Archives for July 2016

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, closes Jan. 1, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, closes Sept. 10, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, closes Jan. 1, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, most performances sold out last week, 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)
• Sense & Sensibility (serious romantic comedy, G, remounting of 2014 off-Broadway production, closes Oct. 2, original production reviewed here)

IN GARRISON, N.Y.:
• Measure for Measure (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Aug. 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN GLENCOE, ILL.:
• Company (musical, PG-13, extended through Aug. 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Fully Committed (comedy, PG-13, closes July 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN STOCKBRIDGE, MASS.:
• Fiorello! (musical, G, reviewed here)

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Janet Baker sings Hector Berlioz’ “Le spectre de la rose,” from Nuits d’été, accompanied by Herbert Blomstedt and the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, at a 1972 concert:

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

“This is one of the greatest menaces there is; people with intelligence deciding that the point is to become grimly gray and intense and unhappy and tiresome because the world and many of its people are in a bad way. It’s a form of egotism, a supreme form. I’ve toyed with it myself and understand it a little. It’s as dangerous as toying with a drug. How can these bastards hope to get hold of what’s the matter with the world and do anything about it when they haven’t the slightest idea that something just as bad and unnatural has happened to them?”

James Thurber, letter to E.B. White, January 20, 1938 (courtesy of Thomas Vinciguerra)

From 2006:

Perhaps as a result of my early musical training, I tend not to worry overmuch about what any work of art “means,” except when it insists on its “meaning” so aggressively that you can’t possibly overlook it, in which case I’m likely to find the results tiresome or irritating.

It’s my impression, however, that most people approach art in exactly the opposite way: they view a work of art as an act of symbolic communication whose “meaning” is fully knowable, and they become uncomfortable, even anxious, if they can’t figure it out more or less immediately….

Read the whole thing here.

“I say ‘the great literature’ not because of its aura of cultural strenuousness, but simply because, in the past, there is only great literature. Only the great stands the racket of time and survives from generation to generation; the rest dies for lack of staying power.”

V.S. Pritchett, My Good Books (courtesy of Patrick Kurp)

Mrs. T and I are midway through a much-needed seaside vacation in Maine. For me that means no deadlines of any kind and no shows until Friday, when we pass through Massachusetts to see The Pirates of Penzance on our way back home. Instead we’re eating lobster rolls, taking day sails, looking at paintings and flowers, and watching the sun set. So far the weather has favored us, and if it ceases to do so, we took care to pack plenty of books. (The inn where we’re staying this week has a library, but we learned when we came here two years ago that the collection is a bit random.)

I’ve already written and filed my Wall Street Journal drama column for Friday, and the usual routine daily postings will continue to appear in this space, but I won’t be writing anything else, here or elsewhere, until next week. Leisure beckons.

Judy Collins sings Bob Dylan’s “Daddy, You’ve Been On My Mind” on Rainbow Quest, a TV series hosted by Pete Seeger. This episode was taped in 1966:

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