Archives for February 2016

Mezz Mezzrow is one of those fascinating, exceedingly odd figures in jazz history about whom I could write instructively and at length if I felt so moved. Alas, I don’t, at least not today, so I’ll leave it to Wikipedia to briefly tell his story. Suffice it for now to say that Mezzrow wasn’t quite the worst clarinetist in the world, that he is widely and plausibly believed to have introduced Louis Armstrong to marijuana in 1928, and that (yes, I’m really going somewhere with this) he wrote a self-aggrandizing but nonetheless immensely readable autobiography called Really the Blues, originally published in 1946 and newly reprinted by New York Review Books, that I found altogether invaluable back when I was writing Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.

The reason why I bring him up now is that I ran across this passage, about which I’d completely forgotten, while rereading Really the Blues over the weekend. The date is 1926, the “Dave” referred to in the first sentence is the great jazz drummer Dave Tough, the Austin High Gang was a group of young white jazz musicians from Chicago that also included Tough and Bud Freeman, and “muta” and “muggles” are, of course, marijuana, of which Mezzrow was a celebrated dealer:

It was little Dave who gave me a knockdown to George Jean Nathan and H.L. Mencken, two guys who could mess with the King’s English too. Dave used to read The American Mercury from cover to cover, especially the section called “Americana” where all the bluenoses, bigots, and two-faced killjoys in this land-of-the-free got a going-over they never forgot. That Mercury really got to be the Austin High Gang’s Bible. It looked to us like Mencken was yelling the same message in his magazine that we were trying to get across in our music; his words were practically lyrics to our hot jazz. I dug him all the way, because The Mercury gave you the same straight-seeing perspective that muta does—to me that hard-cutting magazine was a load of literary muggles.

How could I possibly have failed to include that paragraph in my Mencken biography? Ah, well, you can’t think of everything….

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Tommy Ladnier and His Orchestra play “Weary Blues” in 1938. Ladnier is the trumpeter, and the performance also features Sidney Bechet on clarinet and soprano saxophone and Mezz Mezzrow on clarinet:

The French composer Darius Milhaud makes a rare TV appearance in which he talks about jazz in the Twenties, followed by a performance of his jazz-influenced composition Caramel Mou, Shimmy pour Jazz-band, Op. 68, written in 1920. An English translation of the text is read by Madeleine Milhaud, the composer’s wife. Dave Brubeck, who studied with Milhaud, is also seen briefly in this clip, which is drawn from a documentary originally telecast by KQED-TV in 1965. The actual performance took place at Mills College in 1963:

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

“In 1962 I was asked to talk about myself at an American college. I recalled my parents, who were so understanding, my wife, my son and his children, who have brought me nothing but joy. In short, I said that I was a happy man. At that moment I sensed general consternation—almost panic—in the hall. Some students came to talk to me after the conference: how had I been able to create in these conditions? An artist needs to suffer! I replied that I had managed to arrange things differently.”

Darius Milhaud, My Happy Life

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two New York shows, Smart People and the Broadway transfer of The Humans. Here’s an excerpt.

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Lydia R. Diamond’s “Stick Fly,” which made it to Broadway in 2011, showed us a slice of American life, the black upper class, that is scarcely ever portrayed on stage. It didn’t quite work, but the best parts were so fine that I’ve been longing to see something else by Ms. Diamond ever since. Now Second Stage Theatre has mounted the New York premiere of “Smart People,” her latest play, and loud, long cheers are definitely in order: I have no doubt that it marks the decisive emergence of a distinctive voice in American theater.

“Smart People” is set in and around Harvard. The characters are Valerie (Tessa Thompson), a light-skinned black stage actor who would be struggling were she not the scion of a well-heeled family; Jackson (Mahershala Ali), a dark-skinned black surgical intern who runs an inner-city clinic on the side; Ginny (Anne Son) a Chinese-Japanese-American psychologist-professor who studies “race and identity among Asian-American women”; and Brian (Joshua Jackson), a white neuroscientist who believes he’s proved that white people are biologically predisposed to racism. All four are very smart, very attractive, very smug, very prickly, and competitively progressive, by which I mean that they preface every other sentence they utter by assuring you of the impeccability of their liberalism: “My politics are such that I can make that joke. With people who know me.” They are, in short, comfy inhabitants of the academic monoculture—but not nearly as comfy, or as pristinely free of prejudice, as they suppose themselves to be.

At bottom “Smart People” is a sharp-edged satire, and Ms. Diamond’s ear for the foibles of her subjects is so precisely tuned as to make “Clybourne Park” and “Disgraced” sound downright tone-deaf….

Stephen Karam’s “The Humans” stirred up a huge fuss when it ran off Broadway last year. Now that I’ve caught the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Broadway transfer, I can’t quite figure out what all the shouting was about. It’s a kitchen-sink family drama about a Thanksgiving dinner gone wrong, the sort of play that appears to have been written according to an outdated version of what I think of as the Social Issues Checklist. (Dementia? Check. Middle-class unemployment? Check. 9/11? Check. Wait a minute—9/11?)

To be sure, “The Humans” is passably well made, or would be were it not for the way in which the author stirs up expectations of a spookily melodramatic coda on which he fails to deliver, but none of the characters says or does anything that isn’t perfectly obvious…

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To read my review of Smart People, go here.

To read my review of The Humans, go here.

Lydia R. Diamond talks about the writing of Smart People:

George Hearn sings Stephen Sondheim’s “Epiphany” in the 1982 telecast of the original Broadway production of Sweeney Todd, directed by Harold Prince and remounted in Los Angeles. Hearn had replaced Len Cariou in the title role on Broadway:

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

“He that grows old without religious hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper, and where he finds only new gradations of anguish and precipices of horror.”

Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 69 (November 13, 1750, courtesy of Patrick Kurp)

The Court Theatre’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf closed on Sunday. Barry Shabaka Henley’s final performance was, by all accounts, a knockout. Meanwhile, the American Conservatory Theatre’s remounting of the off-Broadway production of Satchmo has now transferred to TheatreWorks in Colorado Springs, where it opens tonight.

Would that I could have been in Chicago on Sunday or could be in Colorado tonight, but I was in Florida on Sunday, and on Wednesday morning I flew from there to New York to see two shows, the New York premiere of Lydia R. Diamond’s Smart People and the Broadway transfer of Stephen Karam’s The Humans. Two shows in one day is a bit much for me—especially when I have to get up at five in the morning in order to catch a plane to see them—but I did what I had to do, and today I am, so far as I can tell, none the worse for wear. I still have one more New York show to catch, Forest Whitaker’s Broadway debut in Eugene O’Neill’s Hughie, after which I’ll return to Florida and Mrs. T.

Needless to say, I haven’t been in Florida for pleasure. Not only have I been reviewing shows there, but on Friday I had my first face-to-face production meeting for Palm Beach Dramaworks’ upcoming production of Satchmo, which I’ll be directing and about which you’ll be hearing much more in due course. Among other things, I got a look at the preliminary model for Michael Amico’s set, which is always, as I have now learned from
experience, a hugely exciting moment. Of course I knew that the production was real—I signed the contract a few weeks ago—but you know it’s real when you see what it’s going to look like.

In addition to all this frenzied activity, I wrote the first draft of a new play over the weekend. I can’t say anything more about it for the moment, but it looks like something may come of it. Watch this space for details.

And now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got to write Friday’s Wall Street Journal review of the shows I saw yesterday. Never a dull moment around this shop.

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, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, most 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, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Prodigal Son (drama, PG-13, extended through March 27, reviewed here)
• Sense & Sensibility (serious romantic comedy, G, remounting of 2014 off-Broadway production, closes April 10, original production reviewed here)

IN SARASOTA, FLA.:
• Ah, Wilderness! (comedy, PG-13, closing April 10, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Noises Off (farce, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, closes March 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN SARASOTA, FLA.:
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, remounting of Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, original production reviewed here)