Archives for 2017

All three of the commercials that appeared during “Of Human Bondage,” a Studio One adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s novel that was sponsored by Westinghouse and originally telecast by CBS on November 21, 1949. The first two ads were “performed” live, the third on film:

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

“Most of us know, now, that Rousseau was wrong: that man, when you knock his chains off, sets up the death camps. Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn’t know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us.”

Randall Jarrell, “On the Underside of the Stone” (New York Times Book Review, August 23, 1953, courtesy of Patrick Kurp)

In the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I review Hartford Stage’s production of Heartbreak House. Here’s an excerpt.

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What makes a play classic? One possible benchmark is that of permanent relevance: It portrays its own time in a way that illuminates ours. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better example of that kind of classicism than “Heartbreak House,” in which George Bernard Shaw, writing in 1919, cast a cold eye on his own class, the educated liberals of Vicwardian England, and came to the damning conclusion that World War I had revealed them to be morally bankrupt. “Heartbreak House” was insufficiently appreciated in Shaw’s own time and for long afterward, in part because of its length (the first performance ran for four hours). But now that the script has entered the public domain, meaning that it can be performed in abridged versions, “Heartbreak House” has become one of Shaw’s most frequently produced plays, especially in this country. Now it’s come to Hartford Stage in a version staged by Darko Tresnjak, the company’s artistic director, that is not without flaw—more about that later—but nonetheless brings an elusive play to life in a way that is lively and immediately accessible….

The setting, a country house that looks like “an old-fashioned high-pooped ship,” is the home of Captain Shotover (Miles Anderson), an octogenarian seaman whose bristling energy cannot conceal the fact that he’s losing his wits. He has two daughters—one a frivolously sexy bohemian (Charlotte Parry), the other a high-society prig (Tessa Auberjonois)—who between them embody all that Shaw thought wrong with the English national character.

This being a country-house comedy, the Shotover house is full of guests, nearly all of whom are, as one of them says, “most advanced, unprejudiced, frank, humane, unconventional, democratic, free-thinking, and everything that is delightful to thoughtful people.” The capitalist in the woodpile is Boss Mangan (Andrew Long), a bloated, parasitical businessman. He is, of course, doomed—but so, too, are the other delightful but ineffectual occupants of Heartbreak House, who lack the will to reconstruct their corrupt society along properly Shavian lines….

The younger Shaw might well have written “Heartbreak House” as a didactic comedy with a hopeful ending. By 1919, though, World War I had blown the progressive optimism out of him, leaving nothing but the frustrated will to power that would lead him to embrace Soviet Communism in his senescence. Before that, though, he wove his despair into a tragicomedy that works as theater precisely because it offers no neat solution, only the enraged poetry of a great artist.

Understanding this, Mr. Tresnjak, who has a near-miraculous knack for staging “well-made” plays, has given us a “Heartbreak House” that is bright in tone and light on its feet, thereby allowing you to take the point by yourself….

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Read the whole thing here.

A trailer of scenes from Heartbreak House:

“The Capitol Tower,” a 1958 promotional short about Capitol Records’ Hollywood headquarters, designed by Lou Naidorf. Among the Capitol recording artists featured in the film, which is narrated by Tennessee Ernie Ford, are Ray Anthony, John Browning, Moura Lympany, and Leonard Pennario. The actual singing voice of “Kathy” was dubbed by Sue Raney, another Capitol artist:

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

“When you rejoice over being young, and notice how well you feel, that is age.”

The Journal of Jules Renard (entry, March 1903)

In my “Sightings” column, which appears in the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I discuss two new books about Van Cliburn. Here’s an excerpt.

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Van Cliburn isn’t exactly forgotten—not quite. All of his albums remain in print, and he has a permanent place in the history of classical music in America. Moreover, the quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which is currently underway in Fort Worth, continues to keep his name greenish. But Cliburn, who died in 2013, isn’t nearly as well known today as he was a half-century ago, when he was one of the biggest names in music, regardless of genre. Merely to see a photo of the six-foot-four Texan with the baby face and curly hair was to be instantly reminded of how he had traveled to Moscow in 1958, won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition at the height of the Cold War, and returned in triumph to the U.S., there to be feted with a ticker-tape parade through Manhattan….

So it’s a pleasant surprise, at least for those of us who loved Cliburn’s rich-toned, warmly expansive playing, to learn that a book about his victory in Moscow has recently been published—seven months after another book on the same subject.

Stuart Isacoff’s “When the World Stopped to Listen: Van Cliburn’s Cold War Triumph, and Its Aftermath,” which came out in April, is the more informed of the two volumes, a tightly focused monograph that concentrates on Cliburn’s Tchaikovsky Competition win and profits from the fact that its author is himself a pianist, one who also writes about music for the Journal. If you want to know why Cliburn played the way he played—and how his distinctive style helped him win—then Mr. Isacoff is your man. Nigel Cliff’s “Moscow Nights: The Van Cliburn Story—How One Man and His Piano Transformed the Cold War,” by contrast, is as chattily discursive as its title (it’s 160 pages longer than “When the World Stopped to Listen”). Neither a full-scale biography nor a proper study of Cliburn and the Cold War, it falls awkwardly between two stools…

No matter which book you choose, you’ll profit from the opportunity to learn more about Cliburn’s overnight ascent to worldwide celebrity, and the cracks that it opened up in his already unstable personality….

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Read the whole thing here.

A Russian telecast of Van Cliburn’s prize-winning 1958 Moscow performance of Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, accompanied by Kirill Kondrashin and the Moscow State Philharmonic Academy Orchesetra. Nikita Kruschchev, who attended the performance, can be seen applauding Cliburn’s entrance:

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, most 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)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, closes August 20, reviewed here)
• Present Laughter (comedy, PG-13, closes July 2, reviewed here)
• Six Degrees of Separation (serious comedy, PG-13/R, closes July 16, reviewed here)
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Pacific Overtures (musical, PG-13, closes June 18, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

“Not the smallest charm of truth is that it scandalizes.”

The Journal of Jules Renard (entry, August 1902)