Archives for 2018

“Television is the first truly democratic culture—the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.”

Clive Barnes, “Stage: Sinister Comedy; ‘Love Your Crooked Neighbor’ Opens” (New York Times, December 30, 1969)

Ian Bostridge sings the “Agnus Dei” movement from Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, accompanied by Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra and Chorus of the Accademia Nazionalle di Santa Cecilia. The interpolated poem is by Wilfred Owen, who was killed in action in France on November 4, 1918, exactly one week before the signing of the armistice that ended World War I:

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

“We live in a fanatical age, an age of propaganda, when everybody wants the support of the whole herd in order to be quite at peace in his own conscience.”

George Santayana, letter to Daniel Cory, April 13, 1938 (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence)

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two new Broadway shows, American Son and King Kong. Here’s an excerpt.

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How do you get a new American play to Broadway? The best way—just about the only way, truth to tell—is to find a TV or movie star who wants to act in it. Witness “American Son,” which tells the grim tale of three black teenagers in a shiny new Lexus who get pulled over by a Miami patrol car one dark and stormy night. Written by Christopher Demos-Brown, a Florida playwright whose work is new to me, it has reached Broadway after just two regional productions, at Massachusetts’ Barrington Stage Company and New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse. Such a thing scarcely ever happens to straight plays nowadays, and the fact that it happened to “American Son” is owing to the interest of two of the show’s producers, Kerry Washington and Shonda Rhimes, the first of whom was the star of “Scandal” and the second of whom was its creator and showrunner. Ms. Washington is also the star of “American Son,” which means that it’s almost certainly going to do pretty well—maybe even very well—at the box office.

If so, though, it will also be in part because Mr. Demos-Brown’s eighth play, in addition to being topical, is unswervingly conventional in its dramaturgy. “American Son” is a one-set, small-cast, no-intermission real-time show that bears a distinct family resemblance to such issue-driven live-TV dramas of the ’50s as Reginald Rose’s “Twelve Angry Men.” The setting has been updated, but the method remains the same…

What we have here, in short, is an earnestly meant, soundly made commercial stage drama of the kind that used to play Broadway regularly, one that is overly inclined to TV-type clichés but proves to be unexpectedly good about not stacking the deck…

Have you been waiting for an Australian musical version of “King Kong” in which the story of the gorilla who loved and lost an actress is turned into a “42nd Street”-style backstage musical full of New Age uplift? Then wait no longer: The show of your wildest dreams has come to Broadway.

The title character is played by a giant puppet designed by Sonny Tilders and manipulated by a team of 10 stalwart operators. Between them, they give us a creature so expressive that he seems to have wandered into the theater from another, vastly better musical. He (if that’s the right word) is the best thing about “King Kong,” closely followed by Christiani Pitts, who is charming as the chorus girl who delivers King Kong into the clutches of the bad guys, then thinks better of her misdeed and resolves to help him.

Otherwise, it’s hard to know where to start pitching the tomatoes….

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To read my review of American Son, go here.

To read my review of King Kong, go here.

The trailer for American Son:

A music video of “Queen of New York,” one of the songs from King Kong, performed by Christiani Pitts and members of the Broadway cast:

Bing Crosby performs “Rhythm on the River,” by Johnny Burke and James Monaco, in Victor Schertzinger’s 1940 film of the same name, accompanied by Wingy Manone and his band. (Manone, the trumpeter, is wearing a glove on his right hand because it was a prosthesis.) Crosby, a self-taught drummer, played professionally in high school and college before becoming a full-time singer:

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

“He did not, he assured me, object to criticism so long as it was constructive. A blessed phrase this; and usually it means that a criticism is regarded as ‘constructive,’ by the subject of it, if it is favourable.”

Neville Cardus, Autobiography

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, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Ferryman (drama, PG-13, Broadway transfer of London production, nearly 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 Lifespan of a Fact (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Waverly Gallery (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 27, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Girl from the North Country (jukebox musical, PG-13, closes Dec. 23, reviewed here)
• Mother of the Maid (drama, PG-13, closes Dec. 23, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, too conceptually complicated for small children, closes Nov. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Uncle Vanya (drama, G, not suitable for children, closes Nov. 18, reviewed here)

“Nietzsche looked around him and announced that God was dead. The question follows: if God is dead, who is making the rules? Nobody, Nietzsche said. Or rather, anybody. The rules are made by whoever has the will to make them.”

Tom Stoppard, Darkside