Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
“A great actor is a conscious humorist. A show-off. He must have a taste for the bizarre, the unusual. He must savor the abnormal, else how can he portray the normal?”
Michael Powell, Million Dollar Movie
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Even in our present age of proud cultural illiteracy, “Macbeth” has managed to remain ubiquitous. It is, with “Hamlet” and “Romeo and Juliet,” one of the three Shakespeare plays whose name is still universally known to people who don’t go to the theater, and it gets produced with consistent regularity, with good reason. Not only is it Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, but “Macbeth” is as clear as it is compact, a tale of ambition run rampant whose plot and characters are so firmly rooted in the dark side of human nature as to be archetypical…
Still, Shakespeare’s plays do fluctuate in popularity from season to season. When I read that Trinity Repertory Company was putting on what the press release calls a “contemporary telling” of Shakespeare’s so-called “Scottish play” staged by Curt Columbus, the artistic director, I checked my records and was surprised to discover that five years had gone by since I’d last seen “Macbeth.” Inspired to make a field trip, I drove up to Rhode Island, where I saw—not at all to my surprise—a very satisfying “Macbeth.”
While Mr. Columbus’ production is contemporary, it’s not conceptual. Shakespeare’s text, though trimmed a bit and fitted out with what’s-past-is-present trappings—Macbeth is first seen running on a treadmill—has not been obscured by a skein of let’s-do-“Macbeth”-in-a-zoo notions that are at least as likely to obscure its meaning as they are to illuminate it….
At least to my eye, Mr. Columbus means for us to see Ms. Atwood’s Lady Macbeth as noticeably younger than her hapless spouse (which would explain the treadmill, not to mention his trendy buzzcut). Indeed, Mr. Hantman’s deliberately ineffectual Macbeth comes off as a film-noir chump, a natural fall guy who can’t help but succumb to the wiles of the blond femme fatale. Ms. Atwood plays her part exceptionally well: Her Lady Macbeth is a doe-eyed millennial in leggings and running shoes—later on she dons a blood-red dress—whose pretty face is a mask that hides her viperine will to power….
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Read the whole thing here.
George Stevens and Claudette Colbert appear as the mystery guests on What’s My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, Arlene Francis, and James Mason. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on September 30, 1956:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind, as by degrees will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.”
Joseph Addison, The Spectator (July 24, 1711)
“There is one rule that works in every calamity. Be it pestilence, war, or famine, the rich get richer and poor get poorer. The poor even help arrange it.”
Will Rogers, Daily Telegram #1019, “Thoughts Of Will Rogers On The Late Slumps In Stocks” (October 31, 1929)
Otherwise, though, today is basically just another day for me. I’ve reached the time of life when birthdays don’t mean much of anything, at least not anything that you want to think about for any longer than you can help.
Ten years ago, though, my attitude was somewhat different, for I wrote these words in this space, and meant them:
Regular readers of this blog will scarcely need to be reminded that there was a time when I didn’t expect to live to see this day, or any others—but I got married, wrote an opera, and finished a biography instead of dying. Not bad for one lifetime.
No, indeed, and the past ten years have been, if not more eventful—I don’t see how that could have been possible—then very nearly so. I needn’t rehash that astonishing decade: you’ve read all about it here. Save for the loss of my mother, it was glorious in every conceivable way. But the past six months have also been pretty damned eventful, and not in a good way, either. Mrs. T and I were put through the wringer repeatedly, and we have every reason to expect stiff doses of more of the same between now and the day that the Big Call finally comes, at which time she—we, really—will be given a new start on life.
Both of us, however, know the inestimable value of what we’ve had throughout the past decade and a half, which is the gift of one another. That’s my birthday present, a gift that keeps on giving every day that I’m above ground, and there is no hour when I’m not overflowing with gratitude for it, as well as for the good friends—some old, some new, all beloved—who make the rest of my life a joy.
So I have no complaints, none whatsoever. Even when things go sour and get scary, I know I’m a lucky guy. May it stay that way, today and always.
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An excerpt from Momix’s “Opus Cactus,” choreographed by Moses Pendleton:
Perry Como sings “Lucky to Be Me” (from On the Town), by Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden, and Adolph Green. This performance was originally broadcast on NBC’s Chesterfield Supper Club on March 8, 1945:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Fortune turns all things to the advantage of those on whom she smiles.”
François de La Rochefoucauld, Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims