Archives for September 2014

I thought it might be worth reminding you that I’ll be making a public appearance on Monday night as part of Project Shaw’s staged reading of George Bernard Shaw’s Village Wooing, a little-known comic two-hander written in 1933. I’ll be sharing the stage of Symphony Space with Jefferson Mays and J. Smith-Cameron, of whose fabulous talents regular theatergoers doubtless already aware. They’ll be doing all the acting, thank heavens. My sole function will be to read the stage directions out loud in my most mellifluous voice.

Symphony Space is at 95th Street and Broadway. The show starts at seven p.m. on Monday. To order tickets or for more information, go here.

“It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.”

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms

Jerry Jazz Musician, a web-based magazine out of Portland, Oregon, that describes itself as being “devoted to jazz and 20th-century America,” has just published a symposium that asks the following question: “What are 3 or 4 of your favorite jazz record albums of the 1970′s?” The participants include (among others) Michael Cuscuna, Eliane Elias, Gary Giddins, Bennie Maupin, Marc Myers, Tierney Sutton, and me. Not surprisingly, our choices ranged very widely.

To see what albums we picked, go here.

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:
• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Love Letters (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 1, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)
• This Is Our Youth (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fatal Weakness (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 26, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• Arms and the Man (comedy, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 18, reviewed here)
• When We Are Married (comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 26, reviewed here)

IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• American Buffalo (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• The Sea (black comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 26, closes Oct. 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• The Doctor’s Dilemma (serious comedy, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 3, reviewed here)
• Travesties (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 3, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• The Wayside Motor Inn (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 5, reviewed here)

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.”

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms

Martha Argerich plays two Chopin mazurkas, Op. 24/2 and Op. 41/2, on German TV in 1966:

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

“Sixty is not a bad age—unless in perspective, when no doubt it is contemplated by the majority of us with mixed feelings. It is a calm age; the game is practically over by then; and standing aside one begins to remember with a certain vividness what a fine fellow one used to be. I have observed that, by an amiable attention of Providence, most people at sixty begin to take a romantic view of themselves. Their very failures exhale a charm of peculiar potency. And indeed the hopes of the future are a fine company to live with, exquisite forms, fascinating if you like, but—so to speak—naked, stripped for a run. The robes of glamour are luckily the property of the immovable past which, without them, would sit, a shivery sort of thing, under the gathering shadows.”

Joseph Conrad, “The Inn of the Two Witches” (courtesy of Lance Mannion)

From 2004:

In Network, the American public is so hungry for the spin-free frankness of a seemingly honest man that it embraces a TV anchorman who goes off his rocker in the middle of a newscast. (That’s what makes the film so provocative, by the way. In the hands of a West Wing-type screenwriter, the anchorman would have been presented as a Christ-like figure, but Chayefsky leaves us in no possible doubt that Howard Beale really is off his rocker.) Imagine, then, a film about a present-day public figure who screws up in a big way, calls a press conference, admits his errors, and throws himself upon the mercy of the public….

Read the whole thing here.