Archives for 2011

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 Apr. 29, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Chinglish (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 29, reviewed here)

• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 22, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes Dec. 18, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, extended through Jan. 15, 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)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (monologue, PG-13, closes Dec. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN GLENCOE, ILLINOIS:

• The Real Thing (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Dec. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• Man and Boy (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

“Athirst for personal salvation, the West forgets that many religions had but a vague notion of the life beyond the grave; true, all great religions stake a claim on eternity, but not necessarily on man’s eternal life.”
André Malraux, Voices of Silence

Kirsten Flagstad and Wilfred Pelletier perform an excerpt from Wagner’s Die Walküre. This clip comes from The Big Broadcast of 1938 and is introduced by Bob Hope:

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

“A large share of our art heritage is now derived from peoples whose idea of art was quite other than ours, and even from peoples to whom the very idea of art meant nothing.”
André Malraux, Voices of Silence

I’m worn out from last week’s travels, and so have withdrawn from the world for a couple of days of total seclusion. I’m reading P.G. Wodehouse novels, listening to music, seeing no shows, and doing no work of any kind.
I am, however, checking my e-mail from time to time, which is why I know that my downstairs neighbors were kind enough to send me a link to a recent episode of Radio Deluxe, the John Pizzarelli-Jessica Molaskey radio show. If you listen to the second track, a performance of “Let’s Fall in Love” by Louis Armstrong and the Oscar Peterson, you’ll hear John and Jess serve up a big fat plug for Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, which is still selling two years after the fact. How cool is that?
I’m also pleased to report that Pops is going be published in Russia, though the publisher has yet to get in touch with me about it. Indeed, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Russian edition of Pops may not redound to my benefit! Be that as it may, I’m pleased to know that my magnum opus will be translated into yet another language, and that an excerpt will soon appear in Jazz.Ru, Russia’s only jazz magazine (read all about it here).
And now…back to inactivity.

“What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.”
André Malraux, Antimémoires

Mary Martin sings Irving Berlin’s “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun.” This clip comes from the 1957 TV version of Annie Get Your Gun:

“Sandra pulled far to the right to let him by, then looked in the rearview mirror and said, ‘The funny thing is, most fools get away with being fools.’
“‘Until they count on it,’ Parker said.”
Richard Stark, Dirty Money