Archives for 2017

“People get embarrassed when they watch Fawlty Towers. I was in a therapy group once with a judge; when he joined the group he had no idea who I was. Most of the other people in England at that time would have some idea but he didn’t. When I told him what I did for a living, he said he’d watch Fawlty Towers. When I saw him next he said he’d started to watch it and had become so embarrassed by everybody’s behavior that he had to leave the room. The vicarious embarrassment was too much for him. I thought that was just perfectly funny.”

John Cleese, quoted in David Marchese, In Conversation: John Cleese (Vulture, September 12, 2017)

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)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Portuguese Kid (comedy, PG-13, extended through Dec. 10, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• After the Blast (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 19, reviewed here)
• The Home Place (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 19, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN MADISON, N.J.:
• Shakespeare in Love (historical romcom, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Jesus is said to have never laughed in the Bible, and I think it’s because laughter contains an element of surprise—something about the human condition that you haven’t spotted yet—and Jesus was rarely surprised. I still laugh, but many of the things that would have made me laugh 30 years ago—paradoxes about human nature—wouldn’t make me laugh anymore because I just believe them to be true. They’re not revelations.”

John Cleese, quoted in David Marchese, In Conversation: John Cleese (Vulture, September 12, 2017)

I spent much of Tuesday sitting in an upstairs studio at Palm Beach Dramaworks, rehearsing Billy and Me, my second play, which opens there on December 8. The plan was simply to read through the play from start to finish, but we ended up taking a searching look at the second act, as a result of which I went straight home after rehearsal and spent the evening doing rewrites.

These weren’t the kind of scared-to-death rewrites that you do when it’s obvious to everyone in the room that a show simply isn’t working. They were aimed at taking an act that was already strong and making it smoother and clearer. I know this because the half-dozen new speeches that I wrote last night gushed out of me like water from a fire hose. Pretty much the same thing happened at the first rehearsal of Shakespeare & Company’s 2012 production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, at which Gordon Edelstein and John Douglas Thompson cheerfully informed me that they both thought I ought to write a new character, Miles Davis, into the show, preferably that same night. I gulped a couple of times, then went home, rolled up my sleeves, set to work, and showed up at the rehearsal hall the following morning with the job all done. That’s more or less how things went yesterday.

Bill Hayes, the artistic director of Palm Beach Dramaworks and the director of Billy and Me, and Nicholas Richberg and Tom Wahl, who are playing the parts of Tennessee Williams and William Inge, are friends and colleagues of long standing, so it was no surprise that the four of us got along so famously. What made me even happier was that I made the acquaintance yesterday of Cliff Burgess, who is playing three smaller parts, and Debi Marcucci, Katie Pyne, and Stefanie Anarumo, the stage manager, assistant stage manager, and assistant to the director, all of whom were new to me. I can already tell that Cliff, the newest member of the cast, is going to do a terrific job. As for Debi, Katie, and Stefanie, I love working with women—virtually all of my best friends are women—and I knew within seconds of saying hello to them that Bill had put together a fabulous team.

I figure we’ll probably start off today’s rehearsal by reading the new speeches that I wrote last night and discovering how they sound when spoken out loud by first-class actors. I’m sure I’ll be doing a certain amount of topping and tailing after that, but I already feel good about our first day’s work.

The Alban Berg Quartet plays the third movement of Beethoven’s String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132. Beethoven titled this movement “Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode”:

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

“I don’t know much about contemporary comedy. I don’t watch any. I’m 77. I will almost certainly be dead within 10 years—maybe I’ll get 15. So to sit down to watch a sitcom seems to be a rather futile way of passing the time. It’s as simple as that. If I have a free evening, I’ll read, because there are so many things I don’t begin to understand and that I’d like to try and get a handle on before I’m dead. I’d rather do that than watch comedy.”

John Cleese, quoted in David Marchese, In Conversation: John Cleese (Vulture, September 12, 2017)

I’ll be spending virtually all of the next six weeks rehearsing and publicizing Billy and Me, my new play, in West Palm Beach. Rehearsing isn’t a 24/7 job, though. Not only will I be writing pieces for The Wall Street Journal and Commentary while I’m down here, but I’ll also have a certain amount of time off, and since Mrs. T’s doctors have now forbidden her to fly until after she gets her new lungs, I’ll likely be spending much of it alone.

This being the case—and seeing as how Lady Bird has yet to make it to West Palm Beach—I packed a tall stack of books, some for work and some purely for pleasure. I thought it might amuse you to know what they are.

I brought these books to West Palm Beach for professional purposes:

• John Mauceri’s Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting

• Leonard Slatkin’s Conducting Business: Unveiing the Mystery Behind the Maestro

• Bernard Shore’s The Orchestra Speaks, written in 1938 by the then-principal violist of the BBC Symphony

• The galleys of Ethan Mordden’s All That Jazz: The Life and Times of the Musical Chicago

I brought these books just for fun:

• Andrew Ferguson’s Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe’s America (I read this when it came out seven years ago, but haven’t looked at it since then)

• George Orwell: A Life in Letters

• Franny Moyle’s Turner: The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of J.M.W. Turner

• Michael Powell’s A Life in Movies: An Autobiography and Million-Dollar Movie: The Second Volume of His Life in Movies (suggested by Farran Nehme, for which much thanks)

• Hilary Spurling’s The Unknown Matisse and Matisse the Master

• Michael Stephans’ Experiencing Ornette Coleman: A Listener’s Companion

That ought to hold me for a month and a half, don’t you think?

From 2007:

Charlotte’s Web I found charming, but Stuart Little seemed to me something more, and still does, perhaps because its symbolism is so precisely gauged and its inconclusive ending so unabashedly open. Even now it strikes me as a little masterpiece, one of the few children’s books that is equally satisfying to the adult reader….

Read the whole thing here.