Archives for July 2006

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)

– 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:

– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)

– Pig Farm (comedy, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here, closes Sept. 3)

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

CLOSING SOON:

– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Aug. 6)

– Faith Healer* (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Aug. 13)

CLOSING SUNDAY:

– Susan and God (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

“William Shakespeare, who liked magic and liberally employed ghosts and spirits as persuasively and meaningfully as you could wish, understood not only magic’s dazzling effects, but also–and this is what’s important–the power of its source in the human heart. We all wish for things with a passion that feels powerful enough to warp matter itself. We fear things we can neither see nor name. We want things we know logically we cannot have. And we are all haunted by demons and visited by grace. The power of magic, in fiction as in life, is its ability to draw us near the tempting and sometimes terrifying threshold of possibility.”

Carrie Brown, Creating Fiction (courtesy of Litwit)

– Mr. Parabasis, one of my favorite stagebloggers, begged to differ vigorously with Charles Isherwood’s panning of Pig Farm in the New York Times. So did I, but he did something about it: he talked a bunch of other bloggers into going to the show and writing about it. His report on Pig Farm‘s “blogger night,” with links to the various online reviews, is here.

For what it’s worth, here’s what I wrote about the show in The Wall Street Journal:

If, like me, you relish the lowbrow foolery of such anything-for-a-laugh movies as “Airplane!” and “There’s Something About Mary,” then Greg Kotis’ “Pig Farm,” in which three bumbleheaded, sex-crazed pig farmers run afoul of the Environmental Protection Agency, is the play for you. Mr. Kotis, who wrote the book of “Urinetown,” is a parodist who works exclusively in primary colors, and “Pig Farm” is a crazy-quilt pastiche stitched together out of bits and pieces of “Tobacco Road,” “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” and God only knows how many other half-remembered films and TV shows. It’s as subtle as a whoopee cushion–a really, really loud whoopee cushion–but it kept the audience laughing pretty much continuously, which is, after all, the point.

Nobody directs comedy better than John Rando, who undoubtedly deserves most of the credit for much of the laughter. The four characters, whose names are Tom, Tina, Tim and Teddy (it’s that kind of show), are played by John Ellison Conlee, Katie Finneran, Logan Marshall-Green and Denis O’Hare, all of whom are very clearly having a very good time. So did I. So will you.

– Ms. Culturegrrl has risen to the bait I dangled on Monday when I posted at length about the Web sites of regional theater companies, complete with links to good and bad sites. I invited her (and Mr. Modern Art Notes, from whom I haven’t yet heard) to share their thoughts on the Web sites of prominent museums. The first installment of her response is here.

By the way, Ms. Culturegrrl has now officially joined the roster of artsjournal.com bloggers. Welcome aboard!

– Kate’s Book Blog asks a question: “Which authors dominate your bookshelves?” She defines domination as owning “five or more books by or about” the author in question.

Here’s my list:

Kingsley Amis

Louis Armstrong (but not H.L. Mencken!)

Max Beerbohm

Richard Brookhiser

Willa Cather

Raymond Chandler

Colette

Ivy Compton-Burnett

Joseph Conrad

No

The first night after guests have gone, the house

Seems haunted or exposed.

Robert Frost, “In the Home Stretch”

I’m writing a long piece for Commentary (and recovering from my niece’s visit to New York last week). You won’t hear from me again until Wednesday, or maybe Thursday. In the meantime, go visit some of those other nice blogs in the right-hand column.

“Two kinds of person are consoling in a dangerous time: those who are completely courageous, and those who are more frightened than you are.”

A.J. Liebling, “Paris Postscript,” The New Yorker, Aug. 10, 1940

“Every time we pick up a book, we expect to fall in love; but after a certain number of disappointments, our expectation turns to mere hope; and eventually we give up even that. But no true reader ever gives up entirely. We still want to be moved deeply; we are still looking for books that, as Orwell put it, will burst the thermometer.”

Lots of interesting critical self-reflection is afoot lately. The quotation above comes from a piece linked seemingly everywhere, Ruth Franklin’s half-essay, half-review of Black Swan Green, published in the New Republic and reprinted at Powell’s Books, addresses some of the pitfalls of positive reviewing. Positive reviews are harder to write well, she claims, for any number of reasons. For one, the well-pleased critic finds herself in unintentional competition with a book’s jacket copy and associated hype–all of the productions of the publishing house’s publicity machine–and it’s not always easy to avoid sounding like part of that machine herself. “We damn not with faint praise, but with hyperbole.” she writes.

I entirely agree with Franklin’s sentiments about overly nice reviewing, which only makes me part of a large chorus. The Believer‘s Snarkwatch was a trial balloon, as she notes, that quietly but quickly sank. But, as someone who reviews ten or twelve books a year, I’d say the problem is less that many bad books are being given glowing reviews, and more that there are a lot of pretty good books out there. Quite good books. Blown kisses to my editors, but it is a rare thing and thus, frankly, some fun, to receive a book for review that’s truly bad–in large part because it happens so seldom. The great majority of the novels and short story collections I review are pretty good–but not essential. In the long run, they probably won’t be remembered as important. In the short run, though, they’ll give the right readers some considerable pleasure and perhaps enlightenment. As a critic, then, my job as I see it is to set aside that perpetually recurring dream of making a great discovery–and all of the attendant overblown adjectives–send out some sort of signal to the readers who I think will appreciate this particular book, and describe the book using verbs instead of adjectives as much as possible–not what the book is like, but what it does. The hardest thing is to maintain an honest sense of proportion in describing what a book achieves. (And for the record, I basically agree with Franklin’s high assessment of Black Swan Green).

Meanwhile, A. O. Scott had a piece in the New York Times last week (warning: the link may expire today) that tries to parse the yawning difference between the critical and popular receptions of a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. As you might imagine, plenty of film and culture bloggers have had something to say about that. It was the always sharp Peter Suderman, though, who pointed out that nowhere in his piece does Scott venture an answer to a key question: “What is the job of the movie critic?” In lieu of anything along these lines from Scott, Suderman graciously obliges with some thoughtful musings.

The subquestion, I suppose, in Scott’s essay was about what, if any, responsibility a critic has to the general moviegoing public. This is a tough question for many critics, and for someone like me especially. Most critics would bristle at the thought of having to serve the masses. Pandering, they’d call it, and dismiss the whole idea. As a firm believer in the usefulness of markets in determinging value, however, I’m not as sure. Now, while I have no love for the inscrutable non-taste of the moviegoing masses, I find myself wondering if a critic doesn’t have some obligation to them. Newspapers and magazines are businesses, after all, and they have an obligation to sell papers. A critic without a public is hardly worth whatever investment–however tiny–his or her publication has made in his or her writing.

In the end, he lands on a close analogue to what he tries to do as a critics: “it seems to me that the best description of a film critic is as a public teacher, one whose job is to be interesting, helpful, available (answer those emails!) and knowledgeable. One hopes that film critics are also film enthusiasts who enjoy not just the entertainment part of film but the intellectual side as well.” One does.

I keep an eye on the Web sites of more than a hundred American theater companies. Many of them are well designed, but at least as many are thoroughly exasperating to anyone looking for information about a company and its schedule–especially a journalist with a deadline who doesn’t have time to root around for basic facts.

If you want to keep traveling critics like me happy, make sure that the home page of your Web site contains the following easy-to-locate information:

– The title of your current production, plus its opening and closing dates

– A link to a complete list of the rest of the current and/or upcoming season’s productions

– A “CONTACT US” link that leads directly to an updated directory of staff members (including individual e-mail addresses)

– A link to a page containing (1) directions to your theater and (2) a printable map

– Your address and main telephone number (not the box office!)

An elegantly designed home page that conveys a maximum of information with a minimum of clutter tells me that you know what you’re doing, thus increasing the likelihood that I’ll come see you. An unprofessional-looking, illogically organized home page suggests the opposite. This doesn’t mean I won’t consider reviewing you–I know appearances can be deceiving–but bad design is a needless obstacle to your being taken seriously by other online visitors.

Two examples of good design:

– Steppenwolf

– Paper Mill Playhouse

Seven examples of bad design:

– This is an informative but cluttered home page.

– This is an uncluttered but insufficiently informative home page.

– This is an informative but amateurish-looking home page.

– This home page gets just about everything wrong–and it also contains a hugely irritating sound bite that plays each time you go there.

– This is a textbook example of unattractive, eye-resistant design.

– So is this.

– This superficially attractive site is so poorly organized that it’s hard to use.

(You don’t have to spend a fortune on an effective Web site, by the way. Remy Bumppo‘s bare-bones home page gets the job done.)

All this free advice applies equally well to other arts organizations, by the way. Any specifically museum-related suggestions, Mr. Modern Art Notes and Ms. Culturegrrl?