Archives for 2018

“Fancy living in one of these streets—never seeing anything beautiful—never eating anything savoury—never saying anything clever!“

Winston Churchill, in conversation with Edward Marsh after walking through a Manchester slum (quoted in Christopher Hassall, Edward Marsh, Patron of the Arts: A Biography)

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway revivals (and premieres) of two important plays, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women and Kenneth Lonergan’s Lobby Hero. Here’s an excerpt.

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Edward Albee may have been one of America’s greatest playwrights, but he couldn’t get a decent review between 1975, when he won a Pulitzer Prize for “Seascape,” and 1994, when the off-Broadway premiere of “Three Tall Women” brought him a third Pulitzer and restored him to critical favor after a string of flops. That “Three Tall Women” subsequently failed to move to Broadway remains an impenetrable mystery, but it’s there now at last, staged with no-nonsense clarity by Joe Mantello and starring Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf and Alison Pill….

“Three Tall Women” is a conversation piece set in the bedroom of a rich, senile woman (Ms. Jackson) who is looked after by a long-suffering paid companion of a certain age (Ms. Metcalf) and is being visited by a young lawyer who takes care of her estate (Ms. Pill). In the first part of the play, Ms. Jackson’s character gabbles randomly, incessantly and revealingly about her long and eventful life. Then she has a stroke, at which point the three actors suddenly metamorphose without authorial explanation into herself when young, middle-aged and very old….

Ms. Jackson, who is returning to Broadway after a 30-year hiatus, gives an acrid, wised-up performance that is as pointed as you’d expect from so celebrated an actor. It’s no better, though, than than that of Ms. Metcalf, who’s as memorable here as she was in “Lady Bird,” while Ms. Pill acquits herself well as their foil….

Kenneth Lonergan is far from prolific, but everything he writes, whether for stage or screen, is worth seeing. “Lobby Hero,” which was first performed off Broadway in 2001 but is only just receiving its Broadway premiere, is his most provocative play to date, a study of what it means—and what it costs—to tell the truth in a corrupt world. In it, two security guards (Michael Cera and Brian Tyree Henry) and two cops, one badly bent (Chris Evans) and the other young and naïve (Bel Powley), come together in the lobby of a New York apartment house to talk for two and a half hours about a murder in which they are variously and complicatedly involved….

Mr. Cera and Mr. Evans are well known from TV and the movies, which accounts for the presence of shrieking fans in and outside the theater. The true star of the show, however, is Mr. Henry, who is calm, solid and touchingly troubled as the guard whose dilemma (he knows that his brother may have done something unforgivably terrible) sets “Lobby Hero” in motion….

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To read my complete review of Three Tall Women, go here.

To read my complete review of Lobby Hero, go here.

The cast of Lobby Hero talks about the play:

Excerpts from a live performance of the original 1993 Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, shot for use by the press. The cast included Ron Leibman as Roy Cohn, Joe Mantello as Louis, and Stephen Spinella as Prior, and and the production was directed by George C. Wolfe. Also included are contemporary interviews with Kushner, Mantello, and Spinella:

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

“I don’t consider myself an artist. I go out there and I try to play what’s right for the music. It seems to be a much more open approach and it would seem to allow me to be able to expand as the music of the time expands. I think people who get hung up in their own artistry often get into a certain style they think is them and if they do anything different the public won’t be able to identify their artistry, which is kind of limiting. I don’t think that way. I have a good time playing. I try to play the best I can. I know I can play the drums and I want to play the best that I can possibly play. I want to play better a year from now than I’m playing now, not because my artistry is at stake, but just because I like it.”

Steve Gadd, in conversation with Julie Coryell (quoted in Coryell and Laura Friedman, Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music )

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, nearly all shows sold out last week, alternating in repertory through July 1, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, 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)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Good for Otto (drama, PG-13/R, closes April 15, reviewed here)
• Later Life (drama, PG-13, closes April 14, reviewed here)

“A relatively primitive village in which there are still real feasts, common artistic shared expressions, and no literacy at all—is more advanced culturally and more healthy mentally than our educated, newspaper-reading radio-listening culture.”

Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

Frank Zappa plays his “Black Napkins” on The Mike Douglas Show, accompanied by the studio orchestra. This episode was taped on October 28, 1976:

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

“The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.”

Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (trans. E.F.J. Payne)