Archives for April 2012

“The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.”
Henry James, preface to The Aspern Papers

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 Sept. 9, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes July 1, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, unsuitable for children, all performances sold out last week, closes June 2, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, 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)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 17, 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)

• 4000 Miles (drama, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

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

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN TYSON’S CORNER, VA.:

• Side Man (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

The prologue and first scene of Benjamin Britten’s operatic version of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, sung by Richard Greager and Helen Field. Steuart Bedford conducts members of the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra:

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

“A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.”
Henry James, “Robert Louis Stevenson”

A young friend of mine read yesterday’s posting about my visit to Fort Tryon Park and wrote to me as follows: “Your ending gave me the chills a little bit. I wonder if it’s possible to feel and fully embrace your youth while you’re young.”
To which I replied, reluctantly:

No, it’s not. Only in flashes, and they don’t happen very often. Mostly you just live it day by day, and long after the fact you look back and remember what it was like, and marvel at how you didn’t understand it while it was happening.
That’s what the end of Our Town is about.

I saw Our Town for the first time on stage in 1989, when I was thirty-three years old. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I think I do now:

For those who missed Bob Brookmeyer’s memorial service last week, Doug Ramsey has posted a report that includes several first-hand accounts, as well as the text of my brief remarks about Bob. To read it, go here.

From 2004:

Those of us who write about music, needless to say, would like it if there were a direct positive correlation between intelligence and musical talent. Intellectuals always take it for granted that theirs is the highest form of life. If they had a bumper-sticker slogan, it’d be “Intellectuals do everything better.” In fact, there are all sorts of things they do spectacularly badly (though they’re rather good at conniving at mass murder), and it’s almost always hard for them to accept the fact that Big Ideas get in the way of the making of great art….

Read the whole thing here.

“Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
Henry James, “The Art of Fiction”