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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 14, 2020

Take their wives, please

February 14, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway premiere of a new musical version of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Once upon a fast-receding time, everybody was talking about what was then called the Sexual Revolution, even those for whom it was as yet little more than a rumor. John Updike got himself onto the cover of Time in 1968 by writing “Couples,” a novel about what used to be called “wife-swapping” in a small Massachusetts town. (The gloweringly sober banner on the cover was “THE ADULTEROUS SOCIETY.”) A year later, Paul Mazursky hit big at the box office with “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” a screen comedy about two suburban couples who end up in bed together in a Las Vegas hotel….

These days, it’s almost touching to contemplate the far-off time when, in the darkly ironic words of Philip Larkin, sex was in the process of becoming “a brilliant breaking of the bank,/A quite unlosable game.” To that end, the New Group is now presenting an off-Broadway musical version of “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.” Skillfully compressed into a small-scale show with a six-person cast, it tracks Mazursky’s film closely, and if you remember the movie, it might make you smile.

But what if you don’t? What if, like most people under the age of 65, you’ve never heard of “Bob & Carol”? Unlike, say, “Groundhog Day” or “Tootsie,” it isn’t one of those beloved films of yesteryear that are the stuff commodity musicals are made of. Is the stage version artistically strong enough in its own right to overcome the disadvantage of not having a pre-sold audience going in?

Part of the problem with “Bob & Carol,” it turns out, is the source material. In Mazursky’s film, Bob and Carol (played in the film by Culp and Wood and in the musical by Joél Pérez and Jennifer Damiano) spend a weekend at a human-potential retreat in Big Sur (remember those?) and return home determined to become more authentic in every way. The point was that nice people who embrace freer love without fully understanding what they’re getting into are pulling the pin on a grenade that could blow up their lives. But the film, which was widely admired in 1969 for the sharpness of its satire, now comes across as lacking in satirical bite…

Not only does Jonathan Marc Sherman’s book fail to transcend the film’s limitations, but the songs, co-written by Duncan Sheik and Amanda Green, are all soft-rock ballads that are presumably meant to suggest the lost world of the film but end up sounding more bland than anything else….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice:

“Style à la ‘Mod,’” a promotional featurette for the original 1969 film:

Replay: Peggy Lee sings “Them There Eyes” and “But Beautiful”

February 14, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Peggy Lee sings “Them There Eyes” and “But Beautiful” on The Andy Williams Show, after which she, Williams, and George Gobel do a trio version of “You Are My Sunshine.” This episode was originally telecas tby NBC on September 27, 1962:

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

Almanac: James Lees-Milne on the deaths of old friends

February 14, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“I used to be surprised and shocked because old people accepted the calamities and deaths of their old friends with seeming equanimity. Now I realise that, had they not done so, they would have gone mad.”

James Lees-Milne, diary, November 25, 1975

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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