Archives for May 2014

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

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, closes June 15, 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)

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 SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• The Heir Apparent (verse comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

“His refusal to accept the realities of this world, babyish as it may be, compels us to take another look at this world and reflect upon our motives for accepting it. The drunkard’s suffering may be self-inflicted, but it is real suffering and reminds us of all the suffering in this world which we prefer not to think abut because, from the moment we accept this world, we acquired our share of responsibility for everything that happens in it.”
W.H. Auden, “The Prince’s Dog”

The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress, a 1944 War Department propaganda film directed by William Wyler. Some of the aerial combat footage was personally shot by Wyler. The uncredited musical score is by Gail Kubik:

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

“She had given him that existential certainty, that confidence in his own judgement, which had allowed him to live his life and not merely inhabit it.”
Michael Ignatieff, Isaiah Berlin: A Life

From 2004:

I came home from Broadway a little while ago and was too wired to go to bed, so I turned on the TV, started channel-surfing, and suddenly found myself watching a snippet from The Sound of Jazz, the famous 1957 show still widely (and rightly) regarded as the finest jazz program ever telecast. Ben Webster was playing a slow blues in F, with Gerry Mulligan nodding in the background, and as the camera panned to Billie Holiday, I realized that the song was “Fine and Mellow” and that the next face I saw would be Lester Young, sick unto death…

Read the whole thing here.

“If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict–and of tragedy–can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition.”
Isaiah Berlin, “Two Concepts of Liberty”

The New York Drama Critics’ Circle voted today on its annual awards. They are:
• BEST PLAY: The Night Alive, by Conor McPherson
• BEST AMERICAN PLAY: All the Way, by Robert Schenkkan (I voted for Family Furniture, by A.R. Gurney)
• BEST MUSICAL: Fun Home, by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori (I voted for Nobody Loves You, by Itamar Moses and Gaby Alter)
We also voted to award special citations to the Shakespeare’s Globe productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III and playwright-director Richard Nelson and the company of The Apple Family Plays (I didn’t vote for either citation).
The links are to my Wall Street Journal reviews of the shows.