Archives for 2018

“I reproach myself very much for not having been more to you. But at any rate in these ten years the sun has never yet gone down on our wrath. Never once have we closed our eyes in slumber with an unappeased difference.”

Winston Churchill, letter to his wife, September 12, 1918

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two musicals, Miss You Like Hell and Mean Girls. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Most of today’s hit musicals are fluffy romances based on hit movies—but there are other ways to draw a crowd. So far, the Public Theater has rung the gong twice with a pair of shows, “Fun Home” and “Hamilton,” that flew in the face of all the rules of contemporary box-office success. Now it’s trying again with “Miss You Like Hell,” a new musical by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Erin McKeown that has a timely political edge, an ethnically diverse cast and a score by a singer-songwriter who knows how to rock. What’s more, it’s good—really good.

“Miss You Like Hell” is the story of Beatriz (Daphne Rubin-Vega), an undocumented immigrant who shows up one morning on the doorstep of Olivia (Gizel Jiménez), her eggheady, long-estranged daughter. Beatriz wants Olivia to join her on a cross-country road trip, but she isn’t just looking to tighten the ties that bind: She urgently needs a character witness to testify at her deportation hearing….

Based on a play by Ms. Hudes, who wrote the book for “In the Heights” and won a Pulitzer for “Water by the Spoonful,” “Miss You Like Hell” is in no way a piece of pamphleteering (set in 2014, it makes no mention of Donald Trump). Its real subject is the tattered relationship between Beatriz and her wholly deracinated child, who lost her mother in a custody battle and cannot forgive Beatriz for giving in so easily…

Like “Water by the Spoonful,” “Miss You Like Hell” steers a bit erratically between sentiment and sentimentality, but it scarcely ever descends to outright tearjerking, and Ms. McKeown’s score heightens every emotion so skillfully that you’d think this was her third or fourth show instead of her theatrical debut….

Every generation has its own what-high-school-is-like movie. For the millennials, it’s Tina Fey’s “Mean Girls,” a softened-up 2004 variation on “Heathers” that retells the old, old story of the pretty but nerdy girl who sells her soul to the most popular girl in town. It’s funny enough, and so, I suppose, is the new musical version, which stars Erika Henningsen and Taylor Louderman and into which Ms. Fey has inserted a shovelful of once-over-lightly topical references (“I liked your post about Intersectional Veganism”) but which is otherwise hard to distinguish from the film…

* * *

To read my review of Miss You Like Hell, go here.

To read my review of Mean Girls, go here.

Erin McKeown and Gizel Jiménez perform “Sundays,” a song from Miss You Like Hell:

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:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, most shows sold out last week, alternating in repertory through July 1, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, nearly 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)
• Lobby Hero (drama, PG-13, virtually all shows sold out last week, closes May 13, reviewed here)
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Pygmalion (comedy, PG-13, closes Apr. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND OFF BROADWAY:
• Good for Otto (drama, PG-13/R, closes Sunday, reviewed here)
• Later Life (drama, PG-13, closes Saturday, reviewed here)

“Of this I am certain, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.”

Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, June 18, 1940

New York City Ballet dances Mozartiana, choreographed by George Balanchine to Tchaikovsky’s orchestral arrangements of the music of Mozart. The soloists are Suzanne Farrell, Ib Andersen, and Victor Castelli. This performance was originally telecast on PBS in 1983:

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

“Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”

Winston Churchill, speech to the National Book Exhibition, November 2, 1949

From 2008:

I speak as one whose taste in barbecue is nothing if not inclusive. I’ve eaten it everywhere from Arthur Bryant’s in Kansas City to Rub BBQ in Manhattan, my adopted home. I’m not a particularly fussy eater, and I like most of the better-known regional variations of barbecue that I’ve run across in my travels. When all is said and done, though, the kind I like best is the kind I grew up with, and I suspect that most people lucky enough to have grown up eating barbecue feel the same way about the kind they grew up with….

Read the whole thing here.