In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review an off-Broadway revival of Caesar and Cleopatra and the Broadway transfer of The Height of the Storm. Here’s an excerpt.

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It used to be that the major plays of George Bernard Shaw all got revived on Broadway with fair frequency—but no more. “Caesar and Cleopatra,” for instance, was last seen there in a poorly reviewed 1977 version starring Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley that closed in ignominy after just 12 performances. Since then, no fully staged “Caesar and Cleopatra” has been produced in New York, which is all the more reason to cheer David Staller’s splendid new adaptation of one of Shaw’s most glittering, least Shakespearean conversation pieces, in which the worldly Caesar (Robert Cuccioli) teaches the kittenish Cleopatra (Teresa Avia Lim) how to be a hard-headed political realist.

Sexy “Caesar and Cleopatra” isn’t, nor did Shaw mean for it to be. He published it in “Three Plays for Puritans,” the 1901 trilogy in which he took the stock genres of Victorian theater, turned them upside down and transformed them into incomparably ingenious plays of ideas, and at one point in the ’30s, he even seems to have given serious thought to asking Shirley Temple to play the hot-blooded Queen of the Nile, which gives you a clearer idea of what he was up to….

As always, Mr. Staller, who knows more about Shaw than anyone else in America, gets it right, situating the action of the play in a modern-day archaeological dig and keeping the costumes simple and the diction crisp and clear….

Old actors never die, they just start appearing in old-actor plays, of which there are two kinds: feel-good old-age-isn’t-for-sissies weepers like “On Golden Pond” and harsh old-age-is-a-shipwreck dramas like “The Waverly Gallery.” Florian Zeller’s “The Height of the Storm,” which has transferred to Broadway after a successful West End run, is a play of the first kind dressed up to look like a play of the second kind. 

Stripped of its over-elaborately Pinteresque mystifications, “The Height of the Storm” appears to be about a famous writer suffering from dementia (Jonathan Pryce) who hasn’t done right by his loyal, long-suffering wife (Eileen Atkins). Will she stick with him to the bitter end? (Yes, other interpretations of the play are absolutely possible, but this one strikes me as the most believable of the lot.) I give Mr. Zeller credit for not being obvious about the denouement, but beyond that, “The Height of the Storm” has little to offer save the opportunity to see two great actors in the finest possible form….

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To read my review of Caesar and Cleopatra, go here.

To read my review of The Height of the Storm, go here.

The trailer for Caesar and Cleopatra:

The trailer for the original British production of The Height of the Storm:

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Shirley Temple dance together in The Little Colonel, directed in 1935 by David Butler:

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

“And then, the French put things so well—so clearly. They are not afraid of platitude.”

Maurice Baring, Cat’s Cradle

Three years ago this past April, my old friend John Sinclair and the Bach Festival Society Choir and Orchestra of Winter Park, Florida, gave the world premiere of my most recent collaboration with Paul Moravec, Music, Awake! It’s an anthem for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, an ode to music for which I wrote the text, my first (and, so far, only) poem.

The occasion was John’s twenty-fifth anniversary as artistic director of the Bach Festival Society. It had a unique importance for me as well, for it was John’s presence at Winter Park’s Rollins College that inspired Mrs. T and me to start spending parts of our winters in Florida, which led in due course to all sorts of other hitherto unimaginably good things. Just six days after the Music, Awake! premiere, for instance, I flew back down to Florida to start rehearsing Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my professional debut as a stage director. For both of us, Florida had by then become a home away from home, and we’re more than eager for Mrs. T to receive the double lung transplant that will ultimately allow us to go back there again.

It is for this reason that we welcome with special excitement the release this week of Music, Awake! Choral Music of Paul Moravec, a new album that contains gloriously well-performed studio recordings by John Sinclair and the Bach Festival Society of five of Paul’s works for chorus and orchestra. The pieces themselves are all superb—Paul is one of the best choral composers I know—but it stands to reason that I should have special feelings about the fact that Music, Awake! is now available to the public.

I still recall with the utmost vividness what it felt like to hear Music, Awake! being rehearsed by flesh-and-blood singers and instrumentalists for the very first time. Naturally, I wrote about the experience in this space shortly after the fact, but I didn’t have to look up that posting to remember every word of it:

Not finding John in his office, I pulled open a door across the hall and found him warming up the choir that would be singing the first performance that evening. I got a round of applause from the members of the choir, who proceeded to perform Music, Awake! for me. It was the first time that I’d heard it done by actual human beings (as opposed to the synthesized version on my MacBook). I was overwhelmed by the unexpected sound of my words being sung by a large, enthusiastic choir, so much so that I actually started crying—though I did have the presence of mind to remind the singers to be sure and hit the consonants hard at the concert!

To have gone more or less straight from the premiere of Music, Awake! to my first rehearsal as a professional stage director was…well, let’s just say it was quite something. Not counting the stupendous good fortune of my having fallen in love at first sight with Mrs. T, my midlife transformation from full-time critic to part-time opera librettist, playwright, and director is the most extraordinary and improbable thing that has ever happened to me, and as I listen to John’s new album, the events of that fantastic week come back as if they’d taken place only yesterday.

I can’t imagine what else life will hold in store for me from here on out, but any man not content with the bounties that have already been showered upon me doesn’t deserve to be nearly as happy as I am.

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To listen to Music, Awake!, go here.

To download Music, Awake! Choral Music of Paul Moravec, go here.

To read my program notes for the premiere performance of Music, Awake!, go here.

John Sinclair talks in 2016 about the commissioning of Music, Awake! and his years with the Bach Festival Society:

“After luncheon, we played prisoner’s base, and I at once realised that there is a vast difference between games and play. Play is played for fun, but games are deadly serious, and you do not play them to enjoy yourselves.”

Maurice Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory

Count Basie’s band, introduced by Steve Allen, performs at New York’s Birdland. This performance is an excerpt from a rare kinescope of The Steve Allen Show, originally telecast by NBC on July 22, 1956:

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

“Memory is the greatest of artists, and effaces from your mind what is unnecessary. What is necessary and what is wanted comes mysteriously at the beck and call of the artist.”

Maurice Baring, Have You Anything to Declare?

“I’m not sure he made a flat-out great film ever—I mean, a film as good as Chinatown, where the story works on its own terms but you know you’ve seen a parable about human nature delivered at the same time. “

David Thomson, “One Hell of a Life” (Guardian, December 1, 2006)