Archives for October 22, 2004

“While I still stood on the boat deck we ran into another belt of mist. The engines changed to slow and then to dead slow, and the fog-horn began dolefully sounding the half-minutes.

“In twenty minutes we were clear again, and running under the stars at full speed.

“I woke up several times in the night to hear the horn again sounding through the wet night air. It was a very dismal sound, premonitory, perhaps, of coming trouble, for Fortune is the least capricious of deities, and arranges things on the just and rigid system that no one shall be very happy for very long.”

Evelyn Waugh, Labels: A Mediterranean Journal

I’m back from Minnesota, and I even made it home in time to see Mary Foster Conklin’s show. I have tales to tell, but I’m worn out from parachuting into the Twin Cities, giving two speeches, then turning right around and coming back, and I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night. (Besides, I have to go to the ballet tonight!)

If you’ll give me a chance to unpack my bag, open my mail, regroup, and take an extended nap, I’ll be back later this afternoon with additional postings, and still more to come on Monday.

Thanks. See you soon.

Time once again for my Wall Street Journal drama column. Today I reviewed Brooklyn,
a new Broadway musical, and Trying, a new off-Broadway play.

Brooklyn was horrible:

Broadway has a new musical with that rarity of rarities, an original score. That’s cause for rejoicing, right? Er…no. The fact that its songs were custom-written by Mark Schoenfeld and Barri McPherson is the only “original” thing about “Brooklyn: The Musical,” which opened last night at the Plymouth Theatre. Otherwise, it’s 100% recycled–from pure garbage.

“Brooklyn” is one of those shows that is better summarized than reviewed. Ray Klausen’s set, a graffiti-encrusted street scene, contrives to be both rundown and adorably picturesque. The cast consists of five golden-voiced street singers similarly clad in ever-so-stylish rags and tatters. The leader of the pack (Cleavant Derricks) invites passers-by to pause for a moment and listen to the “sidewalk fairy tale” of Brooklyn (Eden Espinosa), a budding young pop singer from Paris who comes to America to search for her long-lost father (Kevin Anderson), a songwriter turned Vietnam vet turned smack-shooting vagrant. All she knows of him is an unfinished lullaby he wrote for his baby daughter, whose mother (Karen Olivo) taught it to her before committing suicide. This touching story sends her skyrocketing to the top of the charts, from which she dislodges Paradice (Ramona Keller), a you-go-girl ghetto diva who thereupon challenges Brooklyn to a winner-take-all singoff at Madison Square Garden, where–

Is that the sound of gagging I hear? Well, at least let me share with you some of “Brooklyn”‘s lyrics, set to the kind of music I think of as Disney Soul: “There’s a story behind these empty eyes/That no one wants to know…I used to sing at Christmas/Now Christmas makes me cry…Now once upon a time/Has never felt more right…Life is like a shooting star/And here is where it’s falling.” The book is of identical quality: “Oh, no, no, don’tchu worry ’bout me none, noooo, I’m just like these here weeds, sprouting right up through this concrete. Yeah, that’s me alright…strong as a city weed.” (That comes straight from the script, in case you were wondering.)

In short, we’re talking “Rent” for the pre-school set, a molasses-coated piece of boob bait whose presence on Broadway, however temporary, is proof that musical-comedy standards never seem to hit rock-bottom–they just sink lower and lower….

(By the way, Ben Brantley of the New York Times is totally on the same page with me about Brooklyn. We even used a couple of closely similar metaphors! Take a look–it’s interesting to contrast our approaches.)

Trying wasn’t horrible, just trite, and was largely redeemed by a remarkable performance:

If you prefer your clich

I’m about to leave the office to spruce myself up to see Luciana Souza and Regina Carter perform at Symphony Center tonight. As if that weren’t enough, I’ll be heading out to the suburbs Sunday for one of Paul Taylor’s too infrequent Chicago stopovers. What can I say? Sometimes I lead the life of Terry. Full reports on Monday.

Here’s something you probably don’t know: Evelyn Waugh revised several of his novels, some quite extensively, when preparing the uniform edition of his books that was published in England in the early Sixties. Don’t be embarrassed–many of Waugh’s most ardent American fans are unaware of these revisions. The reason for their ignorance is that the editions of Waugh’s novels that have circulated most widely in this country, the Little, Brown trade paperbacks, are straight reprints of the first American editions.

I mention this because I only just discovered that the Everyman’s Library edition of
Brideshead Revisited, the novel Waugh edited most ruthlessly, not only reprints the revised version but includes an introductory essay by Frank Kermode in which Waugh’s changes are discussed at length and in detail.

Also included is the preface in which Waugh explained why he trimmed Brideshead:

In December 1943 I had the good fortune when parachuting to incur a minor injury which afforded me a rest from military service. This was extended by a sympathetic commanding officer, who let me remain unemployed until June 1944 when the book was finished. I wrote with a zest that was quite strange to me and also with impatience to get back to the war. It was a bleak period of present privation and threatening disaster–the period of soya beans and Basic English–and in consequence the book is infused with a kind of gluttony, for food and wine, for the splendours of the recent past, and for rhetorical and ornamental language, which now with a full stomach I find distasteful. I have modified the grosser passages but have not obliterated them because they are an essential part of the book….

I knew about these changes but had never actually seen the revised version of Brideshead, so I picked up a copy of the Everyman’s Library edition and read it day before yesterday en route to Minnesota. As I read, I found myself agreeing with Kermode: “On the whole most readers, I think, would agree that the purgation of the first version–not over-rigorous, for reasons Waugh suggests in his Preface–makes for improvement: the final version of the novel is preferable.” My guess is that those who dislike the book intensely (as many readers do) won’t find the revised version all that much more persuasive, but swing voters might well be nudged into the pro-Brideshead column by Waugh’s shrewd pruning, while admirers will find it fascinating to see what he chose to cut.

On the other hand, I do admit to regretting the loss of certain delightfully ornate touches, especially in Waugh’s description of Anthony Blanche, the character based on Harold Acton. Here is Blanche in the original version of Brideshead:

This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the “aesthete” par excellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville, a young man who seemed to me, then, fresh from the sombre company of the College Essay Society, ageless as a lizard, as foreign as a Martian. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he moved with his own peculiar stateliness, as though he had not fully accustomed himself to coat and trousers and was more at his ease in heavy, embroidered robes; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously, like the fine piece of cookery he was.

And here he is in the revised version:

This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the “aesthete” par excellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he pranced along with his high peacock tread; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously.

I do think the second version is an improvement, but I miss those last eight words! It’s as though Henry James had started with the New York Edition of The Portrait of a Lady, then edited it down to the original version. Remember his celebrated description of Caspar Goodwood’s kiss? In the original, it was just one crisp sentence: “His kiss was like a flash of lightning; when it was dark again she was free.” By the time of the New York Edition, it had mushroomed into a full paragraph:

His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned she was free.

I’d say James got it right the second time, wouldn’t you? Sometimes less is just…less. But not when it comes to the revised version of Brideshead Revisited, which I commend to your attention not only as a generally superior literary experience but also as a little-known chapter in the history of aesthetic second thoughts.

– A music critic writes:

I was wondering if you could recommend a single Balanchine DVD to this scandalously ill-informed balletomoron.

You have two choices:

(1) Balanchine, on Kultur, is a first-rate, smartly written PBS documentary from the Eighties containing excerpts, some of them extended, from most of the major Balanchine ballets. Watching it on TV was what inspired me to go see New York City Ballet for the very first time.

(2) Nonesuch has just put out two DVDs called Choreography by Balanchine containing performances by New York City Ballet, overseen in the studio by Balanchine himself. Start with the one that contains The Four Temperaments and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. These performances, originally shown on PBS’s Dance in America in the Seventies, introduced untold numbers of viewers to Balanchine. The visceral impact of theatrical dance can only be suggested on the small screen, but the Choreography by Balanchine telecasts were extremely well-directed and give a surprisingly good sense of what the ballets look like on stage. (The Balanchine documentary on Kultur contains snippets from most of these performances.)

Ideally, you should watch both DVDs, but my guess is that either one will at least pique your interest.

– A reader writes:

In thinking about your new book on George Balanchine, and your coverage of dance generally: could you display on the Web site, or provide a link to, a dance score? I’m sure most people have seen a music score, and know what music looks like written down. But I think few of us, me included, know what choreography looks like written down (at least I assume it’s written down!). What does a dance look like on paper? I’m sure many of us would like to see what this looks like.

Gladly. To see an introductory example of dance notation, go to the Dance Notation Bureau’s Web site, then click on the “Notation Basics” button in the left-hand column. You’ll see a brief explanation of Labanotation, the most widely used form of dance notation. You can find out more about dance notation by exploring the rest of the site.

I should add, however, that choreographers themselves rarely if ever use dance notation. Most of them don’t even know how to read Labanotation, much less write it. Instead, they demonstrate the successive moves of a dance to the dancers in the studio, and the finished product is documented by videotaping a complete performance. Notation comes later, if at all. Similarly, older dances are usually revived not by way of notated scores but through a show-and-tell process, with archival videotape available as a backup in case of memory lapses. This is why so many ballets of the past are now “lost”: they were neither videotaped nor notated, and once they ceased to be performed on a regular basis, the steps were gradually forgotten.

Unlikely as it may sound, certain dancers are capable of carrying all the steps of a ballet in their heads, Fahrenheit 451-style, and teaching them to the members of a company that has never before performed it. Sometimes they may remember a dance better than the choreographer himself: Balanchine, for example, forgot the steps to Le Tombeau de Couperin after he made it, and it was only because Rosemary Dunleavy remembered them that the ballet was later revived and documented for posterity. (In return for this feat, Balanchine left Dunleavy the rights to Tombeau in his will.)

From a jazz singer:

I am on the final pages…and in love with Balanchine…and though I have seen so little of his work, I know so much more.

From a modern-dance choreographer:

Your masterful way of clarifying the slippery matter of imagery in dances–ones with or without a plot–is particularly impressive, and learning more about Mr. B’s life was fascinating.

From Library Journal:

A volume as sleek and elegant as the dancers in a Balanchine ballet. Intended as an introduction rather than a full-scale biography, this book goes right to the essence of the Balanchine aesthetic, offering artful observations and insightful commentaries on several of the master’s pivotal works…

All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, now available in bookstores and on line.