Archives for June 18, 2009

I’ve been writing with steadily growing enthusiasm about Kate Whoriskey ever since 2005, when Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre invited her to stage The Tempest:

Kate Whoriskey, the director, may fancy herself a purveyor of ideas, but in fact she’s something infinitely more precious–a natural-born stage magician….This “Tempest” is clearly the work of a youngish director (she’s 34) who has yet to learn the lesson of economy. But it doesn’t matter, since she nails together all the elements of what looks to me like a very expensive production with an absolute assurance that would be enviable in an old pro and is downright astonishing in a new face.

More recently, Whoriskey directed the production of Lynn Nottage’s Ruined currently playing at New York’s City Center, on which occasion I called her “a director of extraordinary talent whose work deserves to be seen far more often in New York.” I still think so, but now it looks like I’ll have to fly to the West Coast to see what she’s up to: Seattle’s Intiman Theatre just announced that starting in 2010, Whoriskey will become its next artistic director, replacing the much-admired Bartlett Sher.
This is very big news for a very important regional theater, and as far as I’m concerned it’s 100% good. I can’t wait to see what Whoriskey does with Intiman. My congratulations to an immensely promising young artist.

CAAF passed on this meme:

Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes.

Her picks:

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre
Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire
Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet
Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica
Joan Aiken’s Wolves of Willoughby Chase
Katherine Dunn’s Geek Love
A.S. Byatt’s Possession
Julio Cortázar’s Hopscotch
Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow
Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield
J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories
George Eliot’s Middlemarch
Bert Hölldobler/ E.O. Wilson’s Journey to the Ants
Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber
Samuel R. Delany’s Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

My picks:

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood
James Gould Cozzens’ Guard of Honor
Boswell’s Life of Johnson
Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now
John P. Marquand’s Point of No Return
Barbara Pym’s A Glass of Blessings
Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour (yes, it’s a trilogy, but I first read it in the one-volume omnibus version)
Dawn Powell’s The Locusts Have No King
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye
Clement Greenberg’s Collected Essays and Criticism (a four-volume set, but I think of it as a single work)
George Orwell’s Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters (ditto)
David Cairns’ Berlioz (a two-volume biography, but I think of it as a single work)
Fairfield Porter’s Art in Its Own Terms
Edwin Denby’s Looking at the Dance

How about you, OGIC?

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage * (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 19, then reopens Sept. 8 and runs through Nov. 15, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• Mary Stuart (drama, G, far too long and complicated for children, closes Aug. 16, reviewed here)

• The Norman Conquests * (three related comedies, PG-13, comprehensively unsuitable for children, playing in repertory through July 25, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

• Waiting for Godot * (drama, PG-13, accessible to intelligent and open-minded adolescents, closes July 12, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Coraline (musical, G, possibly too scary for small children and very problematic for twee-hating adults, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)

• The Rivalry (historical drama, G, too complicated for children, reviewed here)

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, extended through Aug. 2, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• The History Boys (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, too intellectually complex for most adolescents, closes Aug. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Design for Living (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, closes June 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Arcadia (serious comedy, PG-13, too complicated for children and slow-witted adults, reviewed here)

“‘I have done that,’ says my memory. ‘I cannot have done that,’ says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually–memory yields.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (courtesy of Richard Brookhiser)