Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Merrill Ashley, Maria Calegari, Susan Pillarre, Stephanie Saland, Marjorie Spohn, Tracy Bennett, Victor Castelli, and Robert Weiss of New York City Ballet dance the slow movement from George Balanchine’s Divertimento No. 15, choreographed in 1956. The score is by Mozart. This performance was originally telecast on PBS’ Dance in America in 1977:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Nevertheless, just as one of our young men had during these days in London found the air peopled with personal influences, the concussion of human atoms, so the other, though only asking to live without too many questions and work without too many disasters, to be glad and sorry in short on easy terms, had become aware of a certain social tightness, of the fact that life is crowded and passion is restless, accident frequent and community inevitable. Everybody with whom one had relations had other relations too, and even optimism was a mixture and peace an embroilment. The only chance was to let everything be embroiled but one’s temper and everything spoiled but one’s work.”
Henry James, The Tragic Muse (courtesy of Levi Stahl)
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review John Doyle’s Classic Stage Company revival of Peer Gynt. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
American stagings of “Peer Gynt” are scarce to the point of singularity. Mark Lamos directed it at Hartford Stage in 1989, but I’m not aware of any subsequent full-length regional productions, and “Peer Gynt” hasn’t been seen on Broadway in any form since 1960. John Doyle’s new Classic Stage Company revival would thus be of signal importance regardless of its quality—and in spite of the inescapable fact that Mr. Doyle, unlike Mr. Lamos, has given us not the real right thing but an intermission-free two-hour “adaptation” of Henrik Ibsen’s five-hour masterpiece, performed in modern dress on a bare platform by a cast of seven. Fortunately, his version is directed and acted with considerable imagination, but there’s no denying that it amounts to a “Peer Gynt” suite, a production that whets the appetite rather than sating it….
“Peer Gynt” would doubtless be far better known in this country if it were even somewhat more manageable in size and scale. Alas, it is all but impossible to produce in anything remotely resembling its original form save in a festival setting. Hence Mr. Doyle’s scaled-down, unsparingly cut production, performed in the round in his own prose adaptation of the original Dano-Norwegian text….
Nevertheless, a two-hour “Peer Gynt” is better than no “Peer Gynt” at all, and when a gifted director like Mr. Doyle turns his hand to such a venture, one cannot but profit from seeing how he goes about it. His English-language adaptation, for instance, contains any number of felicitous touches….
Mr. Doyle’s staging, by contrast, struck me as almost penitentially drab, denuded of much of the play’s humor and stripped of Edvard Grieg’s justly popular incidental music (which in this country is far better known than the play itself). Mr. Ebert is plausible enough as Peer Gynt, lively and blustery, but I didn’t find him compelling…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
John Doyle talks about his staging of Peer Gynt:
“Back of the Mike,” a promotional film about sound effects on radio produced by the Jam Handy Organization for Chevrolet in 1938:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“If you attack stupidity, you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life, and you will make small progress against it.”
Robertson Davies, The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I hold forth on the subject of books about art that are both thorough and opinionated. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Some books take a lifetime to write—and repay a lifetime’s reading. I’ve recently spent many happy hours with just such a book, William C. Agee’s newly published “Modern Art in America 1908-68.” It is that rarity of rarities, an opinionated but not eccentric scholarly history by a veteran museum curator whose every page crackles with original thinking and bears the stamp of a preternaturally sharp eye. It’s also impressively thorough: Even if you were to read nothing else about 20th-century American art, you’d still come away knowing most of what you needed to know about it.
I have a special liking for books on the arts that are, like “Modern Art in America 1908-68,” at once thorough and strongly personal. Not surprisingly, a fair number of biographies fill that bill. If you were going to read only one book about Beethoven, for instance, you couldn’t possibly do better than Lewis H. Lockwood’s “Beethoven: The Music and the Life,” just as W. Jackson Bate’s “Samuel Johnson,” published in 1977, remains to this day the best modern biography of the Great Panjandrum of English letters. But there are also plenty of other books which, like “Modern Art in America,” come close to telling you everything you want to know about a larger subject, and do it with flair.
Here are five of my favorites….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
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, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Eclipsed (drama, PG-13, Broadway remounting of off-Broadway production, closes June 19, original production reviewed here)
• Fully Committed (comedy, PG-13, extended through July 31, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, 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, closing Jan. 1, 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)
• She Loves Me (musical, G, suitable for bright children capable of enjoying a love story, many performances sold out last week, closes July 10, reviewed here)
OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON IN HOUSTON:
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes June 18, original production reviewed here)
CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN BALTIMORE:
• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, closes June 12, reviewed here)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (drama, PG-13, closes June 12, reviewed here)
CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN BROOKLYN:
• The Judas Kiss (drama, R, closes June 12, reviewed here)
CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:
• Tug of War: Foreign Fire (Shakespeare, PG-13, six-hour marathon staging of Edward III, Henry V, and Henry VI, Part One, closes June 12, reviewed here)
“Art lies in understanding some part of the dark forces and bringing them under the direction of reason.”
Robertson Davies, A Voice from the Attic