Archives for May 12, 2006

The Broadway season is now officially over, and I’m sweeping up the debris in my Wall Street Journal drama column. This week I lower the boom on Tarzan and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial:

You guessed it: “Tarzan,” the new Disney musical, is chockful of actors who swing around the theater on artificial vines. Talk about easy calls! But, then, there aren’t many surprises in this leaden stage version of the 1999 cartoon version of the 1912 novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs about a shipwrecked foundling raised by apes. The only surprising thing about “Tarzan,” in fact, is that so much of it is so tiresome….

Culprit No. 1 is Phil Collins, whose score, some of which is new and some recycled from the movie, is a plodding bore, monotonously paced and unenlightened by the faintest glimmer of wit….

Culprit No. 2 is David Henry Hwang, the author of “M. Butterfly” and a notorious purveyor of PC. His book is a seemingly unending string of ham-handed Disney-style public-service announcements for tolerance, lightly sprinkled with flat punch lines. Jane: “Tarzan’s not a gorilla, he’s a human being. Honestly, that’s not even his real family.” Daddy: “Do you know of any families that aren’t real, my dear?” I bet you didn’t know “Tarzan” was a parable about non-traditional families, did you?…

Herman Wouk’s 1953 stage adaptation of the last part of his blockbuster World War II novel is a nuts-and-bolts courtroom drama that all but plays itself–if you let it. Jerry Zaks, familiar on Broadway for his stagings of such musicals as “Little Shop of Horrors” and last year’s short-lived revival of “La Cage aux Folles,” evidently thinks otherwise, for he has directed the first act of this thoroughly grim play as if it were an episode of “Hogan’s Heroes,” pumping up the occasional moments of comic relief and encouraging the cast to resort to noisy caricature….

No link. Your alternatives remain unchanged: (1) Buy a copy of today’s Journal. (2) Subscribe to the Online Journal by going here, which will give you immediate access to the full text of my review and lots of other good stuff.

In my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I take a look at a freshly coined name for the “new eclecticism” of such contemporary musicians of polystylistic inclination as the Bad Plus, Theo Bleckmann, Julia Dollison, Adam Guettel, Osvaldo Golijov, Michael John LaChiusa, Nickel Creek, Luciana Souza, and Maria Schneider.

Might the phrase “shuffle play” be taking on broader cultural significance? To find out–maybe–pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal, where you’ll find my column in the “Pursuits” section.

“To an extent the theater will always be a magnet for hobbyists, people who are drawn like trainspotters or matchbox fans to compare different performances of Hamlet. They form, if you like, a core audience, who survive over the years. Their overriding interest is in the maintenance and improvement of their collections, and so they will direct their attention not so much at what is said, as to the skills which are being used to say it.”

David Hare, Obedience, Struggle and Revolt

If you’ve been wondering why “About Last Night” looked a little funny today, the reason is that our server went kaplooie on Thursday night. We weren’t able to publish any of our regular Friday postings for the same reason. They’re up now, so if you missed them, scroll down and you’ll find them in the usual place.