“Seeing through is rarely seeing into.”

Elizabeth Bibesco, Haven

Christa Ludwig and Gerald Moore perform Richard Strauss’ “Cäcilie” on the BBC in 1961:

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

“Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.”

Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal I reviewed Westport Country Playhouse’s webcast of Michael Gotch’s Tiny House. Here’s an excerpt.

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One by one, America’s theaters are turning on the post-pandemic lights, among them several top-tier troupes that are only just getting around to putting shows online. The latest, Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse, has just brought us a newly filmed play, Michael Gotch’s “Tiny House,” that is acted and directed with sure-footed skill and is both charming and bitingly witty—a rare and noteworthy example of a comedy filmed without an audience that comes off without a trace of awkwardness….

“Tiny House” is a sharp-tongued yet unabashedly affectionate satire whose protagonists, Sam (Sara Bues ) and Nick (Denver Milord), are an ultra-progressive millennial couple who have wearied of “the ugly” of urban life and the high political anxieties of the moment. (Donald Trump’s shadow is visible at all times, even though his name, à la Voldemort, is never spoken aloud.) So they’ve decided to move to the woods, go off the grid and set up housekeeping in a 150-square-foot “downwardly mobile home” that is “solar, bio-friendly, 100% recycled materials, tiny carbon footprint, completely self-sustaining.”…

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Tiny House:

The original cast of West Side Story performs “Cool” on The Ed Sullivan Show. The song is by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and the choreography is by Jerome Robbins. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on September 14, 1958:

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

“Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign that something is eating us.”

Peter De Vries, Comfort Me With Apples

“We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, ‘here and now’ without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.”

José Ortega y Gasset, The Mission of the University

Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington perform Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing” on The Ed Sullivan Show. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on March 7, 1965:

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