Archives for June 21, 2018

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I report on an on-stage culture clash that I witnessed last week in St. Louis. Here’s an excerpt.

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Culture War II, in which “woke” progressives are now pitting themselves against old-fashioned liberals, came to St. Louis on Friday. The battleground was the Muny, a century-old outdoor theater that produces Broadway musicals every summer, and the casus belli was—unlikely as it may sound—an anti-slavery ballet.

The Muny opened its centennial season last week with a major event, the first revival anywhere of “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway,” the 1989 revue in which the master of musical-comedy choreography put together an evening’s worth of his celebrated production numbers. None was more memorable than “The Small House of Uncle Thomas,” the ballet from “The King and I” in which the enslaved wives of the tyrannical King of Siam turn “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” into an impeccably liberal-minded song-and-dance number that pointedly hints at the resemblance between their degraded condition and that of the black slaves who worked on plantations in the American South….

Laura Jacobs, who reviewed “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” for the Journal, singled out “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” as “the most beautiful of the numbers” in the show. But that’s not how a group of out-of-town American theater artists felt when they saw it on Friday. Jeremy D. Goodwin, who interviewed them afterwards, reported on St. Louis Public Radio’s website that the 15 artists, who were in town for a conference, were offended by what they took to be examples of cultural insensitivity in the production, the most noteworthy of which was the casting of a white actor, Sarah Bowden, as Tuptim, the slave-wife who narrates “The Small House of Uncle Thomas.” “Looking at that work was painful for us,” said Leilani Chan, artistic director of Los Angeles’ TeAda Productions. “We were just shocked.”

How did they respond? One might reasonably have expected them to request a meeting with Mike Isaacson, the Muny’s artistic director and executive producer, to discuss their grievances. But acccording to Mr. Goodwin, the group had already been tipped about the “yellowface” casting (to use the now-common term for casting whites in Asian roles) of Tuptim. Hence they were inclined instead to immediate action, and when “The Small House of Uncle Thomas” got underway, they rose to their feet and started shouting “No yellowface!” and booing in unison before being escorted out of the theater by Muny staffers….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the Muny’s revival of Jerome Robbins’ Broadway:

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:
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, extended through Sept. 2, reviewed here)

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

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

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• The Iceman Cometh (drama, PG-13, some shows sold out last week, closes July 1, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING TONIGHT IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• The Will Rogers Follies (musical, G, reviewed here)

“My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do. You may say to a man, ‘Sir, I am your most humble servant.’ You are not his most humble servant. You may say, ‘These are sad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times.’ You don’t mind the times. You tell a man, ‘I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.’ You don’t care six-pence whether he was wet or dry. You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society: but don’t think foolishly.”

James Boswell, Life of Johnson