Archives for September 2012

From 2005:

I expect a lot out of the books I read, and when they fail to deliver the goods, I toss them aside with a clear conscience and no second thoughts. Life is so very short–and so often shorter than we expect–that it seems a fearful mistake to waste even the tiniest part of it submitting voluntarily to unnecessary boredom. Bad enough that my job sometimes requires me to sit through plays whose sheer awfulness is self-evident well before the end of the first scene….

Read the whole thing here.

“It is a disturbing thought that we suffer in this world just as much by being prudent and taking precautions as we do by being rash and impulsive and acting as the spirit moves us.”
P.G. Wodehouse, Jill the Reckless

Rehearsals for the Long Wharf Theatre transfer of Satchmo at the Waldorf start this morning in New Haven. Since I also have to see two shows in New York and write three pieces between now and Friday, I thought it might be smart for Mrs. T and me to take a little time off from the daily grind and go somewhere quiet and out of the way–though not too far out of the way, since we only had three days to spare.

What to do? Inspiration struck when we saw Mystic Pizza on TV last week. We’d been talking for years about visiting Mystic, a picturesque seaport vilage that’s a bit over forty miles from the front door of our little house in the Connecticut woods. Now, we decided, was the time to go–but could I find a nice place for us to stay on such short notice?

I hit the bull’s-eye on the first try. The Inn at Stonington, located just five miles from the center of Mystic, is the very model of a romantic waterfront retreat: small, cozy, tastefully decorated, and wonderfully well run, with a simple but delicious continental breakfast that includes fresh-baked breads. This being a flawed world, there’s a catch, which is that the inn figures prominently in Hope Springs, meaning that it’s become harder to book a room there. Fortunately, we called a few minutes after somebody else canceled, and two days later we rolled up to the front door. That same night we stood on our tiny balcony, watched the sun set over the harbor, and reveled in our good luck. Henceforth the Inn at Stonington will be on on our very short list of B&Bs and inns to which we return regularly.
The meals we ate in and near Mystic were consistently good. (Yes, we made a point of stopping at Mystic Pizza, and it, too, was excellent.) One of them actually turned out to be spectacular. As we drove through town on Thursday afternoon, we passed by a restaurant called Oyster Club.

“That looks interesting,” I said to Mrs. T. “Why don’t you run in and check it out?”

A few minutes later she trotted back to the car with a menu in her hand and a smile on her face. “You know what the waitress told me?” she said. “I asked her what kind of place it was, and she said, ‘I’m not just saying this because I work here, but this really is the best place in town.'” I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. Mrs. T and I do a fair amount of traveling, and I can’t remember where or when we’ve had a better meal. (The Oyster Club menu changes nightly, but if the handmade tagliatelle with ragout of pork, chicken livers, and chicken hearts happens to be available, order it. Unless you’re a militant vegetarian, you won’t be sorry.)

What I liked best about our mini-vacation, though, was that it really was a vacation. I didn’t write a word or see a show all weekend. Instead, Mrs. T and I happily played tourist. Not only did we go on a schooner cruise, but we visited Mystic Seaport (to which Mrs. T went frequently as a child) and Groton’s Submarine Force Museum, where we toured the U.S.S. Nautilus (about whose cruise to the North Pole I read with wonder when I was a boy). If I gave any thought to Satchmo at the Waldorf or the world of high art, it was strictly in passing.

It helped that we were never very far from the water. I wrote these words seven years ago:

Coming as I do from the middle of America, I find at the age of forty-nine that I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of nights I’ve slept by an ocean. Like everyone who falls in love with the sea in adulthood, I’m incapable of saying anything about it that hasn’t been said a million times before: its ever-changing, self-renewing presence instantly reduces me to clichés. As I sat on the boardwalk and watched the waves that my beloved Fairfield Porter painted so well, I could do no better than to recall the words of Jean de la Ville de Mirmont that Gabriel Fauré set to music with such exquisitely apposite simplicity in L’horizon chimérique, the most perfect of all his song cycles: The sea is infinite and my dreams are wild.

Since then I’ve gone out of my way to spend as much time as possible within sight of the sea, which never fails to soothe my soul. Long Island Sound, being an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean, doesn’t quite fill the bill, but it suited me much, much more than well enough.

So yes, we had a great time…and now it’s over. Mrs. T dropped me off at the New London train station on Sunday afternoon. An hour later I arrived in New Haven, and an hour after that I was being interviewed by New Haven Theater Jerk. Later today I’ll report to Long Wharf’s Rehearsal Room B, roll up my sleeves, and go to work. Good or bad, long or short, all vacations must come to an end, and even when they give way to something just as pleasurable, you can’t help but wish you were back where you came from.

In an excerpt from Beyond the Fringe, Dudley Moore sings “Die Flabbergast,” a parody of a Schubert song as performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau:

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

“She was interested in everything Life presented to her notice, from a Coronation to a stray cat. She was vivid. She had sympathy. She listened to you as though you really mattered. It takes a man of tough fibre to resist these qualities.”
P.G. Wodehouse, Jill the Reckless

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review three productions currently on the boards at Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre: David Hare’s Skylight, Tom Stoppard’s Heroes, and Richard III. All are superior. Here’s an excerpt.
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Theater isn’t about theaters. You can see a great show in a living room–or a parking lot. The only thing that a good-looking performance space guarantees is a performance. But when a well-run company builds a well-designed new house, then uses it with taste and imagination, the plays that you see there will be all the more satisfying for being enacted in a space that sets them off in the way that a first-class frame enhances a first-rate painting.
Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre did just that in 2009 when it opened the Touchstone Theatre, a low-slung, elegantly simple 201-seat indoor house located a stone’s throw-and-a-half from the 1,148-seat rural amphitheatre where the company has been headquartered since 1979. Having spent three decades presenting Shakespeare and Shaw in the Up-the-Hill Theatre, APT wisely opted to use the Touchstone to broaden its repertory with modern fare. This summer’s offerings include David Hare’s “Skylight” and Tom Stoppard’s “Heroes,” two smartly written small-cast-single-set shows…
Mr. Hare’s unhappy lovers embody England’s latter-day class conflicts: Tom (Brian Mani) is a nouveau-riche Thatcherite entrepreneur with a boorish streak, while Kyra (Greta Wohlrabe) is a chastened idealist who has renounced her upper-middle-class background to teach poor children. But both characters are much more complicated than they look…
APT knows how to spot and cultivate up-and-comers, and Ms. Wohlrabe, who made her company debut last year, is a formidably gifted artist who, like Carrie Coon before her, oozes star quality. You can read her feelings off her face as easily as you can the temperature off a king-sized thermometer….
“Heroes,” Mr. Stoppard’s English-language adaptation of Gérald Sibleyras’ 2002 play about three World War I veterans who live in a French hospital for old soldiers, is wholly different in tone from “Skylight,” but no less moving in its quieter way. Next to nothing happens to this ill-sorted trio of decrepit comrades (played with great conviction by Paul Bentzen, John Lister and Jonathan Smoots). All they do is sit on a balcony, watch the world go by without them, and long to live out what’s left of their lives with such flair as they can muster between them. “One must strive a little for the epic,” says Gustave (Mr. Smoots), their querulous leader, knowing full well that his striving will be in vain. Yet here as in “Waiting for Godot,” after which “Heroes” is obviously modeled, the vanity of human wishes is made the subject of dark, bittersweet comedy….
Just a short walk up the hill from the Touchstone, APT is mounting a “Richard III” from whose unassuming yet comprehensive excellence a great many better-known theater companies could learn a thing or two…or three. Set in Edwardian times and staged with brutally lucid directness by James DeVita, it centers on James Ridge, who plays Shakespeare’s crippled monster of ambition as a snide, balding comedian with a strong resemblance to Fred Astaire who makes no secret of being delighted with his monstrosity–until his façade crumbles…
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Read the whole thing here.

“One should never make one’s début with a scandal; one should reserve that to give interest to one’s old age.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I’m thrilled to announce that Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, will be transferring directly from Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven to Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, one of America’s top regional companies, where it will open on November 16 and run through December 2.
Needless to say, the Wilma is mounting the same production of Satchmo at the Waldorf that was first seen earlier this year at Shakespeare & Company and will be opening at Long Wharf on October 3. John Douglas Thompson is the star, Gordon Edelstein the director.
If you haven’t seen Satchmo, come. If you have, come again.
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Adriane Lenox leads the company of the 1999 Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate in Cole Porter’s “Another Op’nin’, Another Show”: