About Last Night

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:

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

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

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

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

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (black comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 1, reviewed here)

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

IN CHICAGO:

• The Seafarer (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 22, reviewed here)

REOPENING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reopens Jan. 21, reviewed here)

REOPENING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• Enter Laughing (musical, PG-13, reopens Jan. 21, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Equus (drama, R, nudity and adult subject matter, closes Feb. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• Gypsy * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

I met a lady from the South who said

(You won’t believe she said it, but she said it):

“None of my family ever worked, or had

A thing to sell.”

Robert Frost, “New Hampshire.”

A reader writes, apropos of my tribute to Donald Westlake:

I, too, sometimes wonder why I like the Parker books so much. I’ve been reading them for years–since the early ones first came out. Yet I almost never like books where the hero is a criminal, an assassin, etc. (One exception, besides the Parker books, is Brian Garfield’s Hopscotch.) A couple of points, though: I don’t think of the Parker books as “noir” fiction, if for no other reason than that he almost always wins. Also, one ingratiating quality of Parker is that he has no sense of humor. I find that quality funny. It comes up most when he is in the company of
other, “normal” criminals. Westlake, as Stark, wrote a series of novels about a criminal with a sense of humor, the Grofield novels, and they didn’t come off too well, though Grofield is a good character in the Parker novels. One of my favorite fictional characters, Horatio Hornblower, is also humorless (or, rather, he feels he must hide his sense of humor), and I find the parts of those books where that quality comes out to be funny, too.

What he said.
As it happens, I’m a great fan of Hopscotch, from which I drew one of my favorite almanac entries a couple of years ago (and received an appreciative e-mail from Brian Garfield shortly thereafter, much to my surprise).

Hal Holbrook performing an excerpt from Mark Twain Tonight! on CBS in 1967:

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

WYATT All right, what’s your idea of heaven?
JOSEPHINE Room service.
Wyatt laughs, almost in spite of himself. Josephine beams.
Oh, he’s laughing again! Well, that’s what I want. I want to move and go places and never look back. Just have fun, forever.
Kevin Jarre, screenplay for Tombstone

A few months ago I paid tribute in this space to Richard M. Sudhalter, the distinguished jazz musician, historian, biographer, and critic, who died last September after a long and grievous illness. Dick’s friends and fans will doubtless be pleased to know that his life and work are being celebrated at a memorial concert to be held on January 12 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York City.

The list of musicians scheduled to perform includes Howard Alden, Donna Byrne, James Chirillo, Bill Crow, Armen Donelian, Bob Dorough, Paquito D’Rivera, Jim Ferguson, Carol Fredette, Marty Grosz, Sy Johnson, Dick Katz, Bill Kirchner, Steve Kuhn, Dan Levinson, Boots Maleson, Marian McPartland, Ray Moska, Joe Muranyi, Sam Parkins, Ed Polcer, Loren Schoenberg, Daryl Sherman, Nancy Stearns, Carol Sudhalter, Ronny Whyte, Jackie Williams, and Marshall Wood. That is–to put it mildly–one hell of a lineup.

In between performances, Albert Haim, Dan Morgenstern, Pat Phillips, and Daryl Sherman will talk about Dick, and I’ll play a few of his favorite records.

St. Peter’s is at 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street. The music starts at seven p.m. The concert is open to the public. Even if you can’t come, please help spread the word in person, via e-mail, or on your blog if you have one.

Time: noon. Place: A rental car driving down Ocean Boulevard in Palm Beach.

HE They call this Billionaires Row. I looked it up this morning.

SHE I can’t imagine having enough money to buy that kind of house.

HE Me, neither.

SHE And I can’t imagine living in any of these houses. Don’t you think they’re tacky?

HE Mm-hmm. I bet there’s a lot of bad art on Ocean Boulevard.

SHE (enthusiastically) You know what I think? People with bad taste should have to give part of their money to people with good taste.

HE (thinking it over) Well…you wouldn’t want it to be too obviously confiscatory. It’d have to be more like a transfer payment.

A beat.

You could call it the Teachout Taste Transfer Tax.

SHE You take the fun out of everything.

Drum on your drums, batter on your banjos,

sob on the long cool winding saxophones.

Go to it, O jazzmen.

Carl Sandburg, “Jazz Fantasia”