Archives for 2012

The King Cole Trio, with Oscar Moore on guitar and Johnny Miller on bass, perform “Errand Boy for Rhythm” in 1946. The dancer is thought to be Nadine Robinson, Nat Cole’s first wife:

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

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.”
George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

My drama column returns to The Wall Street Journal today after a two-week hiatus. I flew out to Minneapolis on Wednesday to see the Guthrie Theater’s revival of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys. Here’s an excerpt.
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Do Neil Simon’s plays have a future? Nobody was asking that heretical question a quarter-century ago, back when the author of “The Odd Couple” was still the most popular and successful playwright on Broadway. But American comedy has mutated almost beyond recognition in the ensuing years, and it’s been so long since Mr. Simon’s glory days that you can’t help but wonder whether his quaint one-two-here-comes-the-wisecrack style is destined to vanish into the same memory hole that long ago swallowed up the likes of Bob Hope and Red Skelton.
I recently saw an Off-Broadway production of “Lost in Yonkers” that was so persuasively staged and acted as to make me wonder for the first time whether Mr. Simon’s best plays might possibly be ripe for revival. I felt the much same way after flying out to Minneapolis on Wednesday to catch the Guthrie Theater’s more conventional but genuinely satisfying new production of “The Sunshine Boys,” Mr. Simon’s 1972 play about a comedy team whose long partnership has dissolved in acrimony and spite….
The premise of “The Sunshine Boys” is neatly pointed: Willie Clark (Peter Michael Goetz) and Al Lewis (Raye Birk) worked together for 43 years, at the end of which Al decided that he’d had enough of show business. His abrupt retirement enraged Willie, who wasn’t ready to quit the stage and now regards his old partner with a volatile blend of pride and rancor: “As an actor, no one could touch him…as a human being, no one wanted to touch him.” The two men haven’t spoken for a decade as “The Sunshine Boys” gets underway, and Willie affects to be perfectly happy to leave it that way. Enter Ben (Robert O. Berdahl), his nephew and manager, who hopes to reunite Lewis and Clark for a TV special. Al is game, but Willie isn’t–at least not at first.
As always, Mr. Simon plays for laughs and gets them, especially in the riotous scene in which Lewis and Clark re-enact their knockabout vaudeville act for the TV cameras. But he is also alert to the underlying pathos of the situation, for the septuagenarian Willie, who lives alone in a crumbling residential hotel, is all too clearly in the early stages of dementia (though nobody would have thought to call it that in 1972). Desperate to cling to his independence, he refuses to come to terms with the diminished thing that is his life….
Gisselman, who directed the Guthrie’s 2006 revival of “Lost in Yonkers,” has staged “The Sunshine Boys” in the same straightforward vein. While it’s not especially daring, nobody makes the mistake of hitting the jokes too hard, and there are more than a few moments when pain peers through the laughter….
Mr. Goetz, who reminds me of Art Carney in his irascible old age, has the lion’s share of the best lines and delivers them with growling gusto. Would, though, that Mr. Gisselman had encouraged him to be more brutal…
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Read the whole thing here.

A man of pleasure is a man of pains.
Edward Young, Night Thoughts

I changed my travel plans early this afternoon after looking at the forecast for New York and its environs. Instead of trying to fly back on schedule, I opted to hole up in a Minneapolis airport hotel and spend the evening working on an essay for Commentary about Neil Simon, with frequent breaks to visit the whirlpool.
So far, so good–and I’m soooo glad that I’m not sitting on that plane right now. Or in that departure lounge. Now all I have to do is get back to New York in time to catch a Friday-afternoon train to Cold Spring, there to meet Mrs. T and see Romeo and Juliet at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival that night.
So what if it’s a horrifically long day? Better that than flying through the even more horrific alternative….

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:

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 9, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

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

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 6, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• Freud’s Last Session (drama, PG-13, restaging of off-Broadway production, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

• A Little Night Music (musical, PG-13, closes Aug. 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Aug. 5, reviewed here)

“Martyrdom by pinpricks can be very painful.”
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

I blew through New York last night, staying just long enough to pick up my mail, get caught in a traffic jam, sweat profusely, eat sushi, and update the right-hand column with fresh “Top Five” and “Out of the Past” picks.
Today I fly to Minneapolis for a Guthrie Theatre revival of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys. From there I head to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in New York, followed by a quick trip to Connecticut to see Goodspeed Musicals’ Carousel. Come Tuesday I report to Shakespeare & Company, where I’ll be spending the next three weeks rehearsing Satchmo at the Waldorf with John Douglas Thompson and Gordon Edelstein.
Whew!
In lieu of anything more elaborate, allow me to pass on two interesting links:
• The mills of academe grind slowly, but the Journal of Jazz Studies has finally gotten around to reviewing Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. The reviewer is Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, and what he says about Pops is…well, see for yourself:

Terry Teachout’s Pops is the definitive, one-volume, narrative biography of Louis Armstrong….Teachout’s ability to place a whirlwind of events in context is masterful and is easy to overlook because it does not draw attention to itself.

I’ve never been so proud of a review.
Read the whole thing here.
• After you’ve finally gotten around to seeing Margaret, you might enjoy knowing what music Kenneth Lonergan listened to while making the film.