Archives for May 2006

Douglas McLennan is the resident genius behind ArtsJournal. In addition to providing an indispensable daily digest of English-language news stories and commentaries on the arts, ArtsJournal also hosts “About Last Night” and a dozen other artblogs (all of which you can visit by scrolling down to the bottom module of the right-hand column). Now Doug has put together a special group-discussion blog called “Critical Edge: Critics in a Critical Age.”

Here, in his words, is what “Critical Edge” is all about:

Everyone’s a critic. And now that anyone has access to an audience through the internet, our computers have become a cacophony of people with opinions. Clearly not all opinions are equal. Traditionally, the influence of an opinion was closely tied to the venue in which it was published–how widely it was disseminated or how prestigious the publication was thought to be. With a growing flood of opinions available to all, some suggest that the influence of the traditional critic is waning, that the opinions of the many will drown out the power of the few. But in a time when access to information and entertainment and art seems to be growing exponentially, more than ever we need ways to to sort through the mass and get at the “good” stuff. The question is how? Where is the critical authority to come from? Some suggest that new social networking software that ranks community preferences and elevates some opinions over others will supplant the formerly powerful traditional critics. So what is to be the new critical currency? Stripped of traditional legitimacies, how will the most interesting critical voices be heard and have influence?

Doug has put together a wide-ranging list of participants, many of whose names will be familiar to you:

– Misha Berson, theatre critic, Seattle Times

– Larry Blumenfeld, jazz critic, The Wall Street Journal

– Caryn Brooks, writer

– Jeanne Carstensen, managing editor, Salon.com

– Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor, Rolling Stone

– Enrique Fernandez, critic, Miami Herald

– Tyler Green, art critic, Modern Art Notes

– Joseph Horowitz, author/orchestra consultant

– Chris Lavin, arts editor, San Diego Union Tribune

– Ruth Lopez, art and design editor, Time Out Chicago

– Maud Newton, book critic, MaudNewton.com

– Claude Peck, fine arts editor, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

– Inga Saffron, architecture critic, Philadelphia Inquirer

– Andras Szanto, former director, National Arts Journalism Program

– Jerome Weeks, book critic, Dallas Morning News

I’m participating, too.

“Critical Edge” is now open for business and will be up and running through Wednesday. To read our collective discussion of the prospects for criticism in the age of the Web, go here and start scrolling.

“I believe the great human change into a new world should be expressed, but I also believe that when the Soviet arbiters say that Hamlet is foolish, they are talking nonsense, and destructive nonsense at that. And I hope the human race will never be purged of those types, who, like Shakespeare, are victims all their mature life of the most dreadful form of morbid jealousy, or of unconscious homosexuals like Hopkins and Housman, or of perfectly batty people, who drive themselves into extreme fits over the fact that the landlady looked at them sideways, like Beethoven. God keep me from a world, even without poverty and human degradation, in which there were no delicate sensibilities that could produce a remark like Margaret, are you grieving; or An expense of spirit in a waste of shame; that could not feel horror over mutability and an excess of joy over the facts of perfectly physical passion, or pity for the maladjusted or horror over the senseless cruel.”

Louise Bogan, letter to Rolfe Humphries, July 6, 1935

ArtsJournal’s group blog on the future of criticism in the age of new media (about which more here) has already come to a rolling boil. It’s even attracting the attention of other bloggers. What’s more, the comments are as interesting as the postings.

Go here to jump in.

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.

Courtesy of Our Girl in Chicago, here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. 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. (Once again, there are no asterisks this week!)

BROADWAY:
– Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)
– Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)
– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here)
– The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here)
– Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, 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 Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
– I Love You Because (musical, R, sexual content, reviewed here)
– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)
– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:
– Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, extended through June 25)
– Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes June 4)
– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)