Archives for 2018

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:
• On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (musical, G, too complex for children, closes Sept. 6, reviewed here)
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

IN GARRISON, N.Y.:
• Richard II (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Aug. 26, reviewed here)
• The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Aug. 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Carmen Jones (musical, PG-13, closes Aug. 19, reviewed here)
• Mary Page Marlowe (drama, PG-13, extended through Aug. 19, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN NEW HOPE, PA.:
• 42nd Street (musical, G, reviewed here)

“What is sweeter than admiration? It is heavenly love; it is affection raised to adoration. We feel ourselves filled with gratitude for the divinity who thus extends the roots of our intelligence, who opens up new vistas for our soul to contemplate, who grants us a happiness so great and so pure that it is without any taint of fear or envy.”

François-René de Chateaubriand, Memoirs from Beyond the Grave: 1768-1800 (trans. Alex Andriesse, courtesy of Richard Brookhiser)

Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-tette perform “Lulu’s Back in Town” (by Al Dubin and Harry Warren) on a 1967 episode of Something Special, a syndicated TV variety show. The arrangement is by Paich:

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

“Russell was too observant not to have noticed that he got on exceptionally well with younger men, but he had never analysed the flair because he never played it consciously. In fact the gift had a simple spring: he seldom thought of men as younger except to reflect that at a similar age he’d had different but much less tolerable defects.”

William Haggard, The Hard Sell

From 2008:

My friend Ethan Iverson, who plays piano with the Bad Plus, read my recent Wall Street Journal column about modern music, in which I mentioned in passing that “I don’t go in for crunch-and-thump music, nor do I care for the over-and-over-and-over-again minimalism of John Adams and Philip Glass, which puts me to sleep.” He promptly issued the following challenge on his blog: “Here’s an open invitation to Terry–who, after all, is a current collaborator with modernist composer Paul Moravec: what about a list of classical music since 1950 that he finds interesting? It should be a list of music that is neither twelve-tone or minimalist, nor particularly ‘crunch and thump.’”

Here goes, straight off the top of my head….

Read the whole thing here.

“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals, and you know it.”

Ed Solomon, screenplay for Men in Black

I wrote a piece for the Weekend Journal edition of The Wall Street Journal about the pleasures and perils of attending outdoor performances. It ran on Saturday. Here’s an excerpt:

From Tanglewood to the Hollywood Bowl, summertime means outdoor performances of every kind, including classical concerts, opera, dance and, most often, theater. I’ve reviewed them all, and some of my happiest memories are of the countless shows I’ve seen under the stars. On the other hand, I also remember a few that I would have paid not to see, usually because Mother Nature chose not to cooperate. Yes, it’s festive and fun to eat a picnic dinner, then stroll to Shakespeare in the Park. But if the sky falls, the show stops—unless the performers are protected by a tent or canopy, in which case it may simply be paused, leaving the audience soaked to the skin by evening’s end. Not only is mere skull-busting heat rarely considered sufficient reason to send a paying crowd home, but I’ve covered plenty of performances where gnats were out in force, flying in funnel-cloud formation with orders to kill….

Read the whole thing here.

The final London performance of Beyond the Fringe, a revue written by and starring Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, and Dudley Moore. It was first performed in 1960, then transferred to Broadway in 1962 and ran there for 667 performances. This live performance was taped by the BBC and was originally telecast on December 12, 1964:

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