About Last Night

“A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.”

Georges Clemenceau, Clemenceau, The Events of His Life as Told by Himself to His Former Secretary, Jean Martet (trans. Milton Waldman)

Satchmo at the Waldorf opened in San Francisco last Wednesday. I flew back to Florida’s Sanibel Island and my beloved Mrs. T early the next morning, having spent the preceding eleven days bouncing ceaselessly (if not altogether tirelessly) from coast to coast, opening Satchmo in Chicago and reviewing plays on Broadway.

I’m not quite done with Satchmo. Mrs. T and I drove to Sarasota on Saturday to review two shows and spend two weeks on Longboat Key. Today, though, I’m flying up to Chicago for a one-nighter, an appearance at a symposium that is part of the Court Theatre’s ongoing Louis Armstrong Festival. But I’ll return to Sarasota first thing Tuesday, and once I’m there, I’m there: no rehearsals, no opening nights, no receptions. For now, I’m done with Satchmo.

John Patrick Shanley, the author of Doubt, is currently rehearsing a new play in New York. He tweeted something about it the other day that caught my eye: “Prodigal Son is taking off, leaving me in the dust. Soon it won’t need me anymore. For a playwright, this kind of abandonment is a victory.” I’m starting to know what he means. A third production of Satchmo at the Waldorf opened in New Hampshire last Friday, but I wasn’t there, just as I won’t be there when the San Francisco production transfers to Colorado Springs in February. Satchmo now belongs to Lawrence E. Street, Barry Shabaka Henley, John Douglas Thompson, and the theater companies that are currently producing it. For better or worse, my first play now has a life of its own. It doesn’t need me anymore.

It feels strange to leave Satchmo behind, but it’s also something of a relief. Even when it goes well—perhaps especially when it goes well—opening a show out of town can be a lonely business. To be sure, I have old friends in Chicago and San Francisco who were kind enough to keep me company there, and I also love the wonderful new friends that I’ve made at American Conservatory Theater and the Court. Yet I missed Mrs. T fiercely during my long trek through the time zones, and by the time it was over, I was bone-tired of living out of a carry-on bag and never being quite sure when to go to bed.

I guess I’m too old—and too happily married—to fully embrace the way of life about which Bruce Cockburn sings in “Life Short Call Now,” one of the saddest songs I know:

Billboards promise paradise
And tattoos “done while you wait”
Possible futures all laid out
On the sweeping curve of the interstate

Got no city, got no land
Got no lover, got no wife
How many ways to say goodbye
Can one man fit in a nomad life?

Am I going to miss Satchmo at the Waldorf? I already do. How could I not? A playwright friend of mine accompanied me to opening night in San Francisco, and as I stood next to her at the party after the show, sipping champagne and thanking everybody in sight, I whispered in her ear, “I’m feeling a bit of post-partum depression.” She squeezed my hand sympathetically. I knew she knew how I felt. You become habituated to a steady flow of adrenalin when you’re rehearsing a play. Once it stops, the blues often set in—but they usually go away before long.

Satchmo and I will be getting together again when I direct it for Palm Beach Dramaworks in May. Until then, I’ll be busy living my real life. It’s about time.

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Bruce Cockburn sings “Life Short Call Now”:

Baby Laurence does a tap-dance solo on an episode of The Hollywood Palace, originally telecast on ABC on September 26, 1967. This is one of the few surviving telecasts of Laurence’s dancing:

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

“Mark this well, you proud men of action: You are nothing but the unwitting agents of the men of thought who often, in quiet self-effacement, mark out most exactly all your doings in advance.”

Heinrich Heine, History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway premiere of Richard Greenberg’s Our Mother’s Brief Affair. Here’s an excerpt.

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I didn’t have high hopes for “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” a four-hander about Anna (Linda Lavin), a woman on the brink of senility who confesses to Seth and Abby (Greg Keller and Kate Arrington), her gay twin children, that she once had an extra-marital affair with a man (John Procaccino) who wasn’t what, or whom, he seemed to be. That’s not an unpromising set-up, but to write about it in a superficial way is a recipe for mediocrity. Only Mr. Greenberg, to my surprise, has engaged with his material in an unequivocally personal way this time around: “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” is a memory play, a tale told to the audience by Seth, and it’s plain to see that Mr. Greenberg was plugged directly into the socket of his own psychic life when he wrote it. While the results are flawed, I was never bored by “Our Mother’s Brief Affair,” and some parts of it are quite moving.

Ms. Lavin, the nominal star of the show, plays a physically attractive but “warm-cold” woman who has kept her children at arm’s length throughout her life. She is dissected by Seth in a stream of one-liners that have the sharp sting of well-remembered truth: “She had a tendency to pose…She was nostalgic but not for anything that had ever happened…She said five or six witty things, then repeated them.” The painfully inhibited Seth, who is enraged by Anna’s “decades of benign neglect,” is an even more striking character. A failed violist turned (unwillingly) celibate obituary writer, he is as disappointed with himself as Anna is disappointed with him: ”I’m…limited. One runs out of me quickly.” “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” gets all these things right, and the fact that Seth is a writer by trade justifies his quick-draw quippery. You buy him as a person—and you feel for him.

Unfortunately, “Our Mother’s Brief Affair” slithers off the track at midpoint…

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Read the whole thing here.

A video featurette about Our Mother’s Brief Affair:

Carl Perkins sings “Blue Suede Shoes” on The Perry Como Show in 1956:

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

“The worker puts his life into the object; but now it no longer belongs to him, it belongs to the object.”

Karl Marx, “Alienated Labor”

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.

BROADWAY:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)
• Noises Off (farce, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, extended through March 13, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Flick (serious comedy, PG-13, too long for young people with limited attention spans, reviewed here)

IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, remounting of Oregon Shakespeare Festival production, closing Feb. 21, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN FORT MYERS, FLA:
• The Cocktail Hour (serious comedy, PG-13, extended through Jan. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• China Doll (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Spring Awakening (musical, PG-13/R, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)