Archives for August 2018

Titus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back to talk about Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter on his latest episode. (I appeared last month to discuss Laura.) Our hour-long chat is now available on line.

Titus and I spoke in detail about the film, the only one that Laughton directed, which starred Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters and whose screenplay was adapted by James Agee from Davis Grubb’s best-selling 1953 novel. The screen version flopped at the box office on its original release in 1955 but is now universally regarded as one of the supreme masterpieces of English-language cinema.

Here’s part of Titus’ summary of our conversation:

Titus and Terry Teachout discuss…a remarkable movie about false prophets—the possibility that the devil would come among us in the clothes of a preacher. We talk at length about the various aspects of the making of the movie—actors, script, production, score, and even some editing and cinematography—and we also talk about the moral seriousness served by all these crafts and Laughton’s unity of conception.

To listen to or download this episode, go here.

* * *

The original theatrical trailer for The Night of the Hunter:

A scene from the film:

“Who Is Gustav Mahler?”, a Young People’s Concert by Leonard Bernstein, Reri Grist, Helen Raab, and the New York Philharmonic. This program was originally telecast from Carnegie Hall by CBS on February 7, 1960, at a time when Mahler’s music was still largely unknown to the American concertgoing public. The music heard includes excerpts from Mahler’s Second and Fourth Symphonies, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and Das Lied von der Erde:

To read Bernstein’s script, 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)

“Intimate acquaintance with the executive side of music in orchestra, chorus and opera made even Mahler into a very tolerable imitation of a composer.”

Ralph Vaughan Williams, “A Musical Autobiography”

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review an extremely rare Massachusetts revival of Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest and the off-Broadway transfer of Be More Chill. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Few playwrights have fallen farther—or faster—than Robert Sherwood. His name was rarely missing from the marquées of Broadway in the Twenties and Thirties, and most of his hits, including “Abe Lincoln in Illinois,” “Idiot’s Delight” and “The Petrified Forest,” were turned into popular Hollywood movies. Then, in 1940, Sherwood went to Washington to write speeches for Franklin Roosevelt, and by the time he made it back to Broadway, tastes had changed and he’d lost his touch: He turned out nothing but flops and near-misses between 1946 and his death in 1955….

Now, very much to my surprise, the Berkshire Theatre Festival has exhumed “The Petrified Forest,” the 1935 stage thriller that made Humphrey Bogart a bad-guy star. What’s more, it’s presenting the play on its main stage in an expensive-looking production directed by David Auburn, the author of “Proof.” All this bespeaks considerable faith in the abilities of a forgotten playwright—and “The Petrified Forest” justifies that faith. It’s not merely stageworthy but excitingly immediate, and Mr. Auburn’s uncommonly well-cast staging enhances the pleasures of a play that is far more than a dusty period piece.

Set in the lunch room of the Black Mesa Filling Station and Bar-B-Q, a rundown roadside café somewhere in the deserts of Arizona, “The Petrified Forest” is a “Grand Hotel”-style ensemble piece that brings together a cast of disparate characters and puts them in a high-pressure situation. The plot is as uncomplicated as a slug from a .45: Duke Mantee (Jeremy Davidson), a hard-boiled heister on the lam, shows up at the café to hide from his pursuers, taking the occupants hostage. Among them are Gabby (Rebecca Brooksher), a disillusioned girl whose lost idealism has just been rekindled by the arrival of Alan Squier (David Adkins), a failed writer who longs in vain for a reason to live—or die.

Sherwood was, of course, the staunchest of New Deal liberals, and “The Petrified Forest” is not merely a thriller but a symbolic portrayal of the shaky state of Depression-era American morale, with Squier playing the part of the high-minded but ineffectual liberal intellectual who is galvanized by crisis into decisive action. The good news is that Sherwood never lets his politics overwhelm the plot….

The New York transfer of “Be More Chill,” the new high-school musical about an anxious teenage nerd (Will Roland) who stumbles across a science-fictional way of overcoming his nerdishness, has just sold out the remainder of its three-week off-Broadway run. Hence I’ll be brief: “Be More Chill” is a delight, a tale of social anxiety whose pop-rock score, written by Joe Iconis, is unfailingly lively and fresh. Stephen Brackett and Chase Brock, the director and choreographer, keep the pace brisk, and the cast, Stephanie Hsu in particular, is engaging without limit

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

David Auburn and the cast of The Petrified Forest talk about the play:

The original theatrical trailer for the 1936 film version of The Petrified Forest:

The trailer for the original Two River Theater Company 2015 production of Be More Chill:

Leroy “Satchel” Paige appears as the guest on I’ve Got a Secret. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on November 22, 1965. Steve Allen is the host and the panelists are Bill Cullen, Henry Morgan, Bess Myerson, and Betsy Palmer:

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

“Write, write, write! It is necessary. Even should the play fail, don’t let that discourage you. A failure will soon be forgotten, but a success, however slight, may be of vast service to the theatre.”

Anton Chekhov, letter to Maxim Gorky, September 8, 1900 (courtesy of Kathryn Jean Lopez)

In the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I review the off-Broadway premiere of Jonathan Leaf’s Pushkin: A Life Played Out. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

George Balanchine called Tchaikovsky “Pushkin in music: supreme craftsmanship, exact proportions, majesty.” That says a lot about Tchaikovsky, and even more about Aleksandr Pushkin. But though he was and is Russia’s greatest poet, Pushkin’s work is comparatively little known in the West save in the form of Tchaikovsky’s “Yevgeny Onegin” and Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov.” Outside of those operas, whose libretti were adapted by their composers from his two best-remembered works, he has never made much of an impression outside his native land. As a result, few Westerners know anything about Pushkin’s spectacularly eventful life and violent death—he was a compulsive gambler who was killed in a duel in 1837—both of which were as theatrical as his poetry.

That’s where Jonathan Leaf comes in. Mr. Leaf is the author of, among other things, “The Germans in Paris,” a smart, elegantly wrought 2007 comedy of manners about an imagined but plausible encounter between Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx and Richard Wagner. While he has a Stoppard-like knack for spinning thought-provoking drama out of such speculative scenarios, “Pushkin: A Life Played Out,” a history play in verse about the circumstances leading up to Pushkin’s murder, is not a witty game of what-if. It is, rather, a romantic tragedy, the true story of an idealist who refuses to compromise with the lethal realities of power and so finds himself staring down the wrong end of a gun barrel. Tautly told and staged with hurtling momentum by Christopher McElroen, “Pushkin” is one of the best new plays to open in New York in recent memory, and this fabulously well-acted production, performed in an 80-seat black-box theater, puts you a heartbeat away from the action….

“Pushkin” doesn’t look or feel like a small-scale show, much less a low-budget downtown production. Troy Hourie, the scenic designer, has created a simply decorated set that nonetheless suggests the resplendent air of Czarist Russia, and Elivia Bovenzi’s period costumes perfect the illusion: You know at all times where you are and when it is. Nor can I possibly say enough good things about Mr. McElroen’s staging, which builds to the climactic duel so inexorably that you’ll resent the intermission….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I pay tribute to Spike Jones. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Humor and music aren’t always strange bedfellows, but they sometimes make for an uneasy fit. From Gilbert and Sullivan’s “My Object All Sublime” to Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Piña Colada Song),” most comic songs are in fact musically straightforward ditties that just happen to tell a funny story. Take “Weird Al” Yankovic, pop music’s clown prince of parody, whose modus operandi is to write incongruous new lyrics for familiar songs. Give a careful listen to, say, “Eat It,” his cover version of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” and you’ll be struck by how closely the instrumental backing reproduces that of the original record….

The staying power of Mr. Yankovic’s formula has long since proved itself. But there are other, more specifically musical ways to make funny music. Haydn, the most sophisticated of all musical comedians, did it by spicing up the time-honored formulas of classical music with startling musical jokes, the most celebrated of which is the explosive fortissimo chord that he detonates without warning a half-minute or so into the slow movement of his “Surprise” Symphony. And a century and a half later, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, American pop music’s first great comedy band, dusted off Haydn’s bottomless bag of tricks, using them to cut dozens of records that remain wildly funny to this day….

One of his biggest hits, a 1942 version of “Cocktails for Two,” shows off his method (if you want to call it that) to sensational effect. The original song, written in 1934, is a sugary ballad that tells the tale of a romantic encounter “in some secluded rendezvous/That overlooks the avenue.” Accordingly, Jones’ recording starts off with a straight-down-the-center harp-accompanied vocal-group performance of the verse, one that never hints at the chaos to come. Then someone shouts “WHOOPEE!” and the rest of the band crashes in from out of nowhere with a hard-charging, Dixieland-flavored banjo-and-tuba accompaniment interspersed with such exquisitely timed sound effects as a pistol shot, a bicycle horn, a clanging fire-station bell and—least likely of all—a hoedown fiddle….

Nothing in Jones’ previous life suggested that he longed to become a specialist in musical slapstick….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

A 1945 “soundie” film version of Spike Jones’ “Cocktails for Two”:

Spike Jones appears as the mystery guest on a 1954 episode of What’s My Line? The panel includes Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen: