Archives for July 2018

From 2003:

Me, I think all musicians, classical and non-classical alike, should talk to their audiences. If I ran a conservatory, I’d require every student to take a class in public speaking. Failing that, though, I think a little discreet ghostwriting might prove to be a shrewd investment in the future of classical music in America….

Read the whole thing here.

“Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it.”

Mark Twain, foreword to The American Claimant

The Band peforms Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight” on stage at Woodstock in 1969:

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

“I believe that in India ‘cold weather’ is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.”

Mark Twain, Following the Equator

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two of the Hudson Valley Shakepeare Festival’s new productions, Richard II and The Taming of the Shrew. Here’s an excerpt.

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Seven years ago, it was still inherently newsy when the Oregon Shakespeare Festival put on a “Julius Caesar” whose title role was played by a woman, Vilma Silva. Nowadays, though, gender-bending revivals of the classics have become all but commonplace, and what makes Davis McCallum’s Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of “Richard II” noteworthy is not that Julia Coffey has been cast as Shakespeare’s unhappy king, or even that her performance is so distinctive: It is, rather, Mr. McCallum’s staging. As crisp, legible and full of import as a well-written headline, his “Richard II” cuts straight to the heart of a play that has never been as popular as its historical companion pieces…

Ms. Coffey, who first came to my attention when she appeared in Mr. McCallum’s 2014 Mint Theater revival of John Van Druten’s “London Wall,” is at home with both aspects of Richard II’s cloven personality, pivoting from arrogance to desperation so smoothly as to suggest that both qualities are opposite sides of the same coin of character….

In the #MeToo moment, how can “The Taming of the Shrew” be staged without setting off alarm bells of political incorrectness? The best way, it strikes me, is to play it the way Shakespeare wrote it, as a slapstick comedy in which a proto-feminist hellion gets her comeuppance at the hands of an arrogant man, and let the audience draw its own conclusions about what it’s seeing. This is more or less the way Shana Cooper approaches the play in her Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival directorial debut, and the results are consistently satisfying—the best “Shrew” I’ve ever reviewed, in fact.

Ms. Cooper, a newish face on the theatrical scene, has written a program note that bristles with up-to-the-minute notions (“The world of ‘Taming’ is one…in which women are judged and punished for not adhering to the rules of the game as dictated by a patriarchal society”). But whatever her production really “means,” Ms. Cooper’s “Shrew” plays as a riotously bawdy baggy-pants farce, one whose director is unafraid to opt for broad comic gestures and whose cast is more than happy to oblige her….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Richard II:

The trailer for The Taming of the Shrew:

Manhatta, a 1921 silent film documentary about New York City photographed by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler. The titles are drawn from the poetry of Walt Whitman. To read more about the film, go here:

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

“All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others.”

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826

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:
• Carmen Jones (musical, PG-13, closes Aug. 19, reviewed here)
• Conflict (drama, PG-13, closes July 21, reviewed here)
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING SATURDAY IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:
• The Royal Family of Broadway (musical, G, reviewed here)