Archives for 2009

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column contains reviews of the Folger Theatre’s revival of Arcadia in Washington, D.C., the American Shakespeare Center’s revival of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in Staunton, Virginia, and the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s production of David Ives’ new adaptation of Georges Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear. Here’s a excerpt.
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Most of the half-dozen American drama companies that perform in more or less authentic replicas of Elizabethan-era theaters specialize, logically enough, in the works of Shakespeare. From time to time, though, contemporary plays are acted on these modern re-creations of 17th-century stages, and it happens that two such productions are currently being performed in the same part of the country. In Washington, the Folger Theatre is mounting Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” on its indoor stage, while the American Shakespeare Center, located in Staunton, Va., is presenting Mr. Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” in the Blackfriars Playhouse, a copy of a 1596 London theater. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence that these two shows are being performed within a three-hour drive of one another, and both are very much worth seeing.
The Folger’s “Arcadia,” directed by Aaron Posner, is the more conventional of the two stagings: Daniel Conway’s solidly built proscenium-style set treats the surrounding theater as a shell rather than making use of its specifically Elizabethan features. But Mr. Posner and his fabulous cast need no scenic assistance in order to make magic out of Mr. Stoppard’s best play….
Unlike Mr. Posner’s “Arcadia,” which would have looked as good and played as well in a modern theater, Jim Warren’s knockabout staging of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” Mr. Stoppard’s topsy-turvy variation on “Hamlet,” is a site-specific production that makes impeccably idiomatic use of the wide-open stage of the Blackfriars Playhouse. No curtain, no sets, no spotlights–just a bunch of actors who come and go through a pair of upstage doors, speaking their soliloquies directly to the audience and moving briskly from scene to scene. The title roles are played not by two men but by a man and a woman, Rick Blunt and Ginna Hoben, who act in the broad, unselfconsciously vulgar manner of Shakespearean clowns….
David Ives, who rewrote Mark Twain’s “Is He Dead?” to extensive and brilliant effect a couple of seasons ago, has done a similar service on behalf of an infinitely better play. In Mr. Ives’ new version of “A Flea in Her Ear,” Georges Feydeau’s 1907 comedy about an impotent husband (John Scherer) whose wife (Carol Halstead) suspects him of adulterous dalliance, Feydeau’s fin-de-siècle French dialogue has been modernized (and Americanized) in a way that is fully faithful to the spirit of the greatest of all French farces. My guess is that this version, which is now making the regional rounds, will become the standard English-language version of “A Flea in Her Ear,” and anyone who sees the Kansas City Repertory Theatre’s immaculate production, directed by Gary Griffin, will come away certain that Mr. Ives has passed another theatrical miracle.
Mr. Griffin’s staging of “A Flea in Her Ear” is direct, vigorous and gimmick-free, thus allowing Feydeau’s meticulously engineered plot to work itself out with near-mathematical clarity….
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Read the whole thing here.

“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life’s ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved.”
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

I just opened an envelope containing three “advance reading copies” of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. These are handsomely bound promotional paperbacks of the uncorrected galley proofs of Pops whose front cover and spine are essentially identical to the dust jacket of the finished book. I can now see for the first time what Pops will look like when it comes out on December 2.
Needless to say, I’m biased, but I think it’s the most beautifully designed of all my books–and now it’s real. I can hold it in my hand, turn the pages, and marvel at what Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and I have wrought.
I’m so proud I could burst.

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)

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

• Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (drama, PG-13, some adult subject matter, accessible to adolescents with mature attention spans, closes June 14, 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:

• 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 CHICAGO:

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

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Exit the King * (disturbingly black comedy, PG-13, closes June 14, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes June 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN DALLAS:

• Lost in the Stars (musical, PG-13, closes June 14, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN HOUSTON:

• Awake and Sing! (drama, PG-13, closes June 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO:

• Old Times (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN ARLINGTON, VA.:

• Giant (musical, PG-13, far too long for children, reviewed here)

“Go for the pain, and the audience will laugh.”
Matthew Warchus, director of The Norman Conquests and God of Carnage (quoted in The Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2009)

Excerpts from the only surviving film of Wanda Landowska playing harpsichord, shot in 1953:

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

“It may take time to get over an obsession, even after the roots have been pulled out.”
L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda

You can get anywhere in America from anywhere else, but some trips are easier than others. Unless you own a private plane, the only sensible way to get from Kansas City to Smalltown is to drive east on I-70 to St. Louis for four hours, turn right, then drive south on I-55 for two hours. I’ve made that trip dozens of times, and it isn’t very interesting, so instead of sticking to the program last Wednesday morning, I pulled off the interstate, fired up my GPS, and took the back roads all the way home.
It’s been more than a quarter-century since I last saw the parts of Missouri through which I drove, and I enjoyed every minute of my impromptu journey to Smalltown via Sedalia, Cole Camp, Laurie, Sunrise Beach, Rolla, Dixon, Steelville, and Potosi. Somewhere along the way I stopped in the parking lot of a Burger King, downloaded my e-mail, and learned that Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong has been sold to a Bulgarian publisher. Isn’t technology wonderful?
I hadn’t been home since Christmas, so I hadn’t seen the effects of the devastating ice storm that swept through southeast Missouri a few weeks after my last visit. My first sight of Smalltown was jolting: it looked as if my home town had caught a terrible disease. Many of the trees in town, including the ones in my mother’s yard, had lost a considerable number of their branches, and more than a few, including some of the biggest and grandest ones, had been chopped down. Once I started getting used to the sight of the sickly trees, though, things in Smalltown seemed pretty much the way they’ve always been. I took my mother to the covered bridge north of town for a picnic one day, and a couple of days later my brother smoked a pork loin on his back porch and treated us to a feast.
In between I wrote a Wall Street Journal drama column and a book review and went to lunch at Lambert’s Café, the home of “throwed rolls” (the waiters toss them to you) and Smalltown’s sole claim to national fame, with Lee McMurray, a good friend from high school who now lives in St. Louis but was in town for a weekend visit. Lee and I hadn’t seen one another for years, but we’d been keeping in sporadic touch via e-mail and Facebook, and we picked up the threads of our friendship effortlessly.
My visit was over before I knew it, and today I rose early to start the long trip from Smalltown to Washington, D.C., where I’ll be seeing a Noël Coward play and dining with Thornton Wilder’s nephew. Then I’ll rush back to New York to appear at BookExpo America, do a couple of Pops-related interviews, and see an off-Broadway press preview. On Sunday I pack my passport and fly north to Toronto for my first visit to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. I already miss Smalltown, where I got to hang up my clothes, sleep late every morning, and eat home cooking. I love my crowded life more than words can say, but sometimes it’s nice to stay in one place for a few days and do next to nothing.
(To be continued)