Archives for October 4, 2010

I review the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival of Mrs. Warren’s Profession in the Greater New York section of today’s Wall Street Journal. It isn’t very good. Here’s an excerpt.
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Nobody ever says the word “prostitution” out loud in George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession,” even though the oldest profession is what it’s all about. Small wonder: The play was written in 1894, but nobody dared to perform it on stage until 1902, Victorian prudery being what it was, and it has only been in recent years that “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” has been seen at all regularly in this country. Nowadays, though, interest in Shaw’s early work is on the upswing, and the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway revival is the play’s third major American mounting so far this year (it was previously presented by California Shakespeare Theater and the Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, D.C.). Could it be that the once-scandalous, now-titillating subject matter of “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” makes it more attractive to modern audiences? I wouldn’t be surprised–but I’m sorry to say that the Roundabout’s erratic version has little else to offer.
On paper, the Roundabout’s “Mrs. Warren” looked like a sure thing. Cherry Jones, who is as accomplished a stage actor as we have today, plays the unapologetically vulgar madam whose “private hotels” are sufficiently profitable to allow her to buy Vivie (Sally Hawkins), her brainy daughter, a place in respectable English society. The staging is by Doug Hughes, who directed Ms. Jones in “Doubt,” and the sets are by Scott Pask, whose list of noteworthy design credits is several feet long. In addition to Ms. Jones, the cast includes such familiar faces as Mark Harelik, Edward Hibbert and Michael Siberry.
So what went wrong? Pretty much everything, though by far the worst offender is Ms. Hawkins, a British film and TV actor of some note whose performance as Vivie couldn’t be further off the mark. Shaw’s stage directions describe Vivie as the quintessential example of “the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman….strong, confident, self-possessed.” For Ms. Hawkins to play her as a squeaky, flighty semi-tomboy is thus nonsensical, and the fact that she swallows at least half of her lines renders large chunks of the play all but unintelligible….
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The print version of the Journal‘s Greater New York section only appears in copies of the paper published in the New York area, but the complete contents of the section are available on line, and you can read my review of Mrs. Warren’s Profession by going here.

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:

• Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (musical, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)

• Fela! (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• A Life in the Theatre (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• Lombardi * (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

• The Pitmen Painters (serious comedy, G, too demanding for children, closes Dec. 12, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

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

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 20, reviewed here)

• 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)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

• Night and Day (serious comedy, PG-13, extended through Nov. 14, reviewed here)

I’m still on the road, but travel conditions have improved significantly. Not only is Mrs. T with me again, but we’re in Cleveland, a town to which we’re both partial, where we’ll be seeing two shows performed at the Great Lakes Theater Festival and paying a visit to the new and improved Cleveland Museum of Art. Nor are we in our usual tearing hurry to head for elsewhere: we flew into town on Sunday and don’t have to leave until Thursday, which happens to be our third wedding anniversary.
Best of all, we’ve returned to the Penfield House, one of the half-dozen houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that are available for short-term rental. I wrote about the house at length when Mrs. T and I last stayed here a couple of years ago, so I won’t repeat myself–suffice it to say that I can’t imagine a more satisfying place to live.
I’m also pleased to report that you can’t connect to the Web at the Penfield House. You have to drive to the parking lot of a Wendy’s that is located a mile from the gate. Normally I’d find this oppressive, but under the circumstances I regard it as downright liberating. We’ve brought along plenty of books and compact discs, and we mean to turn loose the burdens of dailiness and enjoy being where we are while we’re here.
To this end, I guarantee that you will hear nothing whatsoever from me between now and next Monday save for the usual routine almanac entries and theater-related postings (I do have to write my Friday drama column, after all!). My colleagues will do the heavy lifting until I return.

“A foreign correspondent is someone who lives in foreign parts and corresponds, usually in the form of essays containing no new facts. Otherwise he’s someone who flies around from hotel to hotel and thinks that the most interesting thing about any story is the fact that he has arrived to cover it.”
Tom Stoppard, Night and Day