Fats Domino sings “Ain’t That a Shame” in Shake, Rattle & Rock!, a 1956 film directed by Edward L. Cahn:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
Archives for 2016
Almanac: Francis Bacon on vanity
“The Arch-flatterer, with whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence, is a man’s self.”
Francis Bacon, “On Love”
Anatomy of a WASP
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a show in Fort Myers, Florida Repertory Theatre’s revival of A.R. Gurney’s The Cocktail Hour. Here’s an excerpt.
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If A.R. Gurney had been born in 1900 instead of 1930, all of his major plays would have had long runs on Broadway and he would now be universally acknowledged as one of America’s leading playwrights. But his penetratingly witty studies of the WASP ascendancy in retreat came along a couple of generations too late to catch the wave of changing theatrical taste, and so he has never had a Broadway hit. Instead, his plays are regularly staged off Broadway and by smart regional companies from coast to coast. Be that as it may, Mr. Gurney is still one of the very best playwrights that we have, and “The Cocktail Hour,” which ranks among his finest efforts, is now being performed by Florida Repertory Theatre, one of the top regional troupes in the U.S. If all that sounds to you like a recipe for success, you’re not wrong: Florida Rep’s production, directed by Chris Clavelli, is the most satisfying staging of “The Cocktail Hour” I’ve ever seen.
First performed in 1988, “The Cocktail Hour” is a more-or-less autobiographical comedy about John (Brendan Powers), a youngish playwright who comes home to Buffalo, the city where he (and Mr. Gurney) grew up, with a surprise up his sleeve for his priggish parents: His new play is all about them. The title? “The Cocktail Hour,” naturally—and it’s not a wholly affectionate portrait, either….
Ann (Carrie Lund), John’s mother, has the best line, a two-way zinger aimed at drama critics who don’t get what her son is up to when he puts WASPs on stage: “They don’t like us, John. They resent us. They think we’re all Republicans, all superficial and all alcoholics. Only the latter is true.” But “The Cocktail Hour” contains plenty of other laughs, more than enough to briefly throw the audience off the trail of Mr. Gurney’s intentions. For this is a serious comedy about a family whose members are at odds with one another but are too nice to admit it…
I last saw “The Cocktail Hour” performed by Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company in an 890-seat theater whose Broadway-sized stage was a couple of sizes too big for the show. Fort Myers’ 393-seat Arcade Theatre, by contrast, is just right, both for the play itself and for the staging. Mr. Clavelli, a longtime member of Florida Rep’s semi-permanent ensemble, is as adept a director as he is an actor…
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Read the whole thing here.
A.R. Gurney talks about The Cocktail Hour in an interview conducted in 2000 at his New York home:
His shining hour
I wrote a piece about Harold Arlen for the latest issue of the Weekly Standard:
In one sense Arlen’s credits are lackluster. None of his Broadway shows has ever been successfully revived, and except for The Wizard of Oz, the films on which he worked were, for the most part, unmemorable. And while he was also a highly accomplished singer who recorded a fair number of his finest songs—no one ever sang “Ill Wind” better—the timbre of his plaintive, throaty tenor voice was not quite distinctive enough to bring him the kind of mass popularity that [Hoagy] Carmichael and [Johnny] Mercer had during their salad days.
But…the songs! To catalogue them is to be reminded of what made the golden age of American popular song golden, and to be struck by how many of them were performed and recorded to indelible effect by the very best pop and jazz singers of the 20th century. Think, just for openers, of Fred Astaire’s “My Shining Hour,” Ray Charles’s “Come Rain or Come Shine,” Nat Cole’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” Bing Crosby’s “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive,” Judy Garland’s “The Man That Got Away,” Lena Horne’s “Stormy Weather,” Peggy Lee’s “Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe,” Frank Sinatra’s “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” and Mel Tormé’s “When the Sun Comes Out.” Of such records is an era made….
Read the whole thing here.
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Harold Arlen plays and sings his songs on a 1954 episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour, assisted by Eddie Cantor, Connie Russell, and Frank Sinatra:
Replay: Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66 in 1967
Sergio Mendes and Brasil ’66, featuring Lani Hall on lead vocals, perform “Goin’ Out of My Head” and “Arrastão” on The Hollywood Palace on December 12, 1967. They are introduced by Herb Alpert:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
Almanac: A.R. Gurney on the vocation of playwriting
“Maybe I’m a masochist, but I can’t seem to write anything but plays. I can’t write movies or television. I’m caught, I’m trapped in this old medium. It’s archaic, it’s restrictive beyond belief. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with contemporary American life. I feel like some medieval stone cutter, hacking away in the dark corner of an abandoned monastery, while everyone else is outside, having fun in the Renaissance. And when I finish, a few brooding inquisitors shuffle gloomily in, take a quick look, and say, ‘That’s not it. That’s not what we want at all!’”
A. R. Gurney, The Cocktail Hour
So you want to see a show?
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, many performances sold out last week, too complex for small children, reviewed here)
• China Doll (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, nearly all 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, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, nearly all performances sold out last week, 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)
CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Spring Awakening (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 24, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Sylvia (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 24, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, closes Jan. 17, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• A Wilder Christmas (drama, G, too complicated for children, reviewed here)
Almanac: James Gould Cozzens on humorlessness
“Though a sense of humor was generally spoken of with approval, and a man was pitied for lacking one, Abner supposed that he must lack one himself. When he saw a sense of humor in action, it always seemd to Abner a lucky thing, since somebody had to do the work of an unappreciative world, that a certain number of people could be relied on to lack it.”
James Gould Cozzens, The Just and the Unjust