Archives for June 2018

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review Classic Stage Company’s revival of Carmen Jones. Here’s an excerpt.

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The history of the Broadway musical in the Forties is in essence the story of Oscar Hammerstein II. After going for 11 anxious years without a hit, Hammerstein finally teamed up with Richard Rodgers. The duo then knocked out “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” back to back, and Hammerstein spent the rest of his life counting money. Yet he also scored another hit in between those two legendary smashes, this one without Rodgers: “Carmen Jones,” an all-black modern-dress version of Georges Bizet’s much-loved opera, came to Broadway in 1943, ran there for 503 performances, toured the country, and was turned a decade later into an equally popular film. No opera has had a longer Broadway run. But “Carmen Jones” dropped out of sight after Otto Preminger’s screen version opened in 1952, and Classic Stage Company’s slimmed-down new revival, directed by John Doyle, is its first New York staging of any consequence since the original production. The result is a major find, a show that deserves to return to Broadway and will surely end up there.

So what happened to “Carmen Jones” in the meantime? It came to be regarded as a racially condescending period piece. James Baldwin famously roasted Preminger’s film version, dismissing it as “tasteless and vulgar…ludicrously false and affected” in a 1955 Commentary essay that was long taken to be the last word on Hammerstein’s transformation of Bizet’s opera into a tale of love and death in a World War II parachute factory….

All credit, then, belongs to Mr. Doyle for realizing that Hammerstein’s English-language adaptation of the most popular of all 19th-century operas, far from being condescending, is in fact a completely straightforward translation of Bizet’s opera into contemporary terms….

As for Mr. Doyle’s small-scale staging, performed by a cast of 10 and accompanied by a six-piece band, it is simple, subtle and wonderfully lucid, and features a performance of the title role by Anika Noni Rose for which the word “hot” is a wan understatement. No doubt you could strike matches off Ms. Rose’s blood-red dress, but you wouldn’t need to: They’d probably burst into flame all by themselves….

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Read the whole thing here.

Simon Callow talks about his 1990 Old Vic revival of Carmen Jones:

In addition to my regularly scheduled appearances in The Wall Street Journal, I popped up in two of the electronic media this week.

To begin with, the latest episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. In this longer-than-usual episode, Peter, Elisabeth, and I are joined by two guests, Diep Tran, senior editor of American Theatre, which hosts Three on the Aisle, and Lily Janiak, theater critic of the San Francisco Chronicle.

For what it’s worth, I think this is the most exciting Three on the Aisle that we’ve taped so far, and very possibly the most illuminating as well.

If I may quote from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings, which got extremely lively at more than one point:

Terry, Elisabeth and Peter delve into one of the most controversial issues of the day in the theatre world and the performing arts in general: “whitewashing,” the practice of casting white performers as characters of color. The discussion is inspired by the recent protest at the Muny in St. Louis, where fifteen audience members loudly booed and then walked out of a performance of Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. The panelists are joined by Diep Tran…

Janiak fills in the panel on the theatre scene in the Bay Area, talks about how she goes about her job and the need for more women and younger writers in the ranks of theatre critics….

As usual, we wrap things up, joined this time by Lily, with a discussion of recent productions, in New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere, that we’ve seen and liked—or not.

To listen, download the latest episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

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Peter and I, joined this time by Ben Brantley of the New York Times, also appeared on the latest episode of CUNY-TV’s Theater Talk, the show’s annual theater critics’ forum, during which we talked about most of the plays and musicals that opened on Broadway during the second half of the 2017-18 season. The episode was hosted by Susan Haskins and Jesse Green of the New York Times.

If I may say so, this particular episode conveys with special clarity what it’s like for the five of us to sit in a room and chat about theater. We had fun taping it, and I think you’ll see that we did.

If you didn’t see the episode when it aired, you can view it here:

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Just so you’ll know: Peter, Elisabeth and I will only be taping single episodes of Three on the Aisle in the months of July and August. Our regular twice-monthly schedule resumes in September. Watch this space for details.

Peter Lorre appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? John Charles Daly is the host and the panelists are Steve Allen, Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on February 14, 1960:

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

“One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive—it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.”

Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

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:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, 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)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Conflict (drama, PG-13, closes July 21, reviewed here)
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, alternating in repertory, closes July 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:
• The Royal Family of Broadway (musical, G, closes July 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• The Iceman Cometh (drama, PG-13, some shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

“Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone, and the only one who seeks out another.”

Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I write about a newly released box set that sheds light on an insufficiently appreciated aspect of the phenomenal talent of Leonard Bernstein. Here’s an excerpt.

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Everybody knows that Leonard Bernstein, who was born a century ago this August, was a man of spectacularly varied gifts. Not only was he a great conductor, but he composed hit shows for Broadway and memorable scores for the concert hall, and he also had a knack for talking about music that he used to unforgettable advantage in his Young People’s Concerts with the New York Philharmonic. Because of all this, it’s easy to forget that Bernstein also played piano on the side—well enough to have had a full-time solo career had he wished it.

If you think I’m stretching the truth, let me point you in the direction of “Leonard Bernstein: The Pianist,” a budget-priced 11-CD box set just out from Sony Classical, which contains all of the commercial recordings that Bernstein made as a pianist between 1947 and 1974 for Columbia and RCA Victor. In addition to playing on his own, he can also be heard performing with the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, London’s Philharmonia Orchesra and the Juilliard String Quartet and accompanying Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christa Ludwig and Jennie Tourel, three of the most celebrated classical singers of the postwar era. The contents include piano concertos by Beethoven, Mozart, Ravel and Shostakovich, each one led from the keyboard by Bernstein; chamber music and songs by Brahms, Mahler, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Poulenc and Schumann; an assortment of Bernstein’s own songs and solo pieces; and two American masterworks, Aaron Copland’s Piano Sonata and George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, the latter a signature piece with which he was closely identified….

Most orchestral conductors, of course, can play at least a little piano, and some, like André Previn and George Szell, have been far more than good enough to perform in concert and make noteworthy recordings. But Bernstein, while he seems never to have wanted to be a concert pianist, studied the instrument as seriously as any budding virtuoso….

Not all of Bernstein’s recorded interpretations are equally convincing—his 1959 version of Rhapsody in Blue, for example, is exaggerated to the point of garishness—but his playing is unfailingly crisp and characterful, if occasionally brash. The brashness is, however, the defect of a virtue, for he was incapable of giving a routine performance…

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Read the whole thing here.

Leonard Bernstein plays the first movement of Aaron Copland’s Piano Sonata in 1947:

The Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra plays Jerome Richardson’s “The Groove Merchant” on European TV in 1968:

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

“Nothing so concentrates the mind as having to write. In my own case, I frequently do not know what I really think about a writer, a general subject, an event, a person, until I set out my thoughts on the page.”

Joseph Epstein, Partial Payments: Essays on Writers and Their Lives (courtesy of Patrick Kurp)

From 2003:

If we think a house or painting or photograph or ballet is beautiful, we want it with us always. But the catch is that the more pieces of the past we succeed in preserving, the less space and time we have in which to display and contemplate the present. Too many lovers of art live exclusively in the past. I understand the temptation—I feel it myself—but it strikes me that we have an obligation to keep one eye fixed in the moment, and that becomes a lot harder to do when you’re pulling a long, long train of classics of which the new is merely the caboose….

Read the whole thing here.