Archives for 2018

“If my anarchic friends will not have rules—they will have rulers.”

G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong With the World

From 2008:

I tried to take Stuff White People Like’s Facebook test yesterday, but gave it up after running into three consecutive questions for which my answer was None of the above, which was not an option. My impression, however, was that I’m not very “white,” a fact which amuses me, albeit only mildly. Speaking as an arty Upper West Side drama critic who works for The Wall Street Journal, likes both sushi and hot dogs, is currently writing an opera, and can sit down at the piano and play Nat Cole’s “Easy Listening Blues” on request, I’m not at all sure what color I am.

In the interests of chromatic clarification, here is the personal information that appeared on my Facebook page last week….

Read the whole thing here.

“Come to me in some grievous difficulty: I will talk to you like a father, even like a lawyer. I’ll be hanged if I haven’t a certain mellow wisdom. But if you are by way of weaving theories on some one who will luminously confirm or powerfully rend them, I must, with a hang-dog air, warn you that I am not your man. I suffer from a strong suspicion that things in general cannot be accounted for through any formula or set of formulae, and that any one philosophy, howsoever new, is no better than any other. This is in itself a sort of philosophy, and I suspect it accordingly; but it has for me the merit of being the only one that I can make head or tail of.”

Max Beerbohm, “Laughter”

The Band performs “Slippin’ and Slidin” on stage in July of 1970. This clip comes from Festival Express, a 2003 documentary about the Canadian tour during which this peformance was filmed:

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

“The concept of ‘truth’ as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness—the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte. I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.”

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Public Theater’s new Central Park production of Twelfth Night and a regional revival of Oliver! Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Rejoice greatly! The Public Theater’s delicious new Shakespeare in the Park production of “Twelfth Night,” which Kwame Kwei-Armah and Shaina Taub have turned into something closely resembling a Broadway musical, is at least as good as any of the new musicals that have opened in the past decade, and better than all but a handful of them. Indeed, Ms. Taub’s tuneful pop-soul score is reminiscent of a big-budget Disney show, only without the soul-shriveling slickness of a cold-hearted commodity musical like “Frozen.”…

While it wouldn’t take much work to develop this “Twelfth Night” into a commercial show, the outdoor version has an unpretentious charm all its own. It got its start two years ago as one of the Public Theater’s Public Works productions, in which “civilians” and professionals band together to create what Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director, calls “radically inclusive” shows that blur the line between community and fully professional theater….

I’d like to go into more detail about the show, a colorful modern-dress version that runs for 90 tightly packed, feather-light minutes, but I can do no more in this space than hint at its limitless pleasures…

Speaking of productions that deserve both a larger audience and a longer life, Goodspeed Musicals’ “Oliver!” fills the bill as abundantly as “Twelfth Night.” Lionel Bart’s ever-so-English stage version of “Oliver Twist” first came to Broadway in 1963 and ran there for nearly two years, after which Carol Reed turned it into one of the last high-budget movie musicals to whack the box-office gong. But “Oliver!” tanked when it returned to Broadway in 1984, closing after just 17 performances. Since then, professional American revivals have been comparatively scarce, so much so that I’d never seen it performed live until I drove up to Connecticut to take a look at Rob Ruggiero’s new production. Mr. Ruggiero has a knack for fitting big musicals onto Goodspeed’s tiny stage without breaking off the corners, but “Oliver!” is notable even by his own high standards. It is, in fact, one of the finest things Goodspeed has ever done, making a convincing case for a musical at which many musical-comedy buffs turn up their noses—and one that could be transferred to Broadway almost effortlessly….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Excerpts from the original 2016 Public Works production of Twelfth Night:

Excerpts from Goodspeed Musicals’ revival of Oliver!:

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe appear as the mystery guests on What’s My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and David Niven. (The third mystery guest, seen at the end of the program, is Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.) This episode was originally telecast live by CBS on October 21, 1956, seven months after Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady opened on Broadway. It was directed by Moss Hart, whom Cerf mentions on the air:

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

“I have often heard Degas say that in painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.”

Walter Sickert, “The Royal Academy” (English Review, June 1912)