Archives for March 2020

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a webcast of Syracuse Stage’s revival of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus. Here’s an excerpt.

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Syracuse Stage’s revival of Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” directed by Robert Hupp, is a thrilling staging of one of the best English-language plays of the 20^th century, and it comes across online with exhilarating clarity. You’ll have to move fast to see it: Online “tickets” are only available at syracusestage.org through this coming Sunday. Once you purchase a ticket, though, you can view “Amadeus” at any time during the next two weeks, so I suggest you buy your ticket now, then come back and finish reading this review.

Mr. Shaffer’s best-remembered play, first performed by London’s National Theatre in 1979, tells the story of the troubled relationship between Antonio Salieri, a now-forgotten 18^th-century court musician, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, by common consent the greatest of all classical composers. It is not, however, a work of history but a profound, deeply unsettling parable of the mystery of human inequality. Mr. Shaffer’s Salieri, a successful but mediocre composer, cannot bear to live in the same universe as Mozart, a genius who is (in Mr. Shaffer’s heavily fictionalized rendering) ill-mannered, grossly vulgar and unworthy of his transcendent gift….

“Amadeus” was a colossal success when it transferred to Broadway, running for 1,181 performances and winning five Tonys. Since then, though, U.S. revivals have been rare to the point of invisibility, partly because the play calls for a big, costly cast (Syracuse Stage is fielding 19 actors) and partly because Miloš Forman’s Oscar-winning 1984 screen version, in which F. Murray Abraham brilliantly replaced Paul Scofield as Salieri, was so memorable….

This version, jointly mounted by Syracuse Stage and the drama department of Syracuse University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, whose students cover the smaller ensemble parts, is artistically successful in every way, above all because of Jason O’Connell’s performance as Salieri. Mr. O’Connell, familiar from his appearances with Bedlam and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, is a burly stand-up comedian turned classical actor who is best known for his comic roles. He’s always had more in him, though—the excellence of his performance as Don Juan in the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s 2013 off-Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw’s “Don Juan in Hell” staggered me—and his Salieri is a heartbreaking study in malignant envy….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Syracuse Stage’s Amadeus:

Paul Scofield in a scene from the original National Theatre production of Amadeus:

F. Murray Abraham in the screen version of the same scene:

I’ve written an essay for the weekend Wall Street Journal that minces no words: the coronavirus pandemic is already a disaster for the performing arts in America, and things will get worse. Here’s an excerpt.

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Of all the bad tidings brought by the coronavirus, here’s the scariest piece of news for lovers of the performing arts: The Metropolitan Opera is canceling the rest of its current season—and furloughing its orchestra members, choristers, dancers and stagehands. That reportedly comes to more than 500 people….

The Met is America’s largest performing arts organization. While it’s weathered severe budgetary problems in recent seasons, it’s successfully dealt with all of them—until now. As a result of the social-distancing lockdown in New York caused by Covid-19, the Met is staring down losses of up to $60 million. That’s a hit the company can’t survive without drastic measures in response….

What’s happening at the Met is happening at every performing-arts organization I know of, large and small alike. Opera, orchestras, dance companies, theater troupes, nightclubs: All have seen their revenues collapse overnight. And unlike the Met, which has a $300 million endowment, most of them have next to nothing in the bank to see them through the crisis….

I’m hearing much the same thing from coast to coast, though the institutional damage done by the coronavirus looks at first glance to be especially devastating to theater. Even the biggest regional theaters have either laid off staff or are days away from doing so…..

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Read the whole thing here.

Lotte Lenya sings “Pirate Jenny” (from The Three-Penny Opera) on “The World of Kurt Weill,” an episode of NET Playhouse originally telecast in 1967. Bertolt Brecht’s lyrics are sung in Marc Blitzstein’s English-language translation:

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

“Every smart person wants to be corrected, not admired.”

Marvin Minsky, The Society of Mind

A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings: 

This week the critics are coming to you from the living rooms, offices, and kitchens of their respective apartments to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on theatre, both short- and long-term. They talk livestreamed and recorded shows, the struggles that theatre companies will face in the coming weeks to stay in operation, the art that we are turning to in the absence of live theatre, and life in general life under quarantine.

To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

In order to divert those of you who, like me, are staying home these days, I’ve been posting images of some of the prints and paintings that hang on the walls of our Manhattan apartment—the “Teachout Museum,” as a friend calls it. My latest image is of Storm Over Manhattan, a 1935 lithograph by Louis Lozowick, an American precisionist who specialized in printmaking. I was introduced to Lozowick’s work by the late Tommy LiPuma, a more than casual acquaintance whom I got to know a quarter-century ago:

It was back in 1995 that I met Tommy LiPuma, who produced albums by George Benson, Natalie Cole, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, João Gilberto, Dan Hicks, Paul McCartney, Randy Newman, and countless other musicians of note. I attended one of the recording sessions for Diana Krall’s All for You: A Dedication to the Nat King Cole Trio, which Tommy produced and whose liner notes I subsequently wrote. I found him charming—most people did, I gather, though I suspect he could also be scary—but there was no particular reason for the two of us to strike up an acquaintance at the time, so we didn’t.

It wasn’t until I found out eight years later that Tommy was an art collector of high seriousness that I got to know him a bit. I wrote a Washington Post column about a gallery show of his collection of paintings by American moderns, from which he learned that we shared a passion for the paintings of Arnold Friedman. A few months later he invited me over to his Manhattan apartment to look at the rest of his collection.

From then on we had lunch every couple of years, happily eating pasta and trading jazz-world and art-world gossip. He was the perfect luncheon companion, smart, likable, and utterly honest, and he had marvelous taste both as a producer and as a collector. Much to our mutual amusement, we discovered that we had once both bid on the same Friedman canvas (he won, of course—money talks). It was Tommy who suggested to me that Mrs. T and I might want to consider acquiring a lithograph by Louis Lozowick, a piece of advice that we hastened to take.

Tommy was overjoyed when I bid successfully on Storm Over Manhattan, one of Lozowick’s most handsome and characteristic prints, copies of which can be found in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco as well as in our apartment, where it hangs just outside our kitchen, directly above Childe Hassam’s Storm King. It’s a special favorite of Mrs. T, and I think of her every time I look at it.

“When no idea seems right, the right one must seem wrong.”

Marvin Minsky, “Music, Mind, and Meaning”

I am overjoyed—hell, ecstatic—to report that I just got off the phone with Mrs. T. It was, of course, a one-way conversation, since she’s intubated with a ventilator and a tracheostomy, but her nurse informed me that she is now fully conscious, nodding her head vigorously and moving her mouth in response to questions.

“Would this be a good time to talk to her?” I asked.

“You better believe it,” he replied.

We’re not completely sure how clearly what I told her on Sunday night came through, and I didn’t want to waste precious phone time playing Twenty Questions, so I spent most of the call updating her on the state of the world, explaining that the hospital is closed to visitors but that I’ve been checking in twice daily with her nurses and doctors, calling her family with daily reports, and posting updates on Twitter and Facebook. “You’re not going to believe this,” I said, “but there are tens of thousands of people all over the world who are pulling for you.” I hope she believed it.

As for her overall condition, she is—to use the technical term employed by her nurse—copacetic. All her vital signs are looking good. The dialysis that was started over the weekend is keeping her alert and aware. Her hands are still swollen, but she’s passed off enough fluid to be able to squeeze the nurse’s hand in response to questions (except that she doesn’t need to do that anymore!). She is still fighting off a bacterial infection of unknown origin, but the doctors are hitting her with carefully chosen antibiotics and are confident that they’ll get it under control.

Needless to say, I have no idea when I’ll be able to see Mrs. T in the flesh again. That remains in the uncaring hands of the coronavirus, which continues to inundate New York-Presbyterian Hospital with fresh cases and is responsible for the hateful (but understandable) no-visitors order that has been keeping me a mile from her bedside. You can rest assured, though, that I’ll be there as soon as it’s both possible and absolutely safe for both of us.

So that’s my news. At long last, Sleeping Beauty is really, truly awake. And while I haven’t been sleeping very well for the past three weeks. I’m thinking maybe that’s about to change.

UPDATE: I spoke to Mrs. T again for ten minutes on Thursday night. No video yet and she still can’t talk, but she was definitely receiving my signal, and was amused to hear that I made a box of macaroni and cheese for dinner (the limit of my kitchen competence) and am now bingewatching Frasier episodes. I also told her about my review of Syracuse Stage’s Amadeus—she’s a great fan of Jason O’Connell—and about the open letter I wrote to the family of the anonymous donor of her two lungs.

She knows that lots of you out there are following my updates on her condition, and she seems to be touched to know that you care so much. (So am I, needless to say.) She knows, too, that the hospital is closed to visitors, and this time I tried to explain why. Imagine having been in a coma for three weeks and only just now waking up and finding out about the extent of the coronavirus pandemic! I told her that I’ve reserved our Sanibel bungalow for next January, and that the landlord will hold it for us until the last possible minute and can’t wait to see us again. We’re both living for that.

Finally, I told her that I love her more than anything in the world and called her my “gallant gal,” a nickname she loves to hear. That’s just what she is—gallant, indomitable, fearless. May she get well soon!

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Constant Lambert leads the Sadler’s Wells Orchestra in an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty: