Archives for January 2016

“Maybe I’m a masochist, but I can’t seem to write anything but plays. I can’t write movies or television. I’m caught, I’m trapped in this old medium. It’s archaic, it’s restrictive beyond belief. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with contemporary American life. I feel like some medieval stone cutter, hacking away in the dark corner of an abandoned monastery, while everyone else is outside, having fun in the Renaissance. And when I finish, a few brooding inquisitors shuffle gloomily in, take a quick look, and say, ‘That’s not it. That’s not what we want at all!’”

A. R. Gurney, The Cocktail Hour

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, many performances sold out last week, too complex for small children, reviewed here)
• China Doll (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Flick (serious comedy, PG-13, too long for young people with limited attention spans, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Spring Awakening (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 24, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Sylvia (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, closes Jan. 17, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• A Wilder Christmas (drama, G, too complicated for children, reviewed here)

“Though a sense of humor was generally spoken of with approval, and a man was pitied for lacking one, Abner supposed that he must lack one himself. When he saw a sense of humor in action, it always seemd to Abner a lucky thing, since somebody had to do the work of an unappreciative world, that a certain number of people could be relied on to lack it.”

James Gould Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust

Miami City Ballet performs George Balanchine’s Square Dance, choreographed in 1957 to the music of Corelli and Vivaldi. This performance was originally telecast on PBS in 2012:

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

“Altogether without malice, indeed with the kindliest anxiety, older people often seemed to feel that, just so long as they implied that you were today improved, you would not mind hearing, and might profit by the reminder, that once when you were younger you were everyone’s laughing stock.”

James Gould Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust

Barry Shabaka Henley, the star of the Court Theatre’s upcoming Chicago production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, talks about why he decided to appear in my play:

Performances start on Thursday. To order tickets or for more information, go here.

UPDATE: Chris Jones, the drama critic of the Chicago Tribune, included Satchmo at the Waldorf in his top-10 list of “especially promising” shows. Read the whole thing here.

From 2006:

I’m a childless singleton who spends most of his nights on the town and hasn’t held a nine-to-five job for years. You might mistake me for a wastrel if I didn’t work so hard, and you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t know me fairly well.

It is, I suppose, an odd life, and it doesn’t always please me. Sometimes I wish I had a job that I could put behind me at day’s end, or that I were comfortably ensconced in a nice suburban ranch house with a loving wife and a child or two. This dissatisfaction has grown more marked in recent years, though never overwhelmingly so: I know how lucky I am, and how well my catch-as-catch-can lifestyle suits my temperament. The trouble is that it isn’t nearly so well suited to the diminished energies of old age, and more and more I wonder whether I may have doomed myself to the fearful fate of Aesop’s grasshopper, who fell on lean times when he finally outlived his good luck….

Read the whole thing here.

“‘When you get to be my age,’ he said, ‘you have a feeling, and the vainest feeling in the world, that you’d give a lot to have known some of the things you know now when you were young. You wouldn’t have listened to them. But that doesn’t stop you from wanting to tell younger people about them.’”

James Gould Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust