Archives for July 15, 2005

My drama column in today’s Wall Street Journal is a tripleheader. First is Primo, Sir Anthony Sher’s one-man stage version of Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir:

“Primo” is a very great piece of theater, but the tale, not the teller, is what matters most, and it is to their credit that Sir Anthony and Richard Wilson, his director, have opted for stark simplicity in presenting “If This Is a Man” (originally published in the U.S. as “Survival in Auschwitz”). The set, designed by Hildegard Bechtler, consists of a few concrete walls, a shovelful of gravel and a single wooden chair. Into this cold, bare space walks the bespectacled Sir Anthony, wearing an old cardigan. “It was my good fortune,” he says matter-of-factly, “to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944…I was 24, with little wisdom, no experience, and a tendency–encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me by the racial laws–to live in an unrealistic world of my own.” Then, without further ado, he flings you into the bowels of hell….

Next up, the Mint Theater’s wonderful revival of The Skin Game:

Despite the TV versions of “The Forsyte Saga,” John Galsworthy is no longer widely remembered in this country as a novelist, much less a playwright, though he used to be world-famous in both capacities (he actually won the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature). None of his 27 plays has been seen on Broadway since 1931. Now the Mint Theater Company, a tiny off-Broadway troupe with a justly admired knack for exhuming what it calls “buried theatrical treasures,” has revived “The Skin Game,” a 1920 melodrama about the limits of upward mobility in England, and it proves to be a rattling good show indeed….

Lastly, Shakespeare in the Park:

After a dismaying string of fair-to-middling Shakespeare in the Park offerings, the Public Theater has brought a winner to its outdoor home, Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. Mark Lamos’s production of “As You Like It” is a summery romp played out on a giant map of the cosmos, with the trees of the park (and Belvedere Castle just beyond) supplying a lovely backdrop for romantic hijinks in the Forest of Arden….

My column for this week is one of the stories in Friday’s Journal that’s being made available on line in its entirety as part of the Journal‘s “Today’s Free Features” Web page. To read the whole thing, of which there’s far more, go here. If you’re a blogger, link away!

As usual, you can also read the column on paper by shelling out a dollar for today’s Journal or (better yet) going here to subscribe to the Online Journal, Web-based journalism’s best deal ever.

UPDATE: The original London production of Primo was telecast and will be released on DVD in the U.S. next month by Kultur. To place an advance order, go here.

My drama column in today’s Wall Street Journal is a tripleheader. First is Primo, Sir Anthony Sher’s one-man stage version of Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir:

“Primo” is a very great piece of theater, but the tale, not the teller, is what matters most, and it is to their credit that Sir Anthony and Richard Wilson, his director, have opted for stark simplicity in presenting “If This Is a Man” (originally published in the U.S. as “Survival in Auschwitz”). The set, designed by Hildegard Bechtler, consists of a few concrete walls, a shovelful of gravel and a single wooden chair. Into this cold, bare space walks the bespectacled Sir Anthony, wearing an old cardigan. “It was my good fortune,” he says matter-of-factly, “to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944…I was 24, with little wisdom, no experience, and a tendency–encouraged by the life of segregation forced on me by the racial laws–to live in an unrealistic world of my own.” Then, without further ado, he flings you into the bowels of hell….

Next up, the Mint Theater’s wonderful revival of The Skin Game:

Despite the TV versions of “The Forsyte Saga,” John Galsworthy is no longer widely remembered in this country as a novelist, much less a playwright, though he used to be world-famous in both capacities (he actually won the 1932 Nobel Prize for literature). None of his 27 plays has been seen on Broadway since 1931. Now the Mint Theater Company, a tiny off-Broadway troupe with a justly admired knack for exhuming what it calls “buried theatrical treasures,” has revived “The Skin Game,” a 1920 melodrama about the limits of upward mobility in England, and it proves to be a rattling good show indeed….

Lastly, Shakespeare in the Park:

After a dismaying string of fair-to-middling Shakespeare in the Park offerings, the Public Theater has brought a winner to its outdoor home, Central Park’s Delacorte Theater. Mark Lamos’s production of “As You Like It” is a summery romp played out on a giant map of the cosmos, with the trees of the park (and Belvedere Castle just beyond) supplying a lovely backdrop for romantic hijinks in the Forest of Arden….

My column for this week is one of the stories in Friday’s Journal that’s being made available on line in its entirety as part of the Journal‘s “Today’s Free Features” Web page. To read the whole thing, of which there’s far more, go here. If you’re a blogger, link away!

As usual, you can also read the column on paper by shelling out a dollar for today’s Journal or (better yet) going here to subscribe to the Online Journal, Web-based journalism’s best deal ever.

UPDATE: The original London production of Primo was telecast and will be released on DVD in the U.S. next month by Kultur. To place an advance order, go here.

Bill Kirchner, editor of The Oxford Companion to Jazz, writes:

In the fall of 2000, The Oxford Companion to Jazz
was published–864 pages long, with 60 essays by 59 distinguished musicians,
scholars, and critics. In 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association voted it “Best
Jazz Book” of the year. And it received over 50 reviews worldwide, about 90
percent of them positive. My favorite “review,” though, came from composer-arranger Johnny Mandel,
who remarked: “Putting this book together must have been like being contractor
for the Ellington band.”

I’m pleased to announce that this month, the Companion has just become
available in a new paperback edition, complete with a number of small additions
and corrections. It can be purchased in bookstores internationally as well as from a variety of Internet outlets. At, I might add, an even more reasonable price than previously: $29.95 U.S. (retail).

If you haven’t yet checked out this book (which a number of schools have used as a textbook), I hope that the following list of essays and contributors will serve as encouragement.

– “African Roots of Jazz”–Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.

– “European Roots of Jazz”–William H. Youngren

– “Ragtime Then and Now”–Max Morath

– “The Early Origins of Jazz”–Jeff Taylor

– “New York Roots: Black Broadway, James Reese Europe, Early Pianists”–Thomas L. Riis

– “The Blues in Jazz”–Bob Porter

– “Bessie Smith”–Chris Albertson

– “King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet: M

Bill Kirchner, editor of The Oxford Companion to Jazz, writes:

In the fall of 2000, The Oxford Companion to Jazz
was published–864 pages long, with 60 essays by 59 distinguished musicians,
scholars, and critics. In 2001, the Jazz Journalists Association voted it “Best
Jazz Book” of the year. And it received over 50 reviews worldwide, about 90
percent of them positive. My favorite “review,” though, came from composer-arranger Johnny Mandel,
who remarked: “Putting this book together must have been like being contractor
for the Ellington band.”

I’m pleased to announce that this month, the Companion has just become
available in a new paperback edition, complete with a number of small additions
and corrections. It can be purchased in bookstores internationally as well as from a variety of Internet outlets. At, I might add, an even more reasonable price than previously: $29.95 U.S. (retail).

If you haven’t yet checked out this book (which a number of schools have used as a textbook), I hope that the following list of essays and contributors will serve as encouragement.

– “African Roots of Jazz”–Samuel A. Floyd, Jr.

– “European Roots of Jazz”–William H. Youngren

– “Ragtime Then and Now”–Max Morath

– “The Early Origins of Jazz”–Jeff Taylor

– “New York Roots: Black Broadway, James Reese Europe, Early Pianists”–Thomas L. Riis

– “The Blues in Jazz”–Bob Porter

– “Bessie Smith”–Chris Albertson

– “King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet: M

“As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.”

La Rochefoucauld, Moral Maxims and Reflections

“As uncommon a thing as true love is, it is yet easier to find than true friendship.”

La Rochefoucauld, Moral Maxims and Reflections

This is one of those horrible days when nobody in Manhattan is out and about who doesn’t need to be. Alas, I do. Not only am I seeing three performances tonight and tomorrow (Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, Basil Twist’s La bella dormente nel bosco, and another program by Pilobolus), but I have a houseguest arriving on Saturday afternoon and countless errands to run before I hit the road again first thing Sunday morning.

All this notwithstanding, I decided to visit an art gallery today, having learned from Ionarts that Salander-O’Reilly, one of my favorite New York galleries, is featuring several of my favorite painters, among them Milton Avery, Jane Freilicher, Arnold Friedman, Marsden Hartley, Albert Kresch, and John Marin, in its summer inventory show, “Scapes/Landscapes.” I scooped up two dollars’ worth of accumulated nickels, hopped a crosstown bus to 79th and Madison, and there discovered that the summer hours posted on the Salander-O’Reilly Web site are off by an hour. (Fortunately, the show is up through August 26, so I’ll get another crack at it.) I wilted briefly in the sun, then noticed that a branch of my bank was right across the street, thus allowing me to do one of my essential pre-trip errands, which cheered me up no end. I returned to my air-conditioned apartment on the next bus, not much the worse for the wear.

As many of you will recall, my upcoming trip to Missouri is neither for pleasure nor business. My mother is undergoing spinal surgery on Monday, so I’ll be spending the next two weeks in Smalltown, U.S.A., looking after her while she recuperates. Since I’ve got a couple of deadlines hanging over my head, I’m bringing my iBook with me, and I hope to be blogging at least intermittently. (I’ve already freshened the Top Fives in preparation for my departure.) I don’t expect to be back on line until Tuesday at the earliest, though, so I thought I’d wave goodbye now.

If I were going to be posting an almanac entry on Monday, this’d be it:

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

V

This is one of those horrible days when nobody in Manhattan is out and about who doesn’t need to be. Alas, I do. Not only am I seeing three performances tonight and tomorrow (Merce Cunningham’s Ocean, Basil Twist’s La bella dormente nel bosco, and another program by Pilobolus), but I have a houseguest arriving on Saturday afternoon and countless errands to run before I hit the road again first thing Sunday morning.

All this notwithstanding, I decided to visit an art gallery today, having learned from Ionarts that Salander-O’Reilly, one of my favorite New York galleries, is featuring several of my favorite painters, among them Milton Avery, Jane Freilicher, Arnold Friedman, Marsden Hartley, Albert Kresch, and John Marin, in its summer inventory show, “Scapes/Landscapes.” I scooped up two dollars’ worth of accumulated nickels, hopped a crosstown bus to 79th and Madison, and there discovered that the summer hours posted on the Salander-O’Reilly Web site are off by an hour. (Fortunately, the show is up through August 26, so I’ll get another crack at it.) I wilted briefly in the sun, then noticed that a branch of my bank was right across the street, thus allowing me to do one of my essential pre-trip errands, which cheered me up no end. I returned to my air-conditioned apartment on the next bus, not much the worse for the wear.

As many of you will recall, my upcoming trip to Missouri is neither for pleasure nor business. My mother is undergoing spinal surgery on Monday, so I’ll be spending the next two weeks in Smalltown, U.S.A., looking after her while she recuperates. Since I’ve got a couple of deadlines hanging over my head, I’m bringing my iBook with me, and I hope to be blogging at least intermittently. (I’ve already freshened the Top Fives in preparation for my departure.) I don’t expect to be back on line until Tuesday at the earliest, though, so I thought I’d wave goodbye now.

If I were going to be posting an almanac entry on Monday, this’d be it:

“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

V