Archives for September 18, 2015

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I write about a Chicago revival of The Rainmaker and the New York transfer of a very important regional production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here’s an excerpt.

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Fifteen years after his death, N. Richard Nash is forgotten save for “The Rainmaker,” his perennially popular romantic comedy about a shy spinster who falls for a con man who promises to put an end to a summertime drought—for a price. Like Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” “The Rainmaker” started out in 1953 as a “Philco Television Playhouse” live-TV drama, had a shortish Broadway run and went on to become a successful film and a regional-theater staple. Along the way it was also turned into a hit musical called “110 in the Shade” that was excellently revived on Broadway in 2007. The original play, though, hasn’t been produced there since 1999, and I wondered what Chicago’s American Blues Theater, which did a splendid job with “Side Man” earlier this season, would make of a show for which few critics now have much use. Most latter-day reviews of “The Rainmaker” dismiss it as dated. Why, then, is it still so beloved?

The answer is as direct as the play itself: “The Rainmaker” tells you what you want to hear about human nature, and does so without once putting a dramatic foot wrong. Cast it well and stage it efficiently and the results will disarm all but the most cinder-hearted of cynics—and American Blues Theater has done it right as…well, rain. Not only are ABT’s seven actors beautifully suited to their roles, but Sarah Ross’ triple-interior set makes how’d-she-do-that use of every square inch of the 90-seat theater’s stage….

“The Rainmaker” takes place on a prairie ranch where it hasn’t rained for weeks. The Curry family is wilting under the heat, and Lizzie (Linsey Page Morton), the daughter, is feeling it all the more powerfully because she’s come to the reluctant conclusion that she’s not pretty enough to snag a husband. Bill Starbuck (Steve Key), a traveling rainmaker with a smooth line of talk, begs to differ. Sure, he’s a phony, but he’s a true believer in the power of optimism to water dry souls, and in the process of mulcting the Currys out of $100, he gives Lizzie something more precious than a thunderstorm.

What is it? You can probably guess, but you won’t be quite right, which is part of the charm of “The Rainmaker”: It doesn’t cheat the audience by being blatantly obvious…

Eric Tucker’s five-actor Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” has transferred to an off-Broadway house, the Pearl Theatre Company. Here’s part of what I wrote about it in this space back in June: “Not since Peter Brook’s now-legendary 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company version has there been so radically original or mysteriously poetic a production of the greatest of all stage comedies….”

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To read my review of The Rainmaker, go here.

To read my review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, go here.

A scene from the 1956 film version of The Rainmaker, starring Burt Lancaster in the title role:

I arrived at my New York apartment last night after a longish stretch of time on the road and found a pile of unopened mail on the dining-room table. Most of it was instantaneously disposable—catalogues, uninteresting press releases, unwanted review copies—but no sooner did I see an inch-thick package from my theatrical agent than I pushed everything else aside and tore it open. It contained, as I expected, ten finished copies of the newly released acting edition of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, forwarded to me from the publisher, the illustrous Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

The fourth page of the script tells the improbable story of Satchmo in three paragraphs whose just-the-facts-ma’am language conceals as much as it reveals:

The world premiere of SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF was presented by Shakespeare & Company (Tony Simotes, Artistic Director; Nicholas J. Puma, Jr., Managing Director) in Lenox, Massachusetts, and Long Wharf Theatre (Gordon Edelstein, Artistic Director; Joshua Borenstein, Managing Director) in New Haven, Connecticut.

SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF premiered Off-Broadway at the Westside Theater Upstairs, New York, NY, on March 4, 2014. It was produced by Long Wharf Theatre and Shakespeare & Company; and Scott & Roxanne Bok, Roz & Jerry Meyer, Karen Pritzker, Ronald Guttman, Shadowcatcher Entertainment, John LaMattina, Joey Parnes, S.D. Wagner, and John Johnson. It was directed by Gordon Edelstein; the set design was by Lee Savage; the costume design was by Ilona Somogyi; the lighting design was by Kevin Adams; the sound design was by John Gromada; and the production stage manager was Linda Marvel. It starred John Douglas Thompson.

SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF was written at the Winter Park Institute of Rollins College in 2010 and extensively revised at the MacDowell Colony in 2012. A workshop performance of the first version of the play was presented by Rollins College in 2011, directed by the author and starring Dennis Neal. The first full production of this version was presented at Orlando Shakespeare Theatre in 2011, directed by Rus Blackwell and starring Dennis Neal.

What it reveals, to be sure, is significant enough. In addition to DPS, everyone mentioned in those three paragraphs—every person and every institution—dared to take a costly chance on an untested playwright whose “credentials” were dubious in the extreme. A new play by a drama critic? Who was I trying to kid? But I was serious, and so were they…and now I hold the proof in my hands. Not only has Satchmo at the Waldorf been published, but it’s been staged in Orlando, Lenox, New Haven, Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles, with more stagings set for this season in Chicago, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, and West Palm Beach—the last of which, even more improbably, I’ll be directing myself.

What does that dry language conceal? Vast amounts of hope, fear, trembling, ecstasy, and—above all—unremitting work. It’s true that I wrote the first draft of Satchmo in less than a week, but that was in 2010, and I did it for a lark. And what happened between now and then? A week’s worth of fun turned into a five-year stretch of hard labor. Joyful, too: I wouldn’t trade an hour of it for anything in the world. But it’s an understatement to say that I had no idea what I was getting into when I sat down in Winter Park one January morning and typed the first words of the first draft of Satchmo at the Waldorf.

So how do I feel today? Grateful without limit—and ready to start kicking the can down the road again.

I spent the week just past in Chicago, reviewing four shows for The Wall Street Journal and meeting with Charles Newell, the artistic director of the University of Chicago’s Court Theatre, who will be staging a new production of Satchmo in July. We talked about casting, looked at a preliminary model of the set, and discussed his ideas in detail. Rehearsals start on December 8. I’ll be there, fully prepared to roll up my sleeves and immerse myself yet again in the endless but blissful work that goes into getting the curtain up come opening night.

I can’t wait.

Suzanne Farrell, Adam Lüders, and New York City Ballet dance the last section of George Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes, set to the waltzes from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. This performance was originally telecast by PBS on October 10, 1983. Farrell danced the role for the last time on the night of her retirement from the stage in 1989:

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

“Unless one is a moron, one always dies unsure of one’s own value and that of one’s works.”

Gustave Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, September 19, 1852 (trans. Francis Steegmuller)