Archives for 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, most 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 EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• Bye Bye Birdie (musical, G, closes Sept. 8, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:
• The Pirates of Penzance (operetta, G, closes Aug. 13, reviewed here)

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

“We live and negotiate with the people; if their conversation be troublesome to us, if we disdain to apply ourselves to mean and vulgar souls (and the mean and vulgar are often as regular as those of the finest thread, and all wisdom is folly that does not accommodate itself to the common ignorance), we must no more intermeddle either with other men’s affairs or our own; for business, both public and private, has to do with these people.”

Michel de Montaigne, “Of Three Commerces” (trans. Charles Cotton)

Sarah Connolly, Christopher Hogwood, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment perform “When I am laid in earth,” from Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. This production was staged by Wayne MacGregor at Covent Garden in 2009:

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

“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. One does not have to know anything about Dido and Aeneas to be moved by her lament for him; anyone who has ever lost someone knows what Dido is expressing. And there is, finally, a deep and mysterious paradox here, for while such music makes one experience pain and grief more intensely, it brings solace and consolation at the same time.”

Oliver Sacks, “Lamentations: Music, Madness and Melancholia” (courtesy of Maria Popova)

From 2006:

Art doesn’t have to be true to life to be good, but when a work of art is true to your life, it strikes a special chord. On occasion music has this effect on me: I can think of any number of pieces that appear to embody my feelings about the world so precisely that I feel as though I might have written them. Much of Aaron Copland’s music has that effect on me, as does the streetlights-at-dusk melancholy of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” Mingus’ elegy for Lester Young.

My guess is that most people are more likely to respond in this way to works of art that make use of words, and in particular to movies, which at their best are capable of creating an impression of reality so total as to be overwhelming. For my part, though, I haven’t seen many movies that seemed true in any significant way to my personal experience. Only three spring to mind, and two of them, not surprisingly, are about music….

Read the whole thing here.

SALLY FIELD: “Don’t you know you can’t fight city hall?”

JAMES GARNER: “You can wrestle ’em.”

Harriet Frank, Jr., and Irving Ravetch, screenplay for Murphy’s Romance

A very rare kinescope of the NBC Opera telecast of scenes from Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd, originally telecast on October 19, 1952. The title role is sung by Theodor Uppman, who appeared in the opera’s original 1951 production. Andrew McKinley plays Captain Vere and Leon Lishner plays Claggart. The performance was conducted by Peter Herman Adler and the telecast was directed by Kirk Browning:

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

“Much good has been shown me and much evil, and the good has never been perfect. There is always some flaw in it, some defect, some imperfection in the divine image, some fault in the angelic song, some stammer in the divine speech.”

E.M. Forster and Eric Crozier, libretto for Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd (adapted from Herman Melville’s novella)