Archives for May 2014

“There are men here and there to whom the whole of life is like an after-dinner hour with a cigar; easy, pleasant, empty, perhaps enlivened by some fable of strife to be forgotten–before the end is told–even if there happens to be any end to it.”
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

Charles Laughton reads the Biblical parable of the Burning Fiery Furnace on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1960. Laughton’s original TV performance of the parable, telecast by Sullivan in 1949, inspired him to spend the rest of his life touring in a one-man stage show in which he read from the Bible and other works of great literature:

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

“They wanted facts. Facts! They demanded facts from him, as if facts could explain anything.”
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on revivals of two American shows from the Fifties, William Inge’s A Loss of Roses (done by the Peccadillo Theater Company) and Damn Yankees (done by Goodspeed Musicals). Here’s an excerpt.
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William Inge’s half-remembered plays are finally making a slow but sure comeback. Witness the Peccadillo Theater Company’s new Off-Broadway revival of “A Loss of Roses,” which broke his four-show winning streak and plunged him into a creative slump that led to his suicide. This is the first time that “A Loss of Roses,” now remembered only for having provided Warren Beatty with his lone Broadway role, has been staged in New York since it closed there in 1959 after 25 performances. Judging by the impressive 2013 TACT/The Actors Company Theatre revival of “Natural Affection,” which followed “A Loss of Roses” and met with a similarly disastrous fate, I thought it likely that his fifth play would also prove to be better than its reputation. Sure enough, “A Loss of Roses” is a strong and serious piece of work, and Dan Wackerman’s understated staging helps reclaim a fine play that should never have slipped from sight.
Unlike “Natural Affection,” which takes place in a Chicago apartment, “A Loss of Roses” is set in what you might call Ingeland, the same sort of nondescript Depression-era Midwestern village in which its author grew up and where “Come Back, Little Sheba,” “Picnic,” “Bus Stop” and “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” also take place. It’s the home of Helen and Kenny (Deborah Hedwall and Ben Kahre), a widowed mother and her 21-year-old son who live together uneventfully but uneasily. Something is bound to blow, and it does so when Lila (Jean Lichty), who left town to become a small-time actor, returns to visit her old friend Helen, thereby arousing in Kenny rumblings of lust that can’t help but lead to anguish.
The inevitable crisis is a trifle schematic, but Inge sketches it with his usual quiet intensity, and his sad characters, like the dusty town in which they live, lack nothing in believability. Your heart will ache for them, especially Helen, who can’t figure out how to do right by her troubled son and whom Ms. Hedwall plays with simple grace….
“Damn Yankees” isn’t a great musical, but it can be great fun when done really well. Goodspeed Musicals has filled the bill with a snappy staging in which Stephen Mark Lukas and Angel Reda are wonderfully well cast as Joe Hardy, who sells his soul in order to become a major-league ballplayer, and Lola, the demonic temptress whose job is to keep him from exercising the escape clause in his deal with the devil (David Beach).
Joe DiPietro (“Memphis”) has rewritten the original George Abbott-Douglass Wallop book, turning the once-hapless, now-defunct Washington Senators into the Boston Red Sox, who were having a comparably tough time of it in 1952, the year when “Damn Yankees” is set. The switch is neatly managed…
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Read the whole thing here.

“It may have been that worst of all possible things, a comedy in which the company shrieked with laughter during rehearsals. Laughter is a very serious business, a science. The important thing is to give the audience pleasure, not to have pleasure yourself.”
Simon Callow, Orson Welles: The Road to Xanadu

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:

• Act One (drama, G, too long for children, closes June 15, reviewed here)

• Bullets Over Broadway (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, virtually all performances sold out last week, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

• Casa Valentina (drama, PG-13, extended through June 29, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

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

• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Of Mice and Men (drama, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

• A Raisin in the Sun (drama, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Rocky (musical, G/PG-13, 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 IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Henry IV, Parts One and Two (Shakespeare, PG-13, playing in rotating repertory, closes June 7 and 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN WESTPORT, CONN.:

• A Song at Twilight (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“A celebrity has a negative or an inverted sense of hearing; he can hear his name not being mentioned at forty paces.”
Alva Johnston and Fred Smith, “How to Raise a Child: The Education of Orson Welles, Who Didn’t Need It” (Saturday Evening Post, Jan. 27, 1940)

From a British Pathé 1930 newsreel, Charles Laughton explains how he makes himself up to appear on stage in Edgar Wallace’s On the Spot, in which he played a character based on Al Capone:

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