Archives for 2018

“It is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”

George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

From 2003:

Sooner or later, everybody with a computer discovers the Internet Anagram Server, a Web site that generates anagrams of any phrase you plug into it. What you mostly get are reams of garbage, but sift through it long enough and you can usually find some gems.

I got tired of writing the other day and decided to run my name through the Internet Anagram Server, and was surprised to receive in return a fairly large number of anagrams that could be related to my career as a drama critic…

Read the whole thing here.

“I know very well, for what concerns myself, that from having been brought up in my childhood to a plain and straightforward way of dealing, and from having had an aversion to all manner of juggling and foul play in my childish sports and recreations (and, indeed, it is to be noted, that the plays of children are not performed in play, but are to be judged in them as their most serious actions), there is no game so small wherein from my own bosom naturally, and without study or endeavour, I have not an extreme aversion from deceit.”

Michel de Montaigne, “Of Custom, and That We Should Not Easily Change a Law Received” (trans. Charles Cotton)

Suzanne Farrell, Peter Martins, and New York City Ballet dance George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante, choreographed in 1956 and set to the music of Tchaikovsky. The piano soloist is Gordon Boelzner. This studio performance was originally telecast by PBS on March 7, 1979 as part of its Dance in America series. It was supervised by Balanchine and directed by Emile Ardolino:

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

“Rich people don’t think, they just assume things. They assume everyone thinks the way they do.”

Elmore Leonard, Split Images

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review Classic Stage Company’s revival of Carmen Jones. Here’s an excerpt.

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The history of the Broadway musical in the Forties is in essence the story of Oscar Hammerstein II. After going for 11 anxious years without a hit, Hammerstein finally teamed up with Richard Rodgers. The duo then knocked out “Oklahoma!” and “Carousel” back to back, and Hammerstein spent the rest of his life counting money. Yet he also scored another hit in between those two legendary smashes, this one without Rodgers: “Carmen Jones,” an all-black modern-dress version of Georges Bizet’s much-loved opera, came to Broadway in 1943, ran there for 503 performances, toured the country, and was turned a decade later into an equally popular film. No opera has had a longer Broadway run. But “Carmen Jones” dropped out of sight after Otto Preminger’s screen version opened in 1952, and Classic Stage Company’s slimmed-down new revival, directed by John Doyle, is its first New York staging of any consequence since the original production. The result is a major find, a show that deserves to return to Broadway and will surely end up there.

So what happened to “Carmen Jones” in the meantime? It came to be regarded as a racially condescending period piece. James Baldwin famously roasted Preminger’s film version, dismissing it as “tasteless and vulgar…ludicrously false and affected” in a 1955 Commentary essay that was long taken to be the last word on Hammerstein’s transformation of Bizet’s opera into a tale of love and death in a World War II parachute factory….

All credit, then, belongs to Mr. Doyle for realizing that Hammerstein’s English-language adaptation of the most popular of all 19th-century operas, far from being condescending, is in fact a completely straightforward translation of Bizet’s opera into contemporary terms….

As for Mr. Doyle’s small-scale staging, performed by a cast of 10 and accompanied by a six-piece band, it is simple, subtle and wonderfully lucid, and features a performance of the title role by Anika Noni Rose for which the word “hot” is a wan understatement. No doubt you could strike matches off Ms. Rose’s blood-red dress, but you wouldn’t need to: They’d probably burst into flame all by themselves….

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Read the whole thing here.

Simon Callow talks about his 1990 Old Vic revival of Carmen Jones:

In addition to my regularly scheduled appearances in The Wall Street Journal, I popped up in two of the electronic media this week.

To begin with, the latest episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading. In this longer-than-usual episode, Peter, Elisabeth, and I are joined by two guests, Diep Tran, senior editor of American Theatre, which hosts Three on the Aisle, and Lily Janiak, theater critic of the San Francisco Chronicle.

For what it’s worth, I think this is the most exciting Three on the Aisle that we’ve taped so far, and very possibly the most illuminating as well.

If I may quote from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings, which got extremely lively at more than one point:

Terry, Elisabeth and Peter delve into one of the most controversial issues of the day in the theatre world and the performing arts in general: “whitewashing,” the practice of casting white performers as characters of color. The discussion is inspired by the recent protest at the Muny in St. Louis, where fifteen audience members loudly booed and then walked out of a performance of Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. The panelists are joined by Diep Tran…

Janiak fills in the panel on the theatre scene in the Bay Area, talks about how she goes about her job and the need for more women and younger writers in the ranks of theatre critics….

As usual, we wrap things up, joined this time by Lily, with a discussion of recent productions, in New York, San Francisco, and elsewhere, that we’ve seen and liked—or not.

To listen, download the latest episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

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Peter and I, joined this time by Ben Brantley of the New York Times, also appeared on the latest episode of CUNY-TV’s Theater Talk, the show’s annual theater critics’ forum, during which we talked about most of the plays and musicals that opened on Broadway during the second half of the 2017-18 season. The episode was hosted by Susan Haskins and Jesse Green of the New York Times.

If I may say so, this particular episode conveys with special clarity what it’s like for the five of us to sit in a room and chat about theater. We had fun taping it, and I think you’ll see that we did.

If you didn’t see the episode when it aired, you can view it here:

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Just so you’ll know: Peter, Elisabeth and I will only be taping single episodes of Three on the Aisle in the months of July and August. Our regular twice-monthly schedule resumes in September. Watch this space for details.

Peter Lorre appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? John Charles Daly is the host and the panelists are Steve Allen, Arlene Francis, Martin Gabel, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on February 14, 1960:

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