Archives for September 2005

“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

Today marks the publication of the inaugural issue of the Saturday Wall Street Journal. It also marks my debut as a columnist for the “Pursuits” section of the new Saturday paper. In “Sightings,” to be published every other week in “Pursuits,” I’ll be covering the arts in America. Here’s a taste of my first column:

Remember “View of the World From 9th Avenue,” the 1976 New Yorker cover in which Saul Steinberg depicted New York City as the outsized capital of a squashed-together U.S.? It’s still good for a laugh–but when it comes to the arts in America, Mr. Steinberg’s comically chauvinistic scene bears little resemblance to reality….

I live and work in New York, and I’m happy to be here. Still, I learned long ago that if you want to stay in touch with the best of what’s happening right now, you’ve got to look beyond the city limits–no matter where you live. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Carolina Ballet, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Miami City Ballet, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Washington’s Phillips Collection, the San Francisco Symphony: All rank high on my personal list of America’s top arts organizations, and all are a long, long way from Ninth Avenue….

The Journal has been kind enough to post a free link to Saturday’s “Sightings” column. To read the whole thing, go here.

Today marks the publication of the inaugural issue of the Saturday Wall Street Journal. It also marks my debut as a columnist for the “Pursuits” section of the new Saturday paper. In “Sightings,” to be published every other week in “Pursuits,” I’ll be covering the arts in America. Here’s a taste of my first column:

Remember “View of the World From 9th Avenue,” the 1976 New Yorker cover in which Saul Steinberg depicted New York City as the outsized capital of a squashed-together U.S.? It’s still good for a laugh–but when it comes to the arts in America, Mr. Steinberg’s comically chauvinistic scene bears little resemblance to reality….

I live and work in New York, and I’m happy to be here. Still, I learned long ago that if you want to stay in touch with the best of what’s happening right now, you’ve got to look beyond the city limits–no matter where you live. The Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Carolina Ballet, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Miami City Ballet, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Washington’s Phillips Collection, the San Francisco Symphony: All rank high on my personal list of America’s top arts organizations, and all are a long, long way from Ninth Avenue….

The Journal has been kind enough to post a free link to Saturday’s “Sightings” column. To read the whole thing, go here.

Friday again, and time for another Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. This week I review Jean Cocteau Repertory’s off-Broadway revival of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and a Washington production of Shakespeare’s Othello, both of them enthusiastically:

Lorinda Lisitza, the excellent Pirate Jenny of the Cocteau’s production of “The Threepenny Opera,” is even better this time around as Mother Courage, the brutally cynical camp-follower who means to survive the Thirty Years’ War no matter what it takes, not knowing that she is purchasing her “survival” with pieces of her soul. (It isn’t hard to imagine her sloshing through the waterlogged streets of New Orleans, filling her cart to the brim with looted goods.) Made up to look like the haggard older sister of one of Vermeer’s serious young women, Ms. Lisitza also gets ample opportunity to show off her formidable skills as a cabaret singer, and while Paul Dessau’s settings of Brecht’s lyrics are nondescript, you’d swear they were tuneful when she sings them….

The Shakespeare Theatre Company is currently putting on an “Othello” so fine that I don’t see how it could be bettered, except maybe by bringing it to Broadway, where even more people could see it.

This “Othello” is played as straight as [David] Fuller’s “Mother Courage,” with no overlay of conceptual hoo-hawry to loosen the grip of Shakespeare’s terrible tale of jealousy and envy run amok. Michael Kahn, the company’s artistic director, has put his actors on a dirt-plain set built of unfinished boards, dressed them in period costumes, given them plenty of room to do their stuff and (I suspect) told them not to dawdle….

I also pass on a bit of theatrical news:

William Finn’s “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is having a “parent/teacher night” on Oct. 2 at 7:30. Translation: This performance is for adults only. Jay Reiss plays the vice principal in charge of responding to the question, “Could you use that word in a sentence, please?” Some of the sentences he came up with in rehearsal were, um, child-unfriendly. Mr. Reiss plans to trot them out in public Sunday after next for the first time…

No link, and there’s plenty more where that came from, so buy a copy of today’s Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal.

Friday again, and time for another Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. This week I review Jean Cocteau Repertory’s off-Broadway revival of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and a Washington production of Shakespeare’s Othello, both of them enthusiastically:

Lorinda Lisitza, the excellent Pirate Jenny of the Cocteau’s production of “The Threepenny Opera,” is even better this time around as Mother Courage, the brutally cynical camp-follower who means to survive the Thirty Years’ War no matter what it takes, not knowing that she is purchasing her “survival” with pieces of her soul. (It isn’t hard to imagine her sloshing through the waterlogged streets of New Orleans, filling her cart to the brim with looted goods.) Made up to look like the haggard older sister of one of Vermeer’s serious young women, Ms. Lisitza also gets ample opportunity to show off her formidable skills as a cabaret singer, and while Paul Dessau’s settings of Brecht’s lyrics are nondescript, you’d swear they were tuneful when she sings them….

The Shakespeare Theatre Company is currently putting on an “Othello” so fine that I don’t see how it could be bettered, except maybe by bringing it to Broadway, where even more people could see it.

This “Othello” is played as straight as [David] Fuller’s “Mother Courage,” with no overlay of conceptual hoo-hawry to loosen the grip of Shakespeare’s terrible tale of jealousy and envy run amok. Michael Kahn, the company’s artistic director, has put his actors on a dirt-plain set built of unfinished boards, dressed them in period costumes, given them plenty of room to do their stuff and (I suspect) told them not to dawdle….

I also pass on a bit of theatrical news:

William Finn’s “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is having a “parent/teacher night” on Oct. 2 at 7:30. Translation: This performance is for adults only. Jay Reiss plays the vice principal in charge of responding to the question, “Could you use that word in a sentence, please?” Some of the sentences he came up with in rehearsal were, um, child-unfriendly. Mr. Reiss plans to trot them out in public Sunday after next for the first time…

No link, and there’s plenty more where that came from, so buy a copy of today’s Journal, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal.

“Sightings,” my new biweekly column about the arts in America, kicks off tomorrow morning in the inaugural issue of the Saturday Wall Street Journal, on sale at your local newsstand. Don’t miss it!

“Sightings,” my new biweekly column about the arts in America, kicks off tomorrow morning in the inaugural issue of the Saturday Wall Street Journal, on sale at your local newsstand. Don’t miss it!