Archives for November 24, 2005

– “There are very few men and women, I suspect, who cooked and marketed their way through the past war without losing forever some of the nonchalant extravagance of the Twenties. They will feel, until their final days on earth, a kind of culinary caution: butter, no matter how unlimited, is a precious substance not lightly to be wasted; meats, too, and eggs, and all the far-brought spices of the world, take on a new significance, having once been so rare. And that is good, for there can be no more shameful carelessness than with the food we eat for life itself. When we exist without thought or thanksgiving we are not men, but beasts.”

M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf

– “Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.”

Samuel Johnson, Tour to the Hebrides

– “Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.”

Jacques Maritain, Reflections on America

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated each Thursday. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter, strong language, one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Chicago* (musical, R, adult subject matter, sexual content, fairly strong language)

– Dirty Rotten Scoundrels* (musical, R, extremely vulgar, reviewed here)

– Doubt* (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, implicit sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes Mar. 26, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd* (musical, R, adult situations, strong language, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

– The Woman in White* (musical, PG, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Orson’s Shadow (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, very strong language, closes Dec. 31, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:

– Absurd Person Singular (comedy, PG, adult subject matter, closes Dec. 18, reviewed here)

– Bach in Leipzig (comedy, G, too complicated for any but the brightest children to follow, closes Dec. 18, reviewed here)

– Hamlet (drama, PG, adult subject matter, closes Dec. 11, reviewed here)

– See What I Wanna See (musical, R, adult subject matter, explicit sexual situations, strong language, closes Dec. 4, reviewed here)