Archives for February 9, 2018

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the off-Broadway premiere of Fire and Air, a new play by Terrence McNally. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Within the small world of ballet, Sergei Diaghilev, who died in 1929, was and is a giant. Outside it, though, he is less well remembered, if only because there is no simple way to explain what he did and why it still matters. The founder of the Ballets Russes, the most influential company in the history of dance, Diaghilev on paper was nothing more than an impresario—a producer, if you like. He couldn’t dance a step, much less choreograph a ballet. Yet it was because of him that “The Rite of Spring” came into being and Igor Stravinsky, then an obscure young Russian composer, emerged as a central figure in 20th-century music. Diaghilev made Vaslav Nijinsky a star dancer and George Balanchine a major choreographer, commissioned sets from Picasso and Matisse and musical scores from Debussy, Prokofiev and Ravel, and did more than anyone else to introduce European audiences to the modern movement in art.

Such a man could scarcely have been anything other than interesting in private life, and Diaghilev’s more-or-less open homosexuality and fabulously flamboyant personality made him a journalist’s dream. Not surprisingly, several attempts have been made to put him on stage and screen, the latest of which, Terrence McNally’s “Fire and Air,” in which Douglas Hodge plays Diaghilev, is the work of a playwright who has previously written on numerous occasions about the equally extravagant world of grand opera. Having given us a successful play about Maria Callas, Mr. McNally would seem as likely as anyone to be able to make theatrical sense out of Diaghilev. Yet “Fire and Air,” despite the strong staging of John Doyle and a spare but visually effective production by his Classic Stage Company, is brought low by most of the usual mistakes to which biographical plays are heir. Fact-heavy and stodgily undramatic, it feels for the most part more like a well-meaning TV documentary than a full-fledged play, on top of which it suffers from a devastating piece of miscasting.

“Fire and Air” is the kind of history play in which most of the dialogue conveys factual information instead of illuminating personality or propelling the rudimentary plot….

Mr. Hodge is best known in New York for having played Albin in the 2010 Broadway revival of “La Cage aux Folles.” That will give you some idea of his approach to the role, which seems to be based on the assumption that Sergei Diaghilev was a dead ringer for Nathan Lane. His Diaghilev is small, whiny and about as Slavic as Russian dressing…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Rudolf Nureyev and the Joffrey Ballet perform Vaslav Nijinsky’s L’après midi d’un faune, made for the Ballets Russes in 1912 and set to the msuic of Debussy. The décor is by Léon Bakst:

The latest episode of Three on the Aisle, the podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. It’s our first bimonthly podcast—we’d previously been doing just one a month—and we’re all pleased with the results.

In this episode, Peter, Elisabeth, and I interview playwright Lauren Gunderson, the most-produced playwright of the 2017-18 season. Says the Three on the Aisle web page:

“What most excites me,” says Gunderson, “is thinking that my work has relevance in so many places!” Alas, comparatively few of her scripts have been produced in the New York area, so the Three on the Aisle panel decided to find out what they’d been missing. Among other things, Gunderson talks about how she started out as an actor, realized that “acting is damn hard” and that playwrights don’t have to be dead to get produced, and promptly started writing for the stage. (One big surprise: She’s that rarity of rarities, a full-time playwright without a day job.)

In the second segment, we discuss the phenomenon of the resident acting company, which seemed not long ago to be headed for extinction but has been experiencing a resurgence of interest in recent seasons. Then, as usual, we wrap things up with a podcast-ending segment in which each of us talks about shows that we’ve either seen and liked (we didn’t discuss any stinkers this time around!) or are looking forward to seeing.

To listen, download the sixth episode, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed any of the first five episodes, you’ll find them all here.

It wasn’t my good fortune to have children of my own, for which reason I’ve long doted on Lauren, my niece. She’s been popping up in this space at odd intervals since 2006, when I posted as follows:

My niece graduated from high school on Tuesday. I couldn’t be there, but I sent flowers, and spent the evening marveling at how time flies. Only yesterday she was a baby, and now she’s a tall, poised young lady about to go off to college. How can such things be?

I am immensely proud of Lauren Teachout, and of my brother and sister-in-law, who raised her right. Nothing I will ever do in my life will be as difficult—or honorable—as that.

Five years later Mrs. T and I flew out to Smalltown, U.S.A., to be present as Lauren was married to Ryan Dukes, an excellent young man who had already become an honorary Teachout long before he made my niece a full-time Dukes. Since then she’s visited us several times in New York and Florida, and we have never failed to delight in her company, for she is beautiful, smart, and irresistibly likable.

Having moved away from Smalltown four and a half decades ago, I haven’t been nearly as much of a presence in Lauren’s life as I would have wanted, but I’ve done the best I could, and what I said in this space when I took her to a Broadway show two years ago still goes:

Thanks, Lauren, for spending an evening on Broadway with your Uncle Terry. I hope you liked the show, but I’m mainly glad that you wanted to say hello. You are dear to me, as dear as Smalltown, and you will remain so to the end of time.

By then Lauren and Ryan had moved from Smalltown to Houston, a city that seems to suit them both exceedingly well. When she told Mrs. T and me last year that she was expecting her first child, I felt almost as proud as if she were my own daughter, and when I found out last month that I’d be in Houston right around the time that she was scheduled to have her baby, my heart skipped several beats.

It didn’t quite work out that way, but it was close enough for jazz: Lauren gave birth on Wednesday morning to Evelyn Grace Dukes, who weighs seven pounds, is a bit over twenty inches long, and looks like an exquisitely wrought little thimble. She is named after my mother (to whom Lauren was very close) and maternal grandmother, and her birthday falls neatly in between those of myself and Mrs. T, who is four days my junior.

It goes without saying that I’ll be wildly busy as soon as I land in Houston next Thursday morning. Nevertheless, nothing will stop me from driving straight from my first rehearsal at the Alley Theatre to wherever Lauren, Ryan, and Evelyn Grace are, there to dote on the newest member of the extended Teachout family. It isn’t every day that a man becomes a great-uncle!

“The Gay Parisian,” a 1942 film version of Léonide Massine’s 1938 ballet Gaîté Parisienne, set to the music of Jacques Offenbach, performed by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and directed for the screen by Jean Negulesco. The soloists include Massine, Frederick Franklin, and André Eglevsky, and the score, arranged and orchestrated by Manuel Rosenthal, is conducted by Efrem Kurtz:

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

“No, I hate violence. It seems such a paradox to kill a man before you can persuade him what’s right. So uncivilized.”

Anatole de Grunwald, screenplay for “Pimpernel” Smith (courtesy of Mrs. T)