who plays three smaller roles, two of them in drag, and you get a recipe for Gurney-style comedy...

Ms. Damato is entirely delightful in the canine role created Off Broadway by Sarah Jessica Parker in 1995. Her frisky body language and dead-sure comic timing couldn't be bettered. Not that her colleagues are anything other than right on the button: Here as in the two previous Florida Rep shows I've seen, you get the feeling that you're watching a permanent ensemble at work on stage, one whose members know and trust one another....

Speaking of drag acts, the smartest one ever to come my way is currently doing business in Manhattan: The Roundabout Theatre Company has brought to Broadway Brian Bedford's brilliantly zany Stratford Shakespeare Festival staging of Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest," in which the veteran classical comedian dons wig and gown to play Lady Bracknell.

As I wrote in this space when I saw the production in Canada two summers ago, "I don't care for camped-up drag acts, but Mr. Bedford, who makes himself up to look like Queen Victoria and carries himself like a snooty gargoyle, is giving us something completely different, an impersonation so sharp-witted and closely observed that it demands to be accepted on its own daring terms"...

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted January 14, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making."

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

Posted January 14, 12:00 AM

January 13, 2011

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:
• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)
• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 27, reviewed here)
• 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)
• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 13, transfers to Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, original Broadway production reviewed here)

Posted January 13, 12:00 AM

TT: Margaret Whiting, R.I.P.

Posted January 13, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"The business of the dramatist is to keep out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. As soon as he attracts notice to his personal feelings, the illusion is broken. The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter."

Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Milton"

Posted January 13, 12:00 AM

January 12, 2011

TT: Out of joint

I'm in suspended animation, sort of. I was supposed to fly last night from Sarasota, Florida, to New York's Kennedy Airport, but my flight was canceled in the afternoon and rescheduled for this morning. Later in the day my new flight was canceled, leading to a mildly amusing absurdity: JetBlue then rescheduled me to arrive in New York at 11:32 Thursday morning and depart again for Sarasota at 12:18 that same afternoon.

Not that it mattered, since I'd needed to get to Manhattan in time to see two plays on Wednesday, a matinee and an evening performance, and meet with a stage director in between shows. The canceled flights thus took away the point of my trip, so I decided to be sensible and sit tight in Sarasota for two extra days.

And what am I doing here? Nothing out of the ordinary. Last night I wrote another chunk of the third chapter of my Duke Ellington biography, on which I've been working since Mrs. T and I arrived in Florida last week. I got up this morning, ordered a room-service breakfast, knocked out my Friday drama column for The Wall Street Journal, and e-mailed it to New York. We're staying at a waterfront hotel, and though it's too brisk to swim, the sun is shining brightly, so the next thing on my agenda is a walk.

Needless to say, I'm going to keep on chipping away at the Ellington book while I'm here, but neither Mrs. T nor I has ever been to the Ringling Museum of Art, so an afternoon field trip may be in order. On Friday night we'll go to Asolo Rep's revival of Twelve Angry Men, which is why we came to Sarasota in the first place. The next day, weather permitting, I'll fly up to Philadelphia for the workshop performances of Danse Russe about which I posted earlier today.

I have, in short, plenty to do, but I'm still at loose ends. My life requires me to live by the clock, and it always throws me for a loop when that clock gets stopped, whatever the reason may be. Last week's vacation on Sanibel Island was part of a carefully wrought plan--seven days of relaxation--and so doing nothing seemed all right to me. Today, by contrast, I ought to be be tearing up and down the snowy streets of Manhattan, slipping and sliding from one appointment to the next. Instead I'm sitting in a hotel room in Sarasota, looking at the sun on the water and feeling vaguely guilty.

Such guilt, I suspect, is one of the curses of modernity: these days precious few of us know know how to turn loose the passing hours and let them go unregretted. Perhaps I'll feel better about their passing later today, and I already know I should regard it as an act of grace. For the moment, though, I can't shake off the nagging suspicion that I'm somehow to blame for their demise.

Posted January 12, 11:51 AM

TT: Two giant steps

Danse Russe, my latest operatic collaboration with Paul Moravec, will be given two staged workshop performances this weekend, the first on Saturday night in Wilmington, Delaware, and the second on Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia, where Center City Opera Theater will be giving the world premiere on April 28. This one-act opera is a backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring, and Paul and I have been busily revising it ever since the first workshop performance in November. These latest performances are open to the public, and assuming that the sky doesn't fall again, stranding me somewhere in Florida, I'll be present at both of them.

For more information, go here.

Posted January 12, 12:00 AM

TT: Snapshot

Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang play "Wild Cat" in King of Jazz:

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

Posted January 12, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"There is nothing, I think, in which the power of art is shown so much as in playing the fiddle. In all other things we can do something at first. Any man will forge a bar of iron, if you give him a hammer; not so well as a smith, but tolerably. A man will saw a piece of wood, and make a box, though a clumsy one; but give him a fiddle and a fiddle-stick, and he can do nothing."

Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson)

Posted January 12, 12:00 AM

January 11, 2011

TT: If you've got to be stranded...

...there are definitely worse places than Sarasota in January. This is the view from our hotel room:

Posted January 11, 5:41 PM

TT: What I do for love (and money)

Mrs. T are packing our bags this morning on Florida's Sanibel Island. I won't soon forget what a blissful time we've had there, but if anything can put our happiness out of my mind, however temporarily, it's my schedule for the next seven days, which is more than a little bit crazy.

Later today we'll drive north to Sarasota to spend a few days catching up with Asolo Rep, whose revival of Bertolt Brecht's Life of Galileo made my Wall Street Journal best-of-2010 list. Unfortunately, there's a catch, which is that I have to drop Mrs. T off in Sarasota this afternoon and fly north to New York so that I can see two plays there on Wednesday, The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Desert Cities. Then I'll fly back down to Sarasota to see Asolo's Twelve Angry Men--and then I'll fly back up to Philadelphia to attend a pair of staged workshop performances on Saturday and Sunday of Danse Russe, my new opera. I'll also be catching a play in Philly, the Arden Theatre revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten. The craziness is over a week from today, when I return to Florida and begin my latest residency at Rollins College's Winter Park Institute. Whew!

In case you're wondering, I've been watching the weather, and it looks like I'm going to get into New York tonight before the snow starts in earnest. My hope is that by the time I'm supposed to leave, the runways will be clear and I can fly back down to Florida without incident. We'll see--and so will you. In the meantime, don't expect to hear much of anything from me other than travel updates! This is, to put it mildly, one of those weeks....

P.S. The blizzard caught me--my flight to New York has already been canceled. We'll see how the rest of the week turns out!

Posted January 11, 8:32 AM

TT: Almanac

"Bureaucracy forms a truly supranational freemasonry, with the same quirks, the same incalculable workings of the mind, and the same lack of logic."

Joseph Szigeti, With Strings Attached: Reminiscences and Reflections

Posted January 11, 12:00 AM

January 10, 2011

TT: Landmark

I've spent the past week on Florida's Sanibel Island working on Black Beauty: A Life of Duke Ellington. Yesterday morning I finished writing the second chapter, in which I describe the first eighteen years of Ellington's life. Here are the last two paragraphs. I hope you like them!

* * *

The patterns of Duke Ellington's life and personality were now firmly set, and they looked quite a bit like the complicated shape of life on U Street, the neighborhood in Washington, D.C., where he grew up. The hours he had spent rubbing shoulders with ragtime pianists, Pullman porters, petty thieves, and card sharps in Frank Holliday's poolroom had introduced him to a way of living far removed from the middle-class world into which he had been born. To the end of his life he recalled with undiminished relish the lessons he learned there: "Interns used to come in, who could cure colds. And handwriting experts who would enjoy copying somebody's signature on a check, go out and cash it, and bring back the money to show the cats in the poolroom what artists they were. They didn't need the money. They did it for the kicks. There were also a couple of pickpockets around, so smooth that when they went to New York they were not allowed in the subway. At heart, they were all great artists."

Yet Ellington would never turn his back on the other lessons in life that he had learned from J.E., Daisy, and their genteel neighbors. He regarded them as equally valid, just as he learned as much from listening to "the schooled musicians who had been to the conservatory" as he did from the untrained pianists whose homemade methods he emulated: "Everybody seemed to get something out of the other's playing--the ear cats loved what the schooled guys did, and the schooled guys, with fascination, would try what the ear cats were doing." It did not occur to him that his own elegant carriage was inconsistent with his racial identity, any more than that the authenticity of his music might somehow be compromised by its urbanity. That, he knew, bespoke a constrictingly narrow notion of "blackness." Throughout his life he delighted in pointing out that Harlem "has always had more churches than cabarets," and the composer of Black, Brown and Beige needed no one to remind him that black people came in all shades. "Once I asked him what he considered a typical Negro piece among his compositions," a white friend recalled. "He paused a moment before he came up with 'In a Sentimental Mood.' I protested a bit and said I thought that was a very sophisticated white kind of song and people were usually surprised when they learned it was by him. 'Ah,' he said, 'that's because you don't know what it's like to be a Negro.'"

Never did he harbor the slightest doubt of his own knowledge of what it was like to be a Negro, or his ability to turn that knowledge into music that gave voice to his people's anguish--and aspiration.

Posted January 10, 12:00 AM

TT: Just because

Miles Davis and the Gil Evans Orchestra play Dave Brubeck's "The Duke":

Posted January 10, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Warming up before a concert is like doing breathing exercises before dying."

Gregor Piatigorsky (quoted in Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette, My Nine Lives: A Memoir of Many Careers in Music)

Posted January 10, 12:00 AM

January 7, 2011

TT: Tune in tomorrow

I'll be making my debut tomorrow night on CUNY-TV's Theater Talk, accompanied by fellow drama critics John Simon and Jacques le Sourd. We'll be talking with Michael Riedel of the New York Post about the best and worst Broadway shows of 2010. Bombs will be thrown!

For more information, or to view the episode on line, go here.

Posted January 07, 12:00 AM

TT: Just because

Hadda Brooks sings "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" in Nicholas Ray's "In a Lonely Place":

Posted January 07, 12:00 AM

TT: The kids are all wrong

I spent the first night of 2011 seeing a very bad off-Broadway revival of Dracula for The Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt from today's review.

* * *

How is it that vampires and zombies (not to mention serial killers, their postmodern cousins) are so hot nowadays? No doubt our undiminished interest in the blood-suckers and flesh-eaters among us says something profound, disturbing and transgressive about American culture, but I'm damned if I know what it is, perhaps because I hopped off that particular train when "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" closed up shop. I have yet to see a single installment of "Twilight," "True Blood" or "The Vampire Diaries," nor do I plan to do so anytime soon. I did, however, snag a ticket to the new Off-Broadway "Dracula," partly because the ever-excellent George Hearn is playing Van Helsing, Buffy's spiritual great-grandfather, and partly because Thora Birch, who was so fine in "Ghost World" and "American Beauty," was supposed to play Lucy Seward, the chief recipient of the sanguinary favors of the Transylvanian count (Michel Altieri).

Ms. Birch, however, got canned when the show was in rehearsal and has since been replaced by Emily Bridges, her understudy. Now that I've seen the play she left behind, I incline to think that she got lucky, for this "Dracula" is a limply staged, unconvincingly acted mess....

You won't have any trouble figuring out the high concept of this production: Except for Mr. Hearn and Timothy Jerome, who plays Lucy's father, everyone in the case is very young and mostly very pretty. The goal, I assume, is to appeal to the teen-and-tween set, but the producers have neglected to hire any familiar faces and favored looks over experience. As a result, some of the performances are ludicrously amateurish. I won't name any names--Paul Alexander, the show's near-unknown, painfully ungifted director, may be the guilty party here--but I heard the chilling sound of unintended laughter at several points in the second act....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

A scene from the 1979 film version of Dracula, starring Frank Langella:

Posted January 07, 12:00 AM

TT: Head of the Nice Guys Club

Like everybody else with a more than passing interest in musical comedy, I read Stephen Sondheim's Finishing the Hat with the closest attention. I'm surprised that none of the book's many reviewers, so far as I can tell, seems to have mentioned the obvious fact (obvious to me, anyway) that it was inspired by Ira Gershwin's Lyrics on Several Occasions.

In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I compare the two books. The differences between them are exceedingly revealing! Here's an excerpt.

* * *

One of the reasons why "Finishing the Hat," Stephen Sondheim's annotated volume of his song lyrics, has attracted so much attention is because he takes potshots at certain of his colleagues, most notably Noël Coward and Lorenz Hart, the second of whom he calls "the laziest of the pre-eminent lyricists." Some people have been upset by his candor, but I confess to relishing it--though not because I necessarily agree with anything he has to say about the parties in question. Most creative artists of Mr. Sondheim's stature, after all, have strong opinions about their peers, and such opinions, whether positive or negative, don't have to be right to be interesting. To learn that Renoir believed Degas to be the only great sculptor since the 13th century, or that Benjamin Britten loathed the music of Beethoven and Brahms, is to learn something important about Renoir and Britten.

It may be, of course, that one of the things we learn from "Finishing the Hat" is that Mr. Sondheim isn't a very nice person. I wouldn't know--I've never met him--but I doubt that it matters much in the long run whether he's nice or not. Still, I wouldn't go nearly so far as Bernard Herrmann, who wrote the music for such classic films as "Citizen Kane" and "Psycho" and who once told an astonished interviewer that he had no use whatsoever for nice guys....

To which I need only respond with two words: Ira Gershwin.

George Gershwin's older brother and longtime collaborator was known on Broadway and in Hollywood for being an unusually agreeable person. In "No Minor Chords," his 1991 memoir, André Previn recalled that Gershwin was "so unfailingly kind-hearted and soft-spoken that his cronies dubbed him President of the Nice Guys Club." He was also one of the very best lyricists in the business, and in 1959 he published his own annotated volume of his lyrics called "Lyrics on Several Occasions."...

As the structure of "Finishing the Hat" suggests, Mr. Sondheim is closely familiar with "Lyrics on Several Occasions," so much so that he uses the book as a stick with which to beat its author: "Gershwin talks about his lyrics with an ease I miss in most of the examples." I know what Mr. Sondheim means--up to a point....

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Posted January 07, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Some people take, some people get took. And they know they're getting took and there's nothing they can do about it."

Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, screenplay for The Apartment

Posted January 07, 12:00 AM

January 6, 2011

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:
• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)
• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, extended through Mar. 27, reviewed here)
• 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)
• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 13, transfers to Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, closes Jan. 16, original Broadway production reviewed here)

GOING ON HIATUS ON BROADWAY:
• The Merchant of Venice * (Shakespeare, PG-13, adult subject matter, on hiatus Jan. 9-31, then open through Feb. 20, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• A Free Man of Color (epic comedy, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

Posted January 06, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"Your characteristics can explain your actions, but if there's a persuasive explanation for the source of your characteristics, I've never heard it."

David R. Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution

Posted January 06, 12:00 AM

January 5, 2011

TT: The land of lost content

Mrs. T and I took a sunset cruise off Sanibel Island today. This is one of the things we saw:

Posted January 05, 8:47 PM

TT: Snapshot

Ralph Richardson appears as the mystery guest on What's My Line? in 1963:

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

Posted January 05, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"The only thing worse than being gutless is feeling guilty about it."

David R. Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution

Posted January 05, 12:00 AM

January 4, 2011

TT: Almanac

"On some days, it is hard to believe that mind readers are confidence men."

David R. Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution

Posted January 04, 12:00 AM

January 3, 2011

TT: It doesn't get much nicer than this

I took this picture a little while ago, just a few steps away from our front porch on Sanibel Island:

Posted January 03, 5:50 PM

TT: Escape

Today Mrs. T and I fly south from chilly Connecticut to sunny Florida, where we'll be taking up temporary residence on Florida's Sanibel Island and spending a week in an unpretentious little cottage located a few steps away from the Gulf of Mexico.

In theory, we're coming to Sanibel Island so that I can get some work done. We're seeing a show at Florida Rep in Fort Myers on Friday, and I also intend to finish writing the second chapter of my Duke Ellington biography. The fact of the matter, though, is that both of us are desperately in need of a holiday--I use the adverb advisedly--and so have decided to hole up for a week at Mitchell's Sand Castles, which is, practically speaking, about as far away from the ever-encroaching world as we can get.

Life resumes next Tuesday when we drive from Sanibel to Sarasota, from which I'll be flying up to New York to see The Importance of Being Earnest on Broadway, then back down to Sarasota to see Asolo Rep's revival of Twelve Angry Men. After that...well, it gets hectic.

For the moment, though, I'm going to do my very best to kick back, relax, and watch the sun set over the water every evening. Regular readers of this blog know that relaxation doesn't come naturally to me anymore--I've spent far too much of the last decade of my life charging from show to show and deadline to deadline--but if there's a place where I can turn loose all of my usual preoccupations, this is undoubtedly it.

I've preposted my usual blog entries for the rest of the week, and I've also rolled over the Top Five and "Out of the Past" modules of the right-hand column to keep you busy. Otherwise, you won't be hearing from me again until we get to Sarasota. In the meantime, stay warm.

Posted January 03, 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. Don't take my word for it, though—ask Howard Sherman of the American Theatre Wing, who recently blogged as follows:

To get a regional show to Broadway, one must find a producer who wants to champion the show and take it on as a major commitment. Unfortunately, producers aren't flying to theatres around the country constantly checking out every possible new play and revival for their next Broadway success. And unless you're in a major city and you have a preponderance of positive reviews by long established critics (whose numbers are in decline), your own entreaties aren't likely to cause anyone to jump on a plane unless you already have a relationship with them.

As for "national press" discovering your work and bringing it to the attention of New York bound producers, your only real option is luring The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout to see your show (and Terry regularly publishes his guidelines for what he's likely to be interested in). While The New York Times ventures out of town on occasion (though most frequently to the Berkshires, Chicago or London, it seems), it's rare even for the country's largest newspaper, USA Today, to see work outside of New York; attention from television and radio is even rarer.

So what if 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 just starting to work on my reviewing calendar for the summer of 2011. Here, then, is 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:

• Get your 2011 summer schedule to me as soon as possible. That means, if possible, prior to the public announcement. I'll keep it to myself. My travel plans for the coming summer season are usually pretty firm by the end of February, so don't dally.

• 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 two shows each summer—and one of them has to be serious. I won't put you on my drop-dead list for milking the occasional cash cow, but if The 39 Steps is your idea of a daring new play, 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 Alaska 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 Entertainer, Hotel Paradiso, The Iceman Cometh, Loot, Rhinoceros, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Visit (either the play or the musical), or anything by Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, Horton Foote, William Inge, or Terence Rattigan, 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 last January, for example, 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 Elling are well below zero. (Suggestion: if you're not already reading my Journal column, you might want 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, Endgame, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Glass Menagerie, Into the Woods, The Little Foxes, 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 Show Boat, your best bet is to point out that TheaterSlobbovia also happens to be doing The Real Thing that same weekend. Otherwise, I'll probably go to San Diego 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 January 03, 12:00 AM

TT: Almanac

"I'm not a good enough writer to know how to say this without sounding corny, but the day I decided to propose was the day I realized I would never run out of things to talk to her about and I would never get tired of looking at her."

David R. Dow, The Autobiography of an Execution

Posted January 03, 12:00 AM

January 1, 2011

THE CASE FOR CAB CALLOWAY

Posted January 01, 12:26 AM