Archives for July 2013

I started this blog on July 14, 2003, ten years ago. (This was the very first posting.)

Back then the word “blog” was still comparatively unfamiliar to the public at large, and there were, so far as I know, fewer than a dozen blogs that dealt solely or primarily with cultural matters, none of which was written by a critic who published regularly in the national media. Now there are far more than I can count.

Many, perhaps most of the artblogs that were launched in the early years of the twenty-first century have since fallen by the wayside, but “About Last Night” is still here. I’ve posted something–if only an almanac entry–every weekday for a decade. Sometimes it’s a burden, but mostly it’s a pleasure.

I tip my hat to Laura “Our Girl” Demanski and Carrie Frye, both of whom have shared this space with me in the past, much to my delight. Of late, alas, they’ve become too busy to blog (Laura is editing a magazine and Carrie is writing a book). When and if their lives change, they’ll be welcome back, and then some.

I don’t feel like going on at length about the tenth anniversary of “About Last Night” precisely because it is still here, a fixed point on the horizon of cyberspace. I do, however, want to point you to a few of my favorite postings. Some of them are about art, others about life, most about the intersection between the two. All are personal, most very much so. In time I hope to spin them, and others like them, into a book.

For the moment, though, I invite you to look back with me over a decade of uninterrupted blogging. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride:

• From 2003: Among the professionals and Kind of omnipresent

• From 2004: Nothing to do and A wedding

• From 2005: Time off for good behavior

• From 2006: In a strange land

• From 2007: Among the clouds and Sursum corda

• From 2008: Sacred to the memory

• From 2009: I shook hands with Piney Brown and How it felt

• From 2010: Lucky man and Night thoughts on Jack Benny

• From 2011: One is a wanderer and Time present and time past

• From 2012: Home from the sea and Beloved that pilgrimage

• From 2013: Blossoms in the breeze

A complete performance of the original version of George Balanchine’s Apollo, originally telecast on the CBC in 1960. The score is by Igor Stravinsky. The principal dancers are Jacques d’Amboise as Apollo, Jillana as Calliope, Francia Russell as Polyhymnia, and Diana Adams as Terpsichore:

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

“A writer–and, I believe, generally all persons–must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.”
Jorge Luis Borges, Twenty Conversations with Borges

In today’s Wall Street Journal I give thumbs up to a pair of out-of-town shows, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s revival of Noël Coward’s Fallen Angels and the premiere in Chicago of Keith Huff’s Big Lake Big City. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Everybody likes Noël Coward’s plays, but everybody does the same ones. “Private Lives” and “Blithe Spirit” get done all the time, “Present Laughter” and “Design for Living” somewhat less often, with “Hay Fever” popping up on occasion. Fine plays all, but it’s time for a change, and the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey has filled the bill with a top-flight revival of “Fallen Angels,” which is at least as funny today as it was in 1925.
Julia and Jane (Julie Jesneck and Melissa Miller), the best-friend heroines, are married ladies who find their oh-so-respectable husbands (Jeffrey M. Bender and Ned Noyes) to be a bit on the dull side. According to Julia, this is a good thing: “We’re not in love a bit now, you know….It’s so uncomfortable–passion.” Maybe so, but her conviction is put to the test when Maurice (Michael Sharon), a Pepé Le Pew-type Frenchman with whom both ladies once had premarital flings, pays them a visit after a protracted absence, thereby triggering general mayhem.
Coward himself cast a cool eye on “Fallen Angels”: “It was extremely light and needed a stronger last act…I cannot honestly regard it as one of my very best comedies, but it is gay and light-hearted.” Truth or humblebrag? I know what he meant about the last act, but stage “Fallen Angels” with sharp timing and sufficient zest and the slight loss of climactic momentum will go unnoticed. In any case, you’ll laugh so hard at the second act, an extended drunk scene for Julia and Jane, that you’ll welcome the respite. Matthew Arbour, the director, has got the timing nailed…
Keith Huff, a Chicago playwright who also writes for “Mad Men,” made it to Broadway in 2009 with “A Steady Rain,” a two-man play about a pair of crooked beat cops that was mounted as a vehicle–and a powerfully potent one, too–for Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman. I was so impressed by “A Steady Rain” that I resolved to seek out Mr. Huff’s next play, which is what brought me to Chicago for the premiere of “Big Lake Big City,” a black farce about a police detective (Philip R. Smith) whose wife (Katherine Cunningham), an ex-hooker turned dental technician, has taken a shine to a pathologist at the Cook County Morgue (Kareem Bandealy) whose own spouse (Beth Lacke) is a celebrity shrink and anti-death-penalty advocate with whom the detective in question has lately crossed swords.
Got that? If not, don’t worry. Part of the point of “Big Lake Big City” is that it moves so fast that you have to scramble to keep up, and David Schwimmer (yes, the “Friends” guy) and Sibyl Wickersheimer, the director and set designer, have gone to much trouble to make sure that the show roars down the track like a bullet train….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us–and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle or amaze with itself, but with its subject.”
John Keats, letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, Feb. 3, 1818

The indispensable Maria Popova recently pointed to a cache of “seven-word autobiographies of famous writers, artists, musicians, and philosophers.” Some are clever, some coy, some smug. (Joan Didion: “Seven words do not yet define me.”)
I decided to play and came up with the following:
In flux. Musician, critic, biographer, librettist, playwright….
Not especially clever–except, perhaps, for the ellipsis–but at least it’s accurate. So far.

Here are the books I brought with me to read (or reread) on my trip to California and Oregon:
• Three sets of bound galleys: Stanley Crouch’s Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, Chuck Haddix’ Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker, and Alisa Solomon’s Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof
• Larry Birnbaum’s Before Elvis: The Prehistory of Rock ‘n’ Roll
• Jack O’Brien’s Jack Be Nimble: The Accidental Education of an Unintentional Director
• Brian Priestley’s Chasin’ the Bird: The Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker
• Tom Wolfe’s Back to Blood

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, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all 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, extended through Oct. 9, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes 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)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• The Nance (play with music, PG-13, closes Aug. 11, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• A Picture of Autumn (drama, G, too serious for children, closes July 27, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING SOON IN GLENCOE, ILL.:

• The Liar (comedy, PG-13, extended through Aug. 11, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• Tartuffe (comedy, PG-13, closes July 21, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:

• On the Town (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)