Archives for 2009

“Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.”
Anthony Burgess, Little Wilson and Big God, Being the First Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess

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)

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

OFF BROADWAY:

• 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)

IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• The Music Man (musical, G, very child-friendly, closes Nov. 1, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• The History Boys (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, too intellectually complex for most adolescents, closes Sept. 27, reviewed here)

IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:

• Camelot (musical, G, closes Sept. 19, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY

• Avenue Q * (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, closes Sept. 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes Sept. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN GARRISON, N.Y.:

• Pericles and Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare, PG-13, playing in repertory through Sept. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN LENOX, MASS:

• Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Sept. 5, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN PITTSFIELD, MASS:

• A Streetcar Named Desire (drama, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN PETERBOROUGH, N.H.:

• Heartbreak House (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

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

“I got on with the task of turning myself into a brief professional writer. The term professional is not meant to imply a high standard of commitment and attainment: it meant then, as it still does, the pursuit of a trade or calling to the end of paying the rent and buying liquor. I leave the myth of inspiration and agonised creative inaction to the amateurs.”
Anthony Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess

For those who’ve been following the brouhaha over my Wall Street Journal column about the shrinking adult audience for live jazz in America, I’ll be appearing today on Soundcheck, WNYC’s daily talk show about music, to discuss what I said–and didn’t say–with John Schaefer, the host.
Soundcheck airs live at two p.m. EDT. If you live in the New York City area, you can listen to WNYC via terrestrial radio by tuning to 93.9 FM. Go here for more information on today’s episode or to listen live via streaming audio on your computer.

Dennis Brain and Denis Matthews perform Beethoven’s Horn Sonata:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“Am I happy? Probably not. Having passed the prescribed biblical age limit, I have to think of death, and I do not like the thought. There is a vestigial fear of hell, and even of purgatory, and no amount of rereading rationalist authors can expunge it. If there is only darkness after death, then that darkness is the ultimate reality and that love of life that I intermittently possess is no preparation for it. In face of the approaching blackness, which Winston Churchill facetiously termed black velvet, concerning oneself with a world that is soon to fade out like a television image in a power cut seems mere frivolity. But rage against the dying of the light is only human, especially when there are still things to be done, and my rage sometimes sounds to myself like madness. It is not only a question of works never to be written; it is a matter of things unlearned. I have started to learn Japanese, but it is too late; I have started to read Hebrew, but my eyes will not take in the jots and tittles. How can one fade out in peace, carrying vast ignorance into a state of total ignorance?”
Anthony Burgess, You’ve Had Your Time, Being the Second Part of the Confessions of Anthony Burgess

• YouTube isn’t quite as wonderful as it ought to be, but when it’s good, it’s really good. The other day, for instance, I discovered that it is now possible to view the first hour and a half of CBS’ live coverage of the assassination of President Kennedy–uncut.

The first thing you see is the opening segment of As the World Turns, TV’s longest-running soap opera, complete with the original commercials. Then, without warning, the screen is filled with a CBS NEWS BULLETIN slide and you hear the once-familiar voice of Walter Cronkite breaking the bad news:

Here is a bulletin from CBS News. In Dallas, Texas, three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas. The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting. More details just arrived. These details about the same as previously: President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy, she called “Oh, no!”; the motorcade sped on. United Press says that the wounds for President Kennedy perhaps could be fatal. Repeating, a bulletin from CBS News, President Kennedy has been shot by a would-be assassin in Dallas, Texas. Stay tuned to CBS News for further details.

What you don’t see is Cronkite’s face. In 1963 the CBS newsroom in New York was not yet equipped with a “flash studio” that made it possible to air live pictures of whatever newsman was breaking into regular programming. Not for another twenty minutes did the network get its cameras warmed up and running.

No less surprising is the fact that Cronkite was relying exclusively on wire-service copy, which he read more or less straight from the teletype. Dan Rather was on the scene in Dallas, but he wasn’t able to talk directly to Cronkite in New York, much less send him pictures. Throughout the next hour, Cronkite was forced to read and re-read wire-service reports and to hold up still photographs of the presidential motorcade, all of them transmitted by AP and UPI. Eventually we see live pictures from inside the Dallas Trade Mart, to which Kennedy had been en route. More than a half-hour after the first bulletin, Cronkite quotes Rather, who finally managed to get through to New York by telephone with an unconfirmed report that Kennedy was dead–but Rather is neither seen nor heard.

Fans of Mad Men don’t need to be told how much the world has changed since the Sixties, but I can’t think of a more telling example of how TV news has changed than this dusty ninety-minute time capsule.

“To be able to sit home and put words together in what one hopes are charming or otherwise striking sentences is, no matter how much tussle may be involved, lucky work, a privileged job. The only true grit connected with it ought to arrive when, thinking to complain about how hard it is to write, one is smart enough to shut up and silently grit one’s teeth.”
Joseph Epstein, “Blood, Sweat, and Words” (In Character, Spring 2009)