Archives for 2014

My old friend Anne Kornblut took this snapshot of Mrs. T and me toward the end of last night’s Bradley Prize ceremony. I think it conveys pretty clearly how we were feeling:

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:
• Bullets Over Broadway (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, nearly all performances sold out last week, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, virtually 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, closes July 27, reviewed here)
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)
• Rocky (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• Juno (musical, PG-13, closes July 27, reviewed here)

IN GLENCOE, ILL.:
• The Dance of Death (drama, PG-13, closes Aug. 3, reviewed here)
• Days Like Today (musical, PG-13, extended through July 27, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• The Cripple of Inishmaan (serious comedy, PG-13, closes July 20, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Ayckbourn Ensemble (three serious comedies playing in rotating repertory, PG-13, closes June 29, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Casa Valentina (drama, PG-13, closes June 29, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• Damn Yankees (musical, G, reviewed here)

“In 1703, his Ode on Music was performed at Stationers’ Hall; and he wrote afterwards six cantatas, which were set to music by the greatest master of that time, and seemed intended to oppose or exclude the Italian opera, an exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.”

Samuel Johnson, “Hughes” (in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets)

From the 1937 feature film Moonlight Sonata, Ignacy Jan Paderewski performs Chopin’s Polonaise in A-Flat Major, Op. 53. He was born in 1860, served as Poland’s first Prime Minister in 1919, made his final recordings in the year that Moonlight Sonata was released, and died in 1941:

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

“Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity.”

Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

From 2004:

Since I’m both a musician and an intellectual, I’ve scrutinized my tastes closely and analytically enough to have isolated certain musical “tricks” that I find especially appealing. I know exactly what it is that I like about, say, Gabriel Fauré’s bass lines, or the harmonies in the songs of Jimmy Van Heusen. To be sure, I can’t tell you why these devices tickle my fancy. I can only apply Eddie Condon’s empirical test of musical quality: “As it enters the ear, does it come in like broken glass or does it come in like honey?” (Philip Larkin, who when not writing great poetry was also a part-time jazz critic, swore by Condon’s Law.) But at least I know what I like, and I have enough scientific knowledge to suspect that it will someday be possible to move in certain cases from what to why….

Read the whole thing here.

“But there is an unholy fascination in systematic noise. He did not flee from it incontinently, as one might have expected him to do. He remained, astonished at himself for remaining, since nothing could have been more repulsive to his tastes, more painful to his senses, and, so to speak, more contrary to his genius, than this rude exhibition of vigour. The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy. One felt as if witnessing a deed of violence; and that impression was so strong that it seemed marvellous to see the people sitting so quietly on their chairs, drinking so calmly out of their glasses, and giving no signs of distress, anger, or fear. Heyst averted his gaze from the unnatural spectacle of their indifference.”

Joseph Conrad, Victory (courtesy of Christopher Strawn)

Mrs. T and I drove up to Barrington Stage Company on Sunday for the opening night of its new production of Kiss Me, Kate, which has inspired me to repost my 2011 rewrite of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”:

Turn off your cellphone,
Start powering it down.
Turn off your cellphone
Or your fellow men will frown.
If it rings at the end of The Crucible,
All the ushers will treat you as gooseable.
If you chat when you ought to be si-o-lent,
Then assume that your date will get violent.
We’re all sick of the buzzing and ringing
That detracts from the acting and singing.
Turn off your cellphone
Or get out of town.