Archives for June 2013

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a new off-Broadway play, John Guare’s 3 Kinds of Exile, and two out-of-town revivals, Present Laughter in Red Bank, New Jersey, and The Real Thing in Washington, D.C. Here’s an excerpt.
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The twin tyrannies of Communism and Nazism killed so many Europeans that it’s temptingly easy to think only of the mountains of corpses that were their monument. But totalitarianism also did damage to countless other people by forcing them into unsought exile. Some who fled to America and elsewhere were able to start anew, but many others soon found that the guillotine of history had cut their lives in two. In “3 Kinds of Exile,” John Guare dramatizes the sufferings of a trio of European émigrés whose existence was turned inside out when they left home….
Mr. Guare, as is his wont, tells these varied tales with surging energy and an infectious sense of the absurd, and the three parts of “3 Kinds of Exile” add up to an “entertainment” that is at once excitingly lively and unsettlingly macabre….
Michael Cumpsty was born to play Garry Essendine, the self-absorbed anti-hero of “Present Laughter,” Noël Coward’s comedy about a flamboyant matinée idol who bears a far-more-than-coincidental resemblance to the author himself. Mr. Cumpsty, the star of Two River Theater Company’s new production of Coward’s best play, knows that Essendine is at bottom a spoiled child who is scared of the dark, and he combines stiletto-sharp wit with high-camp poutiness to endlessly exhilarating effect. His performance would be worth seeing all by itself…
Studio Theatre has a strong track record with the plays of Tom Stoppard, and the company’s in-the-round revival of “The Real Thing,” Stoppard’s most heartfelt play, is for the most part a sound piece of work. Annie Purcell, who plays the woman who teaches Henry (Teagle F. Bougere), Stoppard’s own fictional alter ego, a painful lesson in the meaning of love, gives a really lovely performance, sincere and winsome in just the right proportions, and Caroline Bootle Pendergast is pointed and ironic as Charlotte, Henry’s first wife and the mother of his only child (very well played by Barrett Doss). Mr. Bougere, alas, is the weak link, not because he isn’t a good actor but because he lacks the lightness of touch necessary to bring Henry to convincing life….
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Read the whole thing here.

“For my own Part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have received much Kindness from Men, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho’ repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator.”
Benjamin Franklin, letter to Joseph Huey (June 6, 1753)

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:

• Annie (musical, G, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Nance (play with music, PG-13, closes Aug. 11, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

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

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, closes Sept. 1, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, extended through Aug. 25, most performances sold out last week, original production 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)

• Far From Heaven (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 7, reviewed here)

• The Weir (drama, PG-13, extended through Aug. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN ARLINGTON, VA.:

• Company (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Caucasian Chalk Circle (drama with music, PG-13, closes June 23, reviewed here)

“In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself.”
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

Virgil Thomson is interviewed in 1974 on CUNY-TV’s Day for Night:

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

“Let all Men know thee, but no man know thee thoroughly: Men freely ford that see the shallows.”
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

From 2005:

I left my toothbrush behind in my hotel room in Montgomery, and the spare in my Manhattan medicine cabinet proved to be an unpleasant shade of purple. Alas, not only is my bathroom decorated in sunny yellow and cornflower blue, but a Bonnard color lithograph hangs next to the door. Having gone to some trouble last year to track down a suitably blue toothbrush, I went back to the corner drugstore to look for something a bit more compatible with my décor. To my horror, all the brushes they now sell turn out to be vulgar, fat-handled implements that not only don’t match my towels but won’t even fit into my toothbrush holder….

Read the whole thing here.