Archives for May 2018

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:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, alternating in repertory, closes July 15, many shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, virtually all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• 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)
• The Iceman Cometh (drama, PG-13, nearly all shows sold out last week, closes July 1, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes July 15, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• Macbeth (Shakespeare, PG-13, remounting of Two River Theater Company production, closes June 24, original production reviewed here)

IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• The Will Rogers Follies (musical, G, closes June 21, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Travesties (serious comedy, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Our Lady of 121st Street (serious comedy, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, closes June 10, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes June 10, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Mlima’s Tale (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“The real affliction of old age is remorse.”

Cesare Pavese, The Moon and the Bonfire

Myra Hess plays her own arrangement for piano of the slow movement from Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, on the BBC in 1954. She speaks briefly to the audienceafter the performance:

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

“It is not society’s fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.”

George Santayana, The Life of Reason

Time was when hit plays on Broadway and London’s West End were routinely turned into big-budget films. Most of the time, alas, the plays in question were recast and “adapted” within an inch or two of their lives, sometimes to unintentionally comic effect. On occasion, though, the screen versions bore far more than a passing resemblance to the plays on which they were based, especially when some or (rarely) all of the stars and supporting players from the original casts were invited to reprise their roles for the camera. Even when the resulting performances feel overprojected and awkwardly “stagy,” they can still offer us infinitely precious glimpses, however imperfect, of the evanescent phenomenon that is great stage acting.

Mrs. T and I were recently watching John Ford’s film of Mister Roberts, in which Henry Fonda repeated his much-admired performance from the original stage production, and it occurred to me to draw up a list of other films and telecasts that preserve—more or less—significant English-language “creator” performances of the past. I invited my followers on Facebook and Twitter to chime in, and the result was this informal catalogue, which turned out to be quite a bit longer than I’d expected. (I have deliberately omitted musicals, which would have made it unmanageably long.) The results make no pretense of comprehensiveness, but it strikes me that you might find them interesting anyway:

• Beulah Bondi, George Humbert, Anna Konstant, T.H. Manning, Matthew McHugh, John Qualen, Conway Washburne, and Eleanor Wesselhoeft, Street Scene (1929/1931)

• Charles Laughton, Payment Deferred (1931/1932)

• Walter Huston, Dodsworth (1934/1936)

• May Whitty, Night Must Fall (1935/1937)

• Gabriel Dell, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan, Marjorie Main, and Bernard Punsly, Dead End (1935/1937)

• Humphrey Bogart and Leslie Howard, The Petrified Forest (1935/1936)

• Roland Culver and Guy Middleton, French Without Tears (1936/1939)

• Frank Craven and Martha Scott, Our Town (1938/1940)

• Raymond Huntley and Lloyd Pearson, When We Are Married (1938/1943)

• Raymond Massey and Howard Da Silva, Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1938/1940)

• Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story (1939/1940)

• Monty Woolley and Mary Wickes, The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939/1942)

• Jean Adair and Josephine Hull, Arsenic and Old Lace (1939/1944)

• Patricia Collinge, Charles Dingle, Dan Duryea, John Marriott and Carl Benton Reid, The Little Foxes (1939/1941)

• Paul Lukas and Lucile Watson, Watch on the Rhine (1941/1943)

• Kay Hammond and Margaret Rutherford, Blithe Spirit (1941/1945)

• Brenda Bruce and Ronald Squire, While the Sun Shines (1943/1947)

• Josephine Hull and Jesse White, Harvey (1944/1950)

• Judy Holliday, Born Yesterday (1946/1950)

• Tom Pedi, The Iceman Cometh (1947/1973)

• Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947/1951, both directed by Elia Kazan)

• Henry Fonda, Mister Roberts (1948/1955)

• Mildred Dunnock, Death of a Salesman (1949/1951 film version)

• Lee J. Cobb, Death of a Salesman (1949/1966 TV version)

• Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba (1950/1952)

• Julie Harris, Brandon deWilde, and Ethel Waters, The Member of the Wedding (1950/1952)

• Eileen Heckart, Ruth McDevitt, Janice Rule, and Kim Stanley, Picnic (1950/1952)

• Kenneth More, The Deep Blue Sea (1950/1952)

• Julie Harris, I Am a Camera (1951/1955)

• Harvey Lembeck, William Pierson, and Robert Strauss, Stalag 17 (1951/1953)

• Tom Ewell, The Seven Year Itch (1952/1955)

• Deborah Kerr, John Kerr, and Leif Erickson, Tea and Sympathy (1953/1956)

• Henry Jones, Eileen Heckart, Nancy Kelly, and Patty McCormack, The Bad Seed (1954/1956)

• Hal Holbrook, Mark Twain Tonight! (1954/1967 TV version)

• Lloyd Nolan and Robert Gist, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1954/1955 TV version)

• Anthony Franciosa and Henry Silva, A Hatful of Rain (1955/1957)

• Andy Griffith, Myron McCormick, and Don Knotts, No Time for Sergeants (1955/1958)

• Ed Begley, Inherit the Wind (1955/1965 TV version)

• Burl Ives and Madeleine Sherwood, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955/1958)

• Rosalind Russell and Peggy Cass, Auntie Mame (1955/1958)

• Jason Robards, Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956/1962)

• Laurence Olivier and Brenda De Banzie, The Entertainer (1957/1960)

• Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, The Miracle Worker (1957/1960)

• Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons (1957/1962)

• Ralph Bellamy, Sunrise at Campobello (1958/1960)

• Murray Melvin, A Taste of Honey (1958/1961)

• Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Madeleine Sherwood, and Rip Torn, Sweet Bird of Youth (1959/1962)

• Entire cast, A Raisin in the Sun (1959/1961)

• Alan Bates and Donald Pleasence, The Caretaker (1960/1963)

• Lee Tracy, The Best Man (1960/1964)

• Entire cast, Purlie Victorious/Gone Are the Days! (1961/1963)

• Robert Redford, Mildred Natwick, and Herb Edelman, Barefoot in the Park (1963/1967)

• Jason Robards, William Daniels, and Gene Saks, A Thousand Clowns (1963/1965)

• Jack Albertson and Martin Sheen, The Subject Was Roses (1964/1968)

• Walter Matthau, Monica Evans, John Fiedler, and Carole Shelley, The Odd Couple (1965/1968)

• Ian Holm, Vivien Merchant, Terence Rigby, and Paul Rogers, The Homecoming (1965/1973)

• Michael Greer, Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1967/1971)

• James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, The Great White Hope (1967/1970)

• Entire cast, The Boys in the Band (1968/1970)

• Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, and Tony Roberts, Play It Again, Sam (1968/1972)

• John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, Home (1970/1972 TV version)

• Alan Bates, Michael Byrne, and Richard O’Callaghan, Butley (1971/1974)

• Penelope Keith, The Norman Conquests (1973/1977 TV version)

• Peter Firth, Equus (1974/1977)

• John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, No Man’s Land (1975/1975 TV version)

• Entire cast, Abigail’s Party (1977/1977 TV version)

• Jack Lemmon, Tribute (1978/1980)

• Harvey Fierstein, Torch Song Trilogy (1982/1988)

• Spalding Gray, Swimming to Cambodia (1984/1987)

• Matthew Broderick, Biloxi Blues (1984/1988)

• Eric Bogosian, Talk Radio (1987/1988)

• Carl Gordon, Tommy Hollis, and Lou Myers, The Piano Lesson (1987/1995 TV version)

• Morgan Freeman, Driving Miss Daisy (1987/1989)

• Alec Baldwin, Prelude to a Kiss (1998/1992)

• Stockard Channing, Six Degrees of Separation (1990/1993)

• Mercedes Ruehl and Irene Worth, Lost in Yonkers (1990/1993)

• Nigel Hawthorne, The Madness of George III/The Madness of King George (1991/1994)

• William H. Macy, Oleanna (1992/1994)

• Jeffrey Wright, Angels in America (1993/2003)

• Randy Becker, Stephen Bogardus, John Glover, John Benjamin Hickey, and Justin Kirk, Love! Valour! Compassion! (1995/1997)

• Michael Shannon, Bug (1996/2006)

• Entire cast, The History Boys (2004/2006)

• Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon (2004/2006)

* * *

Frank Craven and Martha Scott, who created the roles of the Stage Manager and Emily in the original 1938 Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, perform the same parts in Sam Wood’s 1940 screen version. The part of George is played by William Holden. Wilder, Craven, and Harry Chandlee wrote the screenplay. The score is by Aaron Copland:

The theatrical trailer for the 1945 film version of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, directed by David Lean:

Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden perform scenes from the original stage production of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire as part of an extremely rare radio performance given while the play was still running on Broadway. Tandy, who created the role of Blanche, was subsequently replaced by Vivien Leigh in the film version. John Mason Brown is the host, and Elia Kazan talks about staging the production and introduces the scenes. This program was originally broadcast by WOR-AM on April 4, 1948:

From 2008:

It was Our Girl who introduced me to the music of Liz Phair twelve years ago. I had come to Chicago to pay her a visit, and she played me a mixtape(remember those?) as we drove to dinner. Our Girl has long considered it her duty to keep me conversant with the newest wrinkles in popular culture, so none of the artists on the tape was familiar to me. The music washed undistractingly over us as we discussed the day’s adventures. Then a woman with a low, throaty voice sang a song whose first lines caught my ear…

Read the whole thing here.

“To innovate is not to reform.”

Edmund Burke, “A Letter to a Noble Lord”

I posted this for the first time two years ago. It’s still relevant, and (I suspect) always will be.

* * *

“I saw a woman in Central Park today wearing a T-shirt that said ‘America Was Never Great,’” a friend of mine tweeted over the weekend. I wasn’t surprised to hear it. My country contains many people who are contemptuous of its past, some of whom are no less dismissive of the men and women who endeavor to ensure that it will have a future. (Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep/Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap.) All they can see are the flaws, of which there were and are many—many flaws and much honor.

At no time am I more intensely aware of that honor, and the fearful toll that it exacted, than on Memorial Day. Mrs. T and I watched The Longest Day a couple of nights ago, and I found myself thinking: could I ever have done anything like that? I hope so, but I’ll never know, for history did not demand it of me.

And what did I miss, other than stark terror and the ever-present possibility of violent death? Justice Holmes, who fought and was wounded three times in the Civil War, summed it up in a speech that he gave on this day in 1884: “I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.”

Whenever I read those words, I think of my late father, who served in the Army Air Corps during World War II. Though he never saw combat, he stood ready to do his duty, and I have no doubt that he would have done it without hesitation, just as he unhesitatingly saved me from drowning at the risk of his own life when I was a child. He was that kind of man. I hope I would have been the same kind under similar circumstances—but I’ll never know.

That is why I overflow with respect for those who, like my father, did what they had to do when their country asked them to do it. More than anyone else save for the Founders themselves, they made America great. I have no doubt—none whatsoever—that they always will.

* * *

“The Battle of Midway,” an official 1942 war documentary directed by John Ford. Some of the combat footage was shot by Ford himself with a handheld movie camera:

Lt. Col. Jason K. Fettig and the United States Marine Band play William Schuman’s When Jesus Wept, based on a round by William Billings:

A compilation of interviews with some of the oldest people in America, filmed on August 26, 1929, by Movietone News:

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