Archives for June 2006

Posted for no reason at all, and valid only until I change my mind:

– BEST COMEBACK “Sir, you MAY wonder.”

– BEST MOVIE SCORE Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown

– BEST PAINTING I’VE SEEN THIS YEAR Arnold Friedman, Landscape

– BEST LOUIS ARMSTRONG RECORD I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues (scroll down to listen)

– BEST P.G. WODEHOUSE NOVEL The Mating Season

– BEST EDUCATIONAL FILM Powers of Ten (thank you, dear OGIC, for introducing me to this miniature masterpiece)

– BEST SLOW MOVEMENT Beethoven, Cavatina from Quartet No. 13, Op. 130

– BEST PIECE OF WAR REPORTING Ernie Pyle, The Death of Captain Waskow

– BEST FIRST LINE “The bishop was feeling rather sea-sick.”

– BEST LAST LINE “He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men.”

Jessica Molaskey, with whom I recently shared a microphone, opened last night at the Algonquin. I wasn’t there, but I have vivid and indelible memories of her first Algonquin opening, which I covered
last year in my Washington Post column:

I’ve had an eye on Jessica Molaskey ever since she sang her first cabaret gig, so I knew what it meant when she made her debut in January at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel–and blew the roof off. I’ve seen my share of big-deal Algonquin debuts, including Diana Krall’s very first Oak Room appearance, and I’m here to tell you:

This one was that good.

Molaskey is a Broadway baby (formerly of “Crazy for You” and “Dream”) who, like other musical-comedy artists of her generation, was finding it hard to land decent parts in the dance-driven, rock-flavored shows that now dominate the New York stage. Instead of tearing her hair out, she decided to look for another way to make a living. Molaskey happens to be married to jazz singer-guitarist John Pizzarelli, so she started off sitting in at his New York gigs. Bit by bit she cracked the code of cabaret singing, gradually figuring out how to work a small room. She grew more self-assured with each appearance–and more people started to notice.

At long last, the Algonquin got the message and booked her for a week, backed by her husband on guitar, brother-in-law Martin Pizzarelli on bass, and Larry Goldings, one of Los Angeles’s top session men, on piano. Talk about seizing the day: Molaskey tore into her first set as if she’d been singing cabaret in the cradle. Her singing was warmly inviting, her interpretations subtle, her patter super-sly, her pacing infallible. The first-nighters were wowed by her medley of Cy Coleman’s “Hey, Look Me Over!” and “Big Spender,” which she followed with a string of tried-and-true standards (“Make Believe”) and where-have-I-heard-that-before surprises (“Stepsisters’ Lament”), and by evening’s end it was perfectly obvious that high-end cabaret in Manhattan had found itself a New Face of 2005….

This time around Molaskey will be accompanied by John, Martin, and Larry Fuller on piano (Ray Kennedy’s trio is subbing for the Pizzarelli group on June 22 and 29). The show is called “After Midnight” and features a canny blend of standards (“Glad to Be Unhappy,” “Happy as the Day Is Long”) and new songs by such smart young things as Jason Robert Brown, Ricky Ian Gordon, Adam Guettel, and Michael John LaChiusa.

Alas, I can’t make it. I’m still coughing a bit too loudly to be companionable this week, and I’ll either be out of town or sitting in an aisle seat during the rest of the run. Go and tell me how terrific it was. I won’t mind–much–if you rub it in.

Molaskey will be appearing at the Oak Room through July 1. For more information, go here.

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.

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, extended through Aug. 6)

– Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)

– Faith Healer* (drama, R, adult subject matter, 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:

– 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 NEXT WEEK:

– Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 25)

CLOSING SOON:

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here, closes July 2)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, reviewed here, closes July 2)

“I now know that if you describe things as better as they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you are called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you are called a satirist.”

Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant

I spent all of Tuesday rummaging around in the Louis Armstrong files at the Institute of Jazz Studies in Newark. It was a wonderfully absorbing and profitable day, but it wore me out, and by the time I finally made it back to Manhattan I was too tired to do anything but check my e-mail, take a really hot bath, watch a Lawrence Tierney movie, and call my mother in Smalltown, U.S.A.

Yes, I have tales to tell, and no, I’m not going to tell them until later in the week. On Wednesday I’m returning to the Louis Armstrong Archives to wrap up my primary-source research for the sixth chapter of Hotter Than That: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which I intend to start writing on Monday. I’m not quite over the cold that laid me low last weekend, so I’m headed for bed as soon as I publish this posting. Remember, this is the New Me, the one who takes better care of himself, or at least tries to.

See you soon.

P.S. If you don’t know anything about Lawrence Tierney, go here and shudder. I had more or less the same experience described in the first paragraph of the profile to which the link will take you–it happened in a hotel room a couple of years ago–and I’ve never forgotten the impression it made on me.

Finally, somebody out in the ‘sphere (thank you, Kate) has posted a link to John Updike’s six rules for book reviewing, which I first read years ago and have been citing admiringly ever since.

I usually make a point of mentioning this one whenever I have occasion to teach a seminar in criticism:

2. Give [the author] enough direct quotation–at least one extended passage–of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

I’ve never heard a better piece of book-reviewing advice.

Alas, I no longer buy Updike’s first rule: “Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.” To find out why, go here.

I continue to stand by the others, but Number Two remains my all-time favorite. It’s also the one most likely to be forgotten by big-name reviewers, as I had occasion to point out last month. Should you ever catch me breaking it, feel free to send me a rocket!

“So far as it has merit, a painting is a fact, arbitrary and individual.”

Fairfield Porter, Art in Its Own Terms

I just this minute got home from a press preview of Theresa Rebeck’s The Water’s Edge, and I’m really beat–but on the mend. I remember when I used to come down with colds that would last for a couple of weeks at a time. This one, by contrast, is already giving up the ghost after a mere three days of moderate misery. If I needed yet another reason to keep on doing what the doctor says, which I don’t, that would be it.

Be that as it may, I’m not yet up to tossing off a half-dozen posts between now and bedtime, especially since I have to get up first thing Tuesday morning, drive to the Institute of Jazz Studies, and spend the day sifting through the Louis Armstrong file. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to knit up that ravell’d sleeve.

I’ll be back on Wednesday, ready to roar.