Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Gerald McBoing-Boing, a 1950 UPA animated short directed by Robert Cannon, designed by Bill Hurtz, and scored by Gail Kubik. The story is by Dr. Seuss:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
Albert Einstein, interviewed by George Sylvester Viereck (Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929)
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Public Theater’s new Shakespeare in the Park production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Here’s an excerpt.
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No play, by Shakespeare or anyone else, is better suited to outdoor performance than “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” not only because so much of it takes place in a forest but because of the way in which it commingles sweet, spacious romanticism and slip-on-a-banana-peel comedy. It’s just the kind of show you want to see on a balmy midsummer night—and Lear deBessonet’s Shakespeare in the Park production is just the kind of staging that it deserves. I’ve seen a couple of “Midsummers” that were as good as this one, foremost among them Eric Tucker’s sublime five-person 2015 Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival version, but none better.
Ms. deBessonet is a very big talent who’s been waiting in the wings until now, mainly occupying herself with the Public’s community-based Public Works “participatory theater” classical productions, which make use of amateur actors. The highest-profile show that she’d previously directed in New York was the Public Theater’s 2013 production of Bertolt Brecht’s “Good Person of Szechwan,” an outrageously imaginative vaudeville romp whose décor looked as if it had been recycled from the nearest alley. But while this “Midsummer” is a costlier undertaking with a big-name cast—Annaleigh Ashford, Danny Burstein, Kristine Nielsen, and Phylicia Rashad are among those present—it partakes of the same improvisatory sensibility, and does so with the same éclat.
While this isn’t a high-concept “Midsummer Night’s Dream” in the normal sense of the word, Ms. deBessonet’s approach to the play is nonetheless clear-cut: She’s staged it as if it were a Broadway musical. The casting of Ms. Ashford, Mr. Burstein and Ms. Nielsen, three of Broadway’s funniest comedians, as Helena, Bottom and Puck, underlines the slant of her production, a rom-com that’s 90% com and 10% rom….
It’s as if she’d staged the production specifically to disarm viewers who don’t know the play going in and are a little bit afraid of it: Every twist and turn of the knotty plot comes across with the sunlit clarity of a perfectly executed pratfall….
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Read the whole thing here.
A video featurette about Lear deBessonet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
“To New Horizons,” a promotional film about technology and the American future created by the industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes and shown as part of General Motors’ Futurama exhibit at the 1939-40 World’s Fair:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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:
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Groundhog Day (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, closes Aug. 20, reviewed here)
OFF BROADWAY:
• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Sept. 3, reviewed here)
IN GARRISON, N.Y.:
• Pride and Prejudice (comedy, G, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)
• Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Aug. 26, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON IN LENOX, MASS.:
• Intimate Apparel (drama, PG-13, closes Aug. 13, reviewed here)
CLOSING SOON IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:
• Taking Steps (comedy, PG-13, closes Aug. 13, reviewed here)
“The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Ian Bostridge sings and talks about Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Is My Team Ploughing?” This setting of A.E. Housman’s poem, an excerpt from Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge, is accompanied by an instrumental ensemble conducted by Bernard Haitink:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)