Archives for 2014

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked.”

Steve Jobs, Stanford University commencement address (2005)

Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Philharmonic perform the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony:

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)
• Matilda (musical, G, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, some performances sold out last week, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• 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)
• The Sea (black comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 26, closes Oct. 12, 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 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 IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• The Seagull (drama, G/PG-13, closes Sept. 20, reviewed here)

“It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”

Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind and Other Aphorisms

Elmore Leonard wasn’t a great writer, but he was, at his best and within his limits, quite exceptionally good. Moreover, he was never better than when writing about how men and women relate to one another, an area of life with which many, perhaps most male thriller writers are variously uncomfortable.

I’ve been rereading Unknown Man No. 89, one of the four novels reprinted in the Library of America’s first collection of Leonard’s work, and ran across this passage. It seems to me to describe just about perfectly what it feels like to be with a romantic partner whom you like very much but with whom you nonetheless can’t quite imagine spending the rest of your life:

She was all right. She tried a little too hard—like someone who didn’t have an ear or a sense of timing trying to be funny—but there was a lot of girl there in Rita.

That nails it, don’t you think?

Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic perform the “Scene d’amour” cue from Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo:

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

“It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.”

H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques

I’m pleased—thrilled, in fact—to announce that Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, will receive its West Coast premiere in the spring of 2015 at the brand-new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, California, which opened a year ago next month. This is a remounting of the off-Broadway production, starring John Douglas Thompson and directed by Gordon Edelstein. Satchmo will open there on May 26 and run through June 7.

For more information, go here.