About Last Night

“Passion persuades me one way, reason another. I see the better and approve it, but I follow the worse.”
Ovid, Metamorphoses

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• A Behanding in Spokane (black comedy, PG-13, violence and adult subject matter, closes June 6, reviewed here)

• La Cage aux Folles * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Fela! (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 27, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

• South Pacific (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, closes Aug. 22, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, original Broadway production reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• The Glass Menagerie (drama, G, too dark for children, closes June 13, reviewed here)

• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)

• The Temperamentals (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Parts 1, 2, and 3 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, now being performed in rotating repertory, closes May 8, reviewed here, here, and here)

CLOSING SATURDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• I Never Sang for My Father (drama, G/PG-13, too dark for children, closes May 1, reviewed here)

“I’m acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.”
James Cagney, Cagney by Cagney

Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys play “Roanoke” in 1955:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“Struggling young repertory actors believe too fervently in themselves and their prospects ever to entertain the conscious thought that their backers can suffer–or, at any rate, the thought that their backers can suffer in anything but a noble cause.”
Patrick Hamilton, Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse

Who painted this unsigned watercolor?

If you need a hint–and you almost certainly will–the painter once made the following remark:

We should never judge artists by their political views. The imagination they need for their work deprives them of the ability to think in realistic terms.

Care to venture a guess? If not, search for the quote and you’ll find out the answer….

“But a long time ago I made me a rule: I let people do what they want to do.”
Louis L’Amour, Hondo

The Wall Street Journal‘s much-discussed New York section was rolled out this morning. As part of the general ballyhoo, I’ve been asked to write a second weekly drama column for the Journal, this one specifically for the new section. The new column won’t run on a specific day, but will be published on the morning after the opening of whatever show I happen to be reviewing. Subscribers to the national edition won’t see it, alas, but anybody can read it on line.
My inaugural column is about the Broadway revival of Promises, Promises, which I regret to say is a major disappointment. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
When a hit musical drops out of sight for nearly four decades, there’s usually a reason. In the case of “Promises, Promises,” which is being revived for the first time on Broadway since the original production closed there after a 1,281-performance run, the reason is obvious: It’s no good. Nor is Rob Ashford’s big-budget mounting likely to win many new friends for the 1968 Burt Bacharach-Hal David-Neil Simon adaptation of Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment.” Not only is it dully staged, but it’s so miscast that even Kristin Chenoweth, normally one of Broadway’s hottest commodities, looks like she showed up at the wrong theater.
To be sure, it’s easy to see why Messrs. Bacharach, David and Simon thought it a good idea to turn “The Apartment” into a musical. Wilder’s 1960 movie is one of the sharpest-witted romantic comedies ever filmed, a sweet-and-sour tale of workplace fornication in which every laugh has a sting in the tail. It was also perfectly cast, with Jack Lemmon playing the role of C.C. Baxter, a corporate hireling who makes his apartment available to Fred MacMurray, his married boss, for after-hours trysts with Shirley MacLaine, the delectable elevator operator whom both men crave.
That’s where the trouble starts with “Promises, Promises.” Problem No. 1: Ms. Chenoweth plays Fran Kubelik, the shopworn waif who is so devastated by her lover’s faithlessness that she takes an overdose of sleeping pills. I’m one of Ms. Chenoweth’s staunchest admirers, but her gifts do not include the ability to suggest vulnerability, and it is impossible to imagine that so self-assured a woman would even contemplate suicide, much less attempt it. As a result, her performance is dramatically unbelievable…
This brings us to the deficiencies of the show proper. In the film, Baxter supplies an introductory narration that sets up the plot, then lets the viewer figure the rest out for himself. In the musical, he narrates from start to finish, a bad idea that kills the momentum stone dead and is made worse by Mr. Simon’s habit of stuffing his speeches full of jokes that might been funny in 1968 but are now about as stylish as a Buick with fins.
As for the score, it consists of a string of chirpy soft-rock ballads like the title tune and “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again” that were heard around the clock on AM radio back in the days of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (which doubtless explains why the original production of “Promises, Promises” was so huge a hit). One of them, “A House Is Not a Home,” is a beautifully turned piece of work that has since been taken up by such jazz greats as Sarah Vaughan and Bill Evans. The others are so similar-sounding as to approach indistinguishability….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
UPDATE: A reader advised me this morning that the original online version of this column was behind the Journal‘s paywall. I now have a link in place that should be accessible to everyone.