Archives for May 2018

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Connecticut revival of The Will Rogers Follies. Here’s an excerpt.

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Will Rogers is mostly forgotten now, but he used to be famous in a way that has a peculiarly modern feel to it. A self-styled Cherokee cowboy turned lariat-twirling vaudevillian, he told jokes, most of them political, in between rope tricks, blandly assuring his listeners that “all I know is what I read in the papers.” In time the jokes became the point of his act, and he moved from vaudeville to Broadway to radio to, finally, Hollywood, where he made 69 movies, three of them directed by John Ford, knocking out a popular syndicated newspaper column in between takes. H.L. Mencken once called him “the most dangerous writer alive” to his face, and while Mencken was kidding, it was on the square. Rogers’ cornpone opinionizing (“Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with”) was taken so seriously by his fans that Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt both went out of their way to curry his favor. He would be vastly better remembered today had he not died in a plane crash in 1935. Instead, he has become a footnote to the history of America in the 20th century—except when “The Will Rogers Follies” is performed….

A Tommy Tune-directed glitzmobile with a score by Cy Coleman, Betty Comden and Adolph Green and a book by Peter Stone (“1776”), it ran for 981 performances and won six Tonys, including the best-musical and best-original-score prizes. But “The Will Rogers Follies” has yet to return to Broadway, and even though it continues to be staged on occasion by amateurs and students, professional productions of the show have long since become rare enough that I made a point of going to Goodspeed Musicals’ revival to find out what I’d been missing—and was very happily surprised by how entertaining it proved to be.

The premise of “The Will Rogers Follies” is that Rogers (David Lutken) has come back from the dead to star in a “Ziegfeld Follies”-type bring-on-the-showgirls revue that tells the story of his rise to fame and fortune….

The success of a show like this is wholly contingent on its star, and Mr. Lutken, who understudied Rogers’ part in the original Broadway production and is now best known for playing Woody Guthrie in his own “Woody Sez,” has star quality in abundance…

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Goodspeed Musicals’ revival of The Will Rogers Follies

The cast of the original Broadway production of The Will Rogers Follies, introduced by Julie Andrews, appears on the 1991 Tony Awards telecast:

Will Rogers introduces Franklin D. Roosevelt at a 1932 campaign stop in Hollywood. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, was running against Herbert Hoover for the presidency. This clip was part of a Pathé News theatrical newsreel:

William Talman, who played Hamilton Burger on Perry Mason, appears in a 1968 anti-smoking TV public-service announcement, the first one to feature a celebrity. A longtime smoker, Talman died of lung cancer six weeks after it was filmed:

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

“To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.”

E.M. Forster, “A Book That Influenced Me”

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I consider a new development in the ongoing shunning of Bill Cosby and James Levine. Here’s an excerpt.

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In the wake of Bill Cosby’s conviction on three counts of sexual assault, the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center has voted to rescind his 1998 Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in the performing arts, as well as his 2009 Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. A written statement explained the decision as follows: “The Board concluded that [Cosby’s] actions have overshadowed the very career accomplishments these distinctions…intend to recognize.”

I can’t say I’m surprised, any more than I am by the fast-growing list of colleges and universities that have shredded the honorary degrees they previously conferred upon Mr. Cosby. He was already well on the way to becoming a cultural unperson when the Kennedy Center joined Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame and Yale, among many others, in the #MeToo-triggered pile-on….

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the Kennedy Center, the Motion Picture Academy and Yale were deliriously happy to ride on the capacious coattails of Mr. Cosby’s celebrity once upon a time. Yale went so far as to confer an honorary doctorate of “humane letters” upon him in 2003 for his “contributions to society.” We are now invited to suppose that those contributions have lost all meaning in light of the revelations about the viciousness of his sex life….

Meanwhile, Met Opera Radio, the Metropolitan Opera’s Sirius XM satellite radio channel, has admitted that it is no longer broadcasting live recordings conducted by James Levine, who performed at the Met from 1971 until last December, when he was suspended and subsequently fired…

I won’t lose any sleep over the twin descents of Messrs. Cosby and Levine into the dark pit of disgrace. But there’s a difference—a huge one—between shunning such men and rewriting the history of which they are a prominent part….

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Read the whole thing here.

Bill Cosby performs an excerpt from his nightclub routine on The Jack Paar Show. This episode was originally telecast by NBC on October 4, 1963:

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, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, most 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, all shows sold out last week, closes July 1, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, closes June 10, reviewed here)
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)
• Travesties (serious comedy, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Mlima’s Tale (drama, PG-13, closes June 3, reviewed here)
• 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)

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

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• A Brief History of Women (serious comedy, PG-13, closes May 27, reviewed here)
• The Seafarer (drama, PG-13, closes May 24, reviewed here)

“Death destroys a man, but the idea of death saves him.”

E.M. Forster, Howards End

Michael Rabin plays Fritz Kreisler’s “Tambourin chinois” on an episode of Texaco Star Theatre, originally telecast by NBC in 1951. The fifteen-year-old Rabin is introduced by Milton Berle:

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

“The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.”

E.M. Forster, A Room with a View