Archives for 2016

“Men act through self-interest; and if they do things you wouldn’t do, you’d better not assume it’s because you have a nobler character. There are noble and disinterested actions done every day; but I think most of them are impulsive. I don’t think there’s any such thing as a deliberate noble action. Deliberation always has half an eye on how it will look; it wants something, if only admiration, for what it does.”

James Gould Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I write about the off-Broadway premiere of John Patrick Shanley’s Prodigal Son and a revival of Terrence McNally’s It’s Only a Play in Coral Gables, Florida. Here’s an excerpt.

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Most playwrights quarry their own lives for subject matter, but some are more honest about it than others. John Patrick Shanley acknowledges up front in a program note that “Prodigal Son,” his latest play, is “a true story for the most part,” though I probably would have suspected as much: It’s a memory play about an unhappy 15-year-old Irish Catholic boy from a blue-collar Bronx neighborhood who lands a scholarship to a boarding school in New Hampshire, where he promptly gets himself in the hottest kind of disciplinary water. Finely directed by the author himself and exceptionally well acted by a five-person cast led by Timothée Chalamet, “Prodigal Son” is a heart-sore portrait of adolescent turmoil that bears the stamp of hard-earned truth on every page.

Mr. Chalamet, lately of “Homeland,” plays Jim Quinn, Mr. Shanley’s not-very-fictional alter ego, whom the headmaster at Thomas More School (Chris McGarry) describes as “the most interesting mess we have this year.” A mercurial, self-consciously sharp-witted boy poet with a fanciful streak and an inclination to violence, Jim longs above all things to be valued, but pushes away anyone who tries to do so—sometimes, as we discover in the course of “Prodigal Son,” with good reason….

Mr. Chalamet is perfect as Jim—gawky, eager, full of awkward yearning—and his supporting cast is marvelous, especially Mr. McGarry, who gives the impression of being at once completely relaxed and tautly controlled (as is the character he plays). Authors don’t always serve themselves well as directors, but Mr. Shanley’s staging of “Prodigal Son” is disciplined and direct…

“It’s Only a Play,” Terrence McNally’s 1982 backstage farce about the opening-night party for a play that gets roasted by the critics, was given a new lease on commercial life by a Jack O’Brien-directed 2014 Broadway revival that starred Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing and F. Murray Abraham. Now Florida’s GableStage, whose intimate 150-seat theater is located in Coral Gables’ Biltmore Hotel, is presenting a production of the same play that doesn’t have any stars but is fully as funny.

While the effectiveness of this production is partly due to the quality of Mr. McNally’s one-liners, it has at least as much to do with Joe Adler’s direction. GableStage performs in a wide, shallow space that is hard to use effectively, but Mr. Adler knows its quirks and makes the most of them…

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To read my review of Prodigal Son, go here.

To read my review of It’s Only a Play, go here.

A scene from the premiere production of Prodigal Son, starring Timothée Chalamet and Chris McGarry:

Bill Monroe and Doc Watson play “Sally Goodin” at the 1990 Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival:

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

“In the millionaire Undershaft I have represented a man who has become intellectually and spiritually as well as practically conscious of the irresistible natural truth which we all abhor and repudiate: to wit, that the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty, and that our first duty—a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed—is not to be poor.”

George Bernard Shaw, preface to Major Barbara

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I take a closer look a theatrical controversy in Los Angeles that made national headlines. Here’s an excerpt.

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You may have heard about the tempest that blew up last week over “The Room,” Harold Pinter’s first play. Written in 1957, it was revived in Los Angeles by the Wooster Group, a New York-based experimental theater troupe. A few days before the show was set to open, the Wooster Group and Redcat, the Los Angeles theater presenting “The Room,” put out a press release stating that Samuel French Inc., which handles the U.S. rights to Pinter’s plays, had refused to license this one unless the following condition was observed: “There may be absolutely no reviews of this production.” In other words, Redcat couldn’t invite drama critics. Mark Murphy, Redcat’s executive director, responded by hinting very broadly that Samuel French was treading on the free-speech rights of both the company and the critics: “It seems strange to me that anyone would think critical discourse about this seminal play could be somehow harmful.”

Free speech being the most sacred of journalistic rights, it stands to reason that the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times decided to run news stories about the controversy, and that the American Theatre Critics Association attacked the ban as ”objectionable behavior that tries to restrict not only artistic freedom of expression, but also freedom of the press.” Not at all surprisingly, Charles McNulty, the drama critic of the Los Angeles Times, bought a ticket and reviewed the show anyway. (For the record, he didn’t much care for it.)

But is that the whole story? Not quite.

To begin with, the Wooster Group goes in for high-concept productions that may or may not have anything to do with the plays they’re staging. When it produced Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones” in 1992, the title role, written for a black actor, was played by a white woman in blackface. So I initially assumed that the Pinter estate had ordered Samuel French to put the squeeze on what Mr. McNulty described as the Wooster Group’s “postmodern high jinks.” Had that been the case, I might well have flown to Los Angeles to raise the free-speech flag by reviewing the show myself. But like many snap assumptions, this one didn’t stand up to closer scrutiny. In a statement of his own, Bruce Lazarus, Samuel French’s executive director, said flatly that the Wooster Group had “announced the Los Angeles premiere…before securing the rights” to “The Room” and that the Pinter estate “would have withheld the rights” had it been asked first….

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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, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, some 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)
• Noises Off (farce, PG-13, many performances sold out last week, closes March 6, 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)
• The Flick (serious comedy, PG-13, too long for young people with limited attention spans, 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 NEXT WEEK IN SARASOTA, FLA.:
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (drama, PG-13, closing Feb. 20, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, remounting of Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, closing Feb. 21, original production reviewed here)

“To be broke is not a disgrace, it is only a catastrophe.”

Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men

Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Bay perform Fritz Kreisler’s transcription of “Dance of the Blessed Spirits,” from Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice:

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