Archives for May 2015

Liza with a “Z”: A Concert for Television, an hour-long TV concert by Liza Minnelli, produced by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb, staged by Fosse, and conducted by Marvin Hamlisch. The concert, filmed at New York’s Lyceum Theatre, was originally telecast on NBC in 1972:

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

“One of the basic human rights is to make fun of people. It is now threatened.”

Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I commence my summer travels with a trip to the suburbs of Philadelphia, where I saw a rare and excellent professional revival of Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. Here’s an excerpt.

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Neil Simon’s first play, “Come Blow Your Horn,” opened on Broadway in 1961, the year of Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” and Eugène Ionesco’s “Rhinoceros.” Back then and for a long time afterward, it was taken for granted that Mr. Simon was small potatoes by comparison with the giants of his day, a cobbler of flyweight farces for the tourist trade. Thirty years later, though, he won a Pulitzer Prize for “Lost in Yonkers,” which was cited as ”a mature work by an enduring (and often undervalued) American playwright,” and it looked like he’d finally inched his way into the pantheon.

“Lost in Yonkers,” however, was Mr. Simon’s last full-fledged Broadway hit. Nowadays most top regional companies steer clear of his plays, and you won’t find many drama critics who are still willing to make the case for the enduring value of his work….

Now People’s Light & Theatre Company, one of my favorite East Coast drama troupes, has taken on “Biloxi Blues,” the second panel of the triptych of autobiographical plays (the others are “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Broadway Bound”) in which Mr. Simon sought to puzzle out the meaning of his journey from Depression-era scuffling to world-wide celebrity. The original production opened on Broadway in 1985 and ran for 524 performances, but professional stagings have since been increasingly hard to find. This one, directed by Samantha Bellomo, makes a strong case for a play that, despite certain flaws, is both consistently amusing and, like “Lost in Yonkers,” full of unexpected stretches of harsh darkness.

In “Biloxi Blues,” Eugene Morris Jerome (James Michael Lambert), Mr. Simon’s (barely) fictionalized young alter ego, goes into the Army Air Force in 1943 and is duly dispatched to the fever swamps of Mississippi, there to undergo basic training at the hands of a sergeant (Pete Pryor) who acts tough but turns out to be slightly cracked….

If you’re looking to be entertained, People’s Light’s “Biloxi Blues” will oblige you with room to spare. If you want more, though, you won’t be disappointed….

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Read the whole thing here.

A scene from the 1988 film version of Biloxi Blues, starring Matthew Broderick (who created his role on stage) and Christopher Walken:

In today’s “Sightings” column I write in praise of George Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody. Here’s an excerpt.

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Life’s hardest lessons are often learned most easily when taught with a smile. Crash Davis, the over-the-hill catcher in “Bull Durham,” taught his girlfriend, a believer in reincarnation, a priceless lesson in the vanity of human wishes by asking her this teasing question: “How come in former lifetimes, everybody is someone famous?” George Grossmith, the author of “The Diary of a Nobody,” put his finger on a similarly hard truth—most of us, no matter how well we may think of ourselves, are unimportant to the rest of the world—with equally diverting results.

Grossmith’s book, published in 1892 with deadpan illustrations by Weedon Grossmith, the author’s brother, is a fictional chronicle of the life of Charles Pooter, an obscure London clerk. He begins by asking the reader a rhetorical question worthy of Crash Davis: “Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see—because I do not happen to be a ‘Somebody’—why my diary should not be interesting.” What follows is a brilliant one-joke comedy in which an infinitely and ingeniously varied number of changes are rung on the same note. In addition to being a “nobody,” Pooter is humorless and self-important—yet he thinks himself a great wit and a man of consequence. As a result, he is forever falling victim to comical embarrassments produced by his inability to see himself as he really is.

What I find most striking about “The Diary of a Nobody,” though, is the cumulative pathos of Pooter’s serial humiliations, with which it is impossible not to empathize. Yes, he’s both preposterous and pitiful—but as you chortle at him, you’re likely to ask yourself whether you might look just as ridiculous to the rest of the world….

Grossmith, by the way, was better known in his own time not as a writer but as the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company’s patter-song specialist, in which capacity he created the role of Ko-Ko in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.” He is explicitly portrayed as a morphine addict in “Topsy-Turvy,” Mike Leigh’s 1999 film about the making of “The Mikado,” and the portrayal is based on 19th-century backstage gossip that appears to have been accurate. Because he died in 1912 without making any recordings, we can “know” him only from “Topsy-Turvy” and, far more important, from “The Diary of a Nobody.” It’s a minor masterpiece of satirical comedy, and like many other such masterpieces—as well as, one suspects, its drug-dependent author—it is also very, very sad….

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Read the whole thing here.

To read The Diary of a Nobody on line, go here.

A scene from Topsy-Turvy in which George Grossmith (played in the film by Martin Savage) sings “Behold the Lord High Executioner!” at the first performance of The Mikado::

“Love of power in people is often associated with hatred of authority.”

Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook

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:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, nearly all performances sold out, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out, reviewed here)
• Hand to God (black comedy, X, absolutely not for children or prudish adults, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, all performances sold out, reviewed here)
• It’s Only a Play (comedy, PG-13/R, closes June 7, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• On the Town (musical, G, contains double entendres that will not be intelligible to children, reviewed here)
• On the Twentieth Century (musical, G/PG-13, nearly all performances sold out, extended through July 19, contains very mild sexual content, reviewed here)
• The Visit (serious musical, PG-13, far too dark and disturbing for children, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, ideal for bright children, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Grounded (play, PG-13/R, explicit sexual references, closes May 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN BALTIMORE:
• After the Revolution (drama, G/PG-13, unsuitable for children, closes May 17, reviewed here)

“One of the great points about people who have an eye to the main chance is that their interest in one cannot fail to be acceptable, because it is of necessity flattering.”

Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook

Buddy Rich and his big band play “Love for Sale” on Danish TV in 1968:

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