Archives for 2010

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)

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

• The Merchant of Venice * (Shakespeare, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 9, reviewed here)

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

• The Pee-wee Herman Show (comic revue, G/PG-13, heavily larded with double entendres, closes Jan. 2, 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, closes Jan. 16, 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)

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• A Life in the Theatre (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Nov. 28, reviewed here)

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”
H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major

An excerpt from Laurel and Hardy’s “The Music Box”:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)
UPDATE: Courtesy of Mr. Anecdotal Evidence, Samuel Beckett on Laurel and Hardy.

“A man who can laugh, if only at himself, is never really miserable.”
H.L. Mencken, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks

Jimmy Rushing sings “Goin’ to Chicago Blues” on a 1958 episode of The Subject Is Jazz, accompanied by an all-star band led by Buck Clayton:

“Indeed, I simply can’t imagine competence as anything save admirable, for it is very rare in this world, and especially in this great Republic, and those who have it in some measure, in any art or craft from adultery to zoology, are the only human beings I can think of who will be worth the oil it will take to fry them in Hell.”
H. L. Mencken, Heathen Days (courtesy of Margaret Hivnor)

The big news in New York theater this week is the opening of the Broadway transfer of the Public Theater’s production of The Merchant of Venice. Accordingly, The Wall Street Journal asked me to write a special review for today’s Greater New York section. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
When I reviewed the Public Theater’s Central Park production of “The Merchant of Venice” in June, I said that it might end up on Broadway, and that it deserved to. This has now happened, and the main reason for the transfer is, needless to say, Al Pacino. Even so, what was true six months ago is still true today: Mr. Pacino is a galvanic Shylock, but this “Merchant” would be more than good enough to play on Broadway no matter who was in the title role. The best news is that Daniel Sullivan and Mark Wendland, the director and set designer, have managed to take a site-specific outdoor production and move it to the proscenium stage of the Broadhurst Theatre without any loss of theatrical potency. If anything, the show is more tightly focused in its smaller indoor home.
Shakespeare on Broadway has tended in recent seasons to be spotty, usually because of the stunt casting that makes such productions as Jude Law’s “Hamlet” financially feasible. Fortunately, Mr. Pacino’s performance, in which he plays Shylock as an old-fashioned “stage Jew” driven to the edge of madness by his lust for revenge, is no stunt. He is a veteran stage actor who knows how to nail every line to the auditorium’s back wall, and even if you think he’s flirting with caricature–which he is–you’ll find the results enthralling…
Would that the cheap seats were a whole lot cheaper, but don’t begrudge Mr. Pacino his big-name salary. He’s earning every cent of whatever he’s being paid–and then some. You’ll never see a more exciting “Merchant of Venice,” or a more thought-provoking one.
* * *
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 The Merchant of Venice by going here.

After a lengthy stretch of largely contented residence on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Mrs. T and I are exchanging Central Park West for Fort Tryon Park and moving uptown to Washington Heights later this week. Our goal was to find a larger apartment in a quiet, comfortable neighborhood that can be reached easily by subway, and we think we’ve succeeded. Needless to say, the proof of the pudding is in the living, and I’ll keep you abreast of how our new life in Washington Heights shapes up.
For the moment, though, our immediate concern is transferring several thousand books and compact discs and some two dozen works of art from Apartment No. 1 to Apartment No. 2, a task that I expect will keep both of us preoccupied for the next few days (at least!). To this end, I won’t be doing any blogging this week outside of the usual daily postings.
I hope to be back again next Monday. In the meantime, please send lovely thoughts our way as we tear up our old lives and march anxiously toward the future….