Archives for February 2011

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

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:

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

• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)

• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, closes July 3, 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 Feb. 20, reviewed here)

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

OFF BROADWAY:

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 27, 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)

IN SARASOTA, FLA.:

• Twelve Angry Men (drama, G, closes Mar. 26, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 13, transfers to Washington, D.C., Feb. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.:

• Freud’s Last Session (drama, G, unsuitable for children, reviewed here)

“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Right now I’m too blissfully tired to do much more than post the news that last night’s premiere of Satchmo at the Waldorf (actually, the first forty-five minutes of Satchmo at the Waldorf, but who’s counting?) was a howling success. As if that weren’t enough to report, my publisher informed me via e-mail this morning that the first three chapters of my Duke Ellington biography, which I sent in a couple of weeks ago, “read like a freight train.” Whee!
I’m (A) very, very happy and (B) taking the rest of the day off. See you tomorrow. Or whenever.
UPDATE: A friend writes: “Shouldn’t they read like the A train?”

This week’s video: Joseph Szigeti plays the first movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto:

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

“Everyone feels benevolent if nothing happens to be annoying him at the moment.”
C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Earlier today I posted about the foreword that I’m writing for the University of Chicago Press’ upcoming uniform-edition versions of Flashfire and Firebreak, two novels about Parker, the professional criminal, that were written by Donald E. Westlake under the pseudonym of Richard Stark. I sent the finished foreword off to Chicago this morning. Here are the last two paragraphs.
* * *
When I first started reading about Parker, I thought of the words of Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov: “If you were to destroy in humanity the belief in its immortality, not only love but every vital force for the continuation of earthly life would at once dry up. Moreover, then nothing would be immoral any more, everything would be permitted, even cannibalism.” Up to a point, that applies to Parker, a man to whom nothing but amateurishness is immoral. Even more to the point, though, is Liliana Cavani’s 2002 film version of Ripley’s Game, in which these words are put into the mouth of Tom Ripley, Patricia Highsmith’s anti-hero: “I lack your conscience and when I was young that troubled me. It no longer does. I don’t worry about being caught because I don’t believe anyone is watching.”
Like Ripley, who is a real sociopath, Parker has no conscience. Somehow, though, I doubt that has ever troubled him. I think he got up one morning, decided for reasons known only to himself that no one was watching except for the cops, and decided to act accordingly. Nor do I think there was anything dramatic about his decision, no Farewell remorse…evil be thou my good moment to stun the groundlings. And that’s what makes Parker so interesting, so seductive, and so wholly unlike most of the rest of us: he just doesn’t care, and never did.