“Looking back, I see that only a very little time ago I was greatly concerned about my memory of H. and how false it might become. For some reason—the merciful good sense of God is the only one I can think of—I have stopped bothering about that. And the remarkable thing is that since I stopped bothering about it, she seems to meet me everywhere. Meet is far too strong a word. I don’t mean anything remotely like an apparition or a voice. I don’t mean even any strikingly emotional experience at any particular moment. Rather, a sort of unobtrusive but massive sense that she is, just as much as ever, a fact to be taken into account.
“‘To be taken into account’ is perhaps an unfortunate way of putting it. It sounds as if she were rather a battle-axe. How can I put it better? Would ‘momentously real’ or ‘obstinately real’ do? It is as if the experience said to me, ‘You are, as it happens, extremely glad that H. is still a fact. But remember she would be equally a fact whether you liked it or not. Your preferences have not been considered.’”
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
For this reason alone, it’s appropriate that Lincoln Center Theater, which is as well known for its musical-comedy revivals as it is for its productions of the plays of such noted modern dramatists as John Guare and Tom Stoppard, should now be mounting the fourth Broadway revival of “My Fair Lady,” which was last seen in New York in 1994. Nor would anyone reasonably expect LCT to offer the kind of radical transformation of so beloved a musical that Bedlam recently gave us in its small-scale “Pygmalion” (which closes on Sunday, if you haven’t seen it yet). Instead, Bartlett Sher, the director, has mounted “My Fair Lady” in the now-familiar manner of his hugely and deservedly successful LCT revivals of “South Pacific” and “The King and I.” Like its predecessors, it’s a very big show, with elaborate costumes, a full-sized pit orchestra, a Turneresque drop portraying Vicwardian London and a star, Lauren Ambrose, who is famous for her TV work but is also a stage performer of the first rank.
“The Seafarer” is—or at least appears to be—the simplest and most straightforward of kitchen-sink conversation pieces. It unfolds in the seedy living room of Sharky (Andy Murray), an out-of-work chauffeur who has come home to Dublin to look after Richard (Colin McPhillamy), his newly blinded brother. The time is Christmas Eve, and Sharky is spending the evening with Richard, two of their friends (Michael Mellamphy and Tim Ruddy) and a well-dressed stranger (Matthew Broderick). Sharky, Richard and their friends are hard-drinking, middle-aged Irishmen whom life has treated roughly and who all look very much the worse for it. Not so Mr. Lockhart, the mysterious odd man out, who has come to Dublin to see Sharky, from whom he means to…well, collect a debt.
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.