“In the dress circle, Doctor Smith and Doctor Jakes enjoyed themselves as true Shakespeareans always enjoy themselves, arguing between each act about the reading of the parts, and the way the lines were said. Fortunately, they found plenty to disapprove of, or they would not have enjoyed themselves at all.”

Noel Streatfeild, Ballet Shoes (courtesy of Laura Lippman)

“Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings 1950-1964” closes Saturday at Lucas Schoormans Gallery. It’s the first Morandi exhibition in New York since 1981. God only knows when there’ll be another one. Please don’t miss it.

(To read what I wrote about this remarkable show last month in the Washington Post, go here.)

The gallery, which is at 508 W. 26th St., has just published an exquisite little catalogue. To order a copy, e-mail info@lucasschoormans.com, or call 212-243-3159. I suspect that supplies are limited, so don’t dally.

Friday again, and I’ve reviewed two shows in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Pacific Overtures and Playwrights Horizons’ Rodney’s Wife.

Pacific Overtures is a triumph:

This is one of the most entrancingly beautiful shows ever to come to Broadway. Even if you don’t like it, you won’t be sorry to have seen it.

Originally produced in 1976, “Pacific Overtures” tells the once-familiar story of the naval expedition led by Commodore Perry that opened Japan to the West in 1853–but tells it from the Japanese point of view. The characters are played by Asian-Americans (Perry is a giant monster in a mask). John Weidman’s book makes use of narrative techniques derived from Noh theater, while Mr. Sondheim’s iridescent score melds the spare, percussive textures of Japanese music with his own Ravel-perfumed harmonies.

What makes this production still more individual is that it has been staged and choreographed by a Japanese director, Amon Miyamoto. When I first saw it a few years ago at the Lincoln Center Festival, it was even sung in Japanese (with English supertitles). That deliciously distancing touch is gone from this English-language version, but Mr. Miyamoto and his designers have otherwise been careful to present “Pacific Overtures” in an idiomatically Japanese style, with simple d

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!

Sorry not to have posted anything today, but I’m run ragged and seriously underslept, and it’s been all I could do simply to drag myself from point A to point F. Friday isn’t likely to be much different, but I’ll do my best to show my face. (Cheers to OGIC for taking up the slack!)

Later.

“It is a great mistake to suppose that the only writers who matter are those whom the educated in their saner moments can take seriously.”

Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide

A sampling from the recent cultural menu chez OGIC:

LISTENING: Erin McKeown, Distillation. I went on and on recently about her more recent album, Grand, and stand by my enthused prattling then. Distillation took me longer to warm up to, but its hold may be the stronger for that. If Grand charms your socks off, this album haunts you barefoot.

NETFLICKING: Richard Loncraine’s 1995 Richard III, starring Ian McKellen and Jim Broadbent and set lavishly in 1930s England. This was okay. McKellen is hammy, which seems to be by directorial design. (And by the way, check out Sir Ian’s home page, which–disturbingly or touchingly, I can’t decide–really looks homemade.) Broadbent makes a great, quietly calculating Buckingham, blending in with the background like a less loyal, more lizardy Tom Hagen. I also liked Annette Bening and Robert Downey, Jr., as Queen Elizabeth and her brother the earl of Rivers. They’re both wonderfully game at playing merry, mutually infatuated callowness in the carefree scenes before Richard really gets down to work. But I never could make out what was gained by the historical displacement of the story, other than the opportunities for visual sumptuousness offered by thirties style. Moving the action forward several centuries, though, should also work to highlight what’s universal in the play’s substance, enlarging its scope. This film somehow manages to shrink a giant–even if it does look great doing it.

ALSO NETFLICKING: The Secret Lives of Dentists. Thumbs way up. Sort of an American Beauty with recognizable human beings.

To be continued…

Blogger John Scalzi remembers the 10 Least Successful Christmas Specials. Who among you lit types could forget “An Algonquin Round Table Christmas” (1927)?

Alexander Woolcott, Franklin Pierce Adams, George Kaufman, Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker were the stars of this 1927 NBC Red radio network special, one of the earliest Christmas specials ever performed. Unfortunately the principals, lured to the table for an unusual evening gathering by the promise of free drinks and pirogies, appeared unaware they were live and on the air, avoiding witty seasonal banter to concentrate on trashing absent Round Tabler Edna Ferber’s latest novel, Mother Knows Best, and complaining, in progressively drunken fashion, about their lack of sex lives. Seasonal material of a sort finally appears in the 23rd minute when Dorothy Parker, already on her fifth drink, can be heard to remark, “one more of these and I’ll be sliding down Santa’s chimney.” The feed was cut shortly thereafter. NBC Red’s 1928 holiday special “Christmas with the Fitzgeralds” was similarly unsuccessful.

And if you like that, how could you possibly resist “Ayn Rand’s A Selfish Christmas” (1951), “A Muppet Christmas with Zbigniew Brzezinski” (1978), or “Noam Chomsky: Deconstructing Christmas” (1998)? You’d have to have a heart of stone. Link via Colby, with whom I have to agree when he says he’d really like to see a bunch of these. Round up the cast of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle posthaste!

Uhh…on second thought, let’s round up the cast of Best in Show instead.