Archives for April 2011

“Laughter is the climax in the tragedy of seeing, hearing and smelling self-consciously.”
Wyndham Lewis, “Inferior Religions”

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.

BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, 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)

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

• The Motherf**ker with the Hat (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 26, 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)

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

CLOSING SOON IN LOS ANGELES:

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, Los Angeles remounting of Broadway production with original cast, adult subject matter, closes May 15, Broadway run reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes May 1, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

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

“Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.”
George Saintsbury, A Last Vintage

I’ve hit a bad patch on Broadway. In today’s Wall Street Journal I pan High and Wonderland. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Was Kathleen Turner ever an actor? Maybe, but she’s not one anymore. All she does nowadays is waddle onstage and hawk the self-parody that long ago became her stock in trade. To say that Ms. Turner plays an alcoholic nun in Matthew Lombardo’s “High” comes close to giving away the whole game. Yes, Sister Jamison Connelly is a foul-mouthed, tough-talking dame with a heart of brass-plated gold, and yes, Ms. Turner’s Janie-One-Note performance is so thickly mannered as to suggest that the producers of “High” have engaged a Kathleen Turner robot instead of the real thing. She rattles off her lines in a hoarse, staccato baritone voice that sounds as if it had been brought into being through daily doses of Drano administered by mouth, and she never does anything that you can’t see coming several hundred miles away.
Neither does Mr. Lombardo, a specialist in coarsely wrought small-cast vehicles for Hollywood refugees of a certain age. Last year it was “Looped,” in which Valerie Harper played Tallulah Bankhead. This year it’s “High,” a three-hander in which Ms. Turner attempts to save the body and soul of Cody (Evan Jonigkeit), a dope-addled street hustler whose self-destructive behavior is enabled by the solicitude of a well-meaning but foolish priest (Stephen Kunken). “High” is the sort of play in which a character (Ms. Turner, naturally) utters sentences like “Okay, God, here’s the deal,” then expects the audience not to giggle contemptuously in response….
The problem with Frank Wildhorn musicals is that they contain Frank Wildhorn songs. “Wonderland,” an updated stage version of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” is stuffed full of easy-listening pop ditties written in the out-the-other-ear style to which Mr. Wildhorn long ago accustomed his fans. As for Jack Murphy’s lyrics, suffice it to say that he lays his creative cards on the table in the very first number: “Larger smaller–keep it real/Change just happens, learn to deal.”
If you’ve spent any time at all watching the dreck dished up on contemporary children’s TV, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what Mr. Wildhorn and his collaborators have done to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The time is right this second and the place is Queens. Alice (Janet Dacal) is a well-dressed, temporarily single working mom whose unemployed, temporarily unenlightened husband (Darren Ritchie) has left her because he’s embarrassed not to be the family breadwinner. Chloe (Carly Rose Sonenclar), their daughter, is an unnaturally mature-sounding 11-year-old Broadway diva who is incapable of uttering an unsarcastic word. Alice bumps her head in the elevator, lies down to take a nap and finds herself in Wonderland, a country whose inhabitants all speak the same tired argot, half smart-assery and half meta-humor…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

Paul Lynde, June Carroll, and Alice Ghostley in a very rare kinescope of excerpts from New Faces of 1952, originally telecast in 1960. The songs are “Guess Who I Saw Today” and “Boston Beguine”:

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

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.”
Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics

Danse Russe will be premiered in Philadelphia next Thursday, and Paul Moravec and I are beating the bushes to spread the word about opening night. This afternoon we’ll be talking about our second opera with John Schaefer on my favorite radio show, WNYC’s Soundcheck. By a strange and wonderful coincidence, the first half of the program will be devoted to a debate about the merits of Steely Dan’s Aja, one of the few pop albums of my college days to which I still listen regularly and with the utmost pleasure. Afterward, Paul and I will talk about and play excerpts from Danse Russe.
Soundcheck airs between two and three p.m. ET. To listen live via terrestrial radio, tune to 93.9 on your FM dial (no static at all!). To listen via streaming audio, go here.

Steely Dan plays “Peg” live in 2003: