Archives for February 2010

“Our intentions make blackguards of us all; our weakness in carrying them out we call probity.”
Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses (trans. P.W.K. Stone)

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I report on three shows that I saw in Florida while the snow was falling up north: Orlando Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mad Cow Theatre’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Florida Rep’s You Can’t Take It With You. All are excellent. Here’s an excerpt.
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The Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s “Hamlet” looks on paper like a standard-issue high-concept production, transplanted from ancient Denmark to Victorian England. But Richard Width and Bob Phillips, the director and set designer, have stirred in a cupful of spooky horror-show populism, pumping the stage full of mist and making eye-catching use of a stategically positioned trap door. One might almost be watching an unusually literate vampire flick aimed at a youthful audience, an impression reinforced by Avery Clark’s flamboyantly physical performance of the title role….
All this makes for one of the most theatrically potent “Hamlets” I’ve seen in a good many seasons, far fresher than last year’s Jude Law-powered Broadway production and, I suspect, more accessible to boot….
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” is being performed to similarly fine effect across town by Mad Cow Theater, a small but ambitious company that specializes in contemporary fare (Tracy Letts’ “Superior Donuts” opens there next month). Performed in a black-box theater on a set consisting of seven doors in a curved white wall, this production discreetly underlines the debt owed by Mr. Stoppard to the Samuel Beckett of “Waiting for Godot.” Michael Marinaccio and Timothy Williams play the title characters like a cross between Vladimir-and-Estragon and Abbott-and-Costello, which is just right…
The Pulitzer Prize for drama, like the best-picture Oscar, rarely goes to uncomplicatedly funny plays, but in 1937 the judges made a welcome exception and gave it to “You Can’t Take it With You,” the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy about an extended family whose variously eccentric members have all chosen to renounce worldly ambition and (as the saying goes) follow their bliss. A year later Frank Capra’s film version knocked down a best-picture Oscar, thereby sealing the original play’s long-standing reputation as a classic of American comedy.
Alas, the last Broadway revival of “You Can’t Take It With You” opened more than a quarter-century ago, and professional productions have become comparatively rare. This is mainly because the play calls for a cast of 19, thus putting it out of the reach of cost-conscious regional companies, though the fact that Capra’s film was so portentously windy doesn’t help. Not so the Florida Repertory Theatre’s festive new staging, which is as light and sweet as fresh-spun cotton candy….
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Read the whole thing here.

“There are no child actors. There are child performers.”
Charles Laughton (quoted in Preston Neal Jones, Heaven and Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter)

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:

• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

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

• A View from the Bridge * (drama, PG-13, violence and some sexual content, closes Apr. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

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

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

• The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, now being performed in rotating repertory, extended through May 8, reviewed here, here, and here)

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

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, sexual content, extended through Mar. 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEDNESDAY IN SARASOTA, FLA.:

• Life of Galileo (drama, G, accessible to well-read older teenagers, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Ernest in Love (musical, G, a bit too complicated for children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO, ILL.:

• American Buffalo (drama, PG-13/R, violence and very strong language, reviewed here)

“How mixed people are–how mixed and nice!”
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

Leonard Bernstein talks about “The World of Jazz” on Omnibus in 1955:

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

“But most of the time, I just thought. And what I thought about most was luxury. I had never realized before that it is more than just having things; it makes the very air feel different. And I felt different, breathing that air: relaxed, lazy, still sad but with the edge taken off the sadness. Perhaps the effect wears off in time, or perhaps you don’t notice it if you are born to it, but it does seem to me that the climate of richness must always be a little dulling to the senses. Perhaps it takes the edge off joy as well as off sorrow.
“And though I cannot honestly say I would ever turn my back on any luxury I could come by, I do feel there is something a bit wrong in it. Perhaps that makes it all the more enjoyable.”
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle

“The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon.”
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle