About Last Night

From 2004:

To memorize something effectively, you have to expend some interpretive effort on it, and with this effort you wind up in something like a conversation with the text. Grasping at least the literal meaning–not necessarily as easy as you might think, I’ve learned in my teaching–is the most efficient way of mastering a poem, so you can’t help but learn something more than just the words in the process. And the richer the text, the more there is to absorb. It’s sad that such a truly mind-expanding practice has been saddled with a reputation as just the opposite….

Read the whole thing here.

“I saw the little creases in the flesh of her neck, just the tiniest little creases, the little mark left day after day by that absolutely ininitesimal gossamer cord of thuggee which time throws around the prettiest neck every day to garrote it. The cord is so gossamer that it breaks every day, but the marks get there finally, and finally one day the gossamer cord doesn’t break and is enough. I looked at the marks when Anne lifted her chin, and realized that I had never noticed them before and would always notice them again.”

Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men

Eddie Edwards and Tony Sbarbaro, the original trombonist and drummer of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, appear as guests on an episode of I’ve Got a Secret originally telecast on CBS on November 9, 1960. Their “secret” was that they had made the first jazz record in 1917. (Sbarbaro subsequently changed his last name to “Spargo.”) After stumping the panel, they play “Original Dixieland One-Step” with Phil Napoleon, Tony Parenti, and J. Russel Robinson, all of whom worked with the band at various times. The host is Garry Moore and the panelists are Bill Cullen, Henry Morgan, Bess Myerson, and Betsy Palmer:

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

“Always do it in the daytime, because at night your heart takes over. Take her to lunch, to a very chic place like Le Pavillon or The Colony, where she will see famous people and where it is against all the rules to cry or scream or throw crockery. Buy her a big drink, and then tell her that the train has reached Chicago and you’re getting off at Chicago and you’re getting off at Chicago. Tell her you’re not the marrying kind, but she deserves a home and kids and candlelight. Tell her she’s the most wonderful woman you’ve ever known. Then buy her a great lunch, and let her absorb the news as she eats. Afterward, you can walk out into the sunshine a free man. It never fails.”

James T. Aubrey (quoted in Richard Oulahan and William Lambert, “The Tyrant’s Fall That Rocked the TV World,” Life, Sept. 10, 1965)

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on American Players Theatre’s revival of A Streetcar Named Desire and the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of The Winter’s Tale. Here’s an excerpt.

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Outdoor theater is one of the joys of summer in America—when the weather cooperates. When it doesn’t, the results can be hell. I just saw an outdoor production of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” that took place in 90-degree heat and 90% humidity in American Players Theatre’s open-air hilltop amphitheater, where air conditioning is, at best, a state of mind. The circumstances put me in mind of the best-remembered punch line from Neil Simon’s “Biloxi Blues”: “Man, it’s hot. It’s like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot.”

On the other hand, “Streetcar” is set in New Orleans in early May, a season whose vicious weather is epitomized in the grumbling of Stanley Kowalski, the unwitting villain of the piece, who can’t understand why his sister-in-law Blanche insists on spending so much time in the bathroom: “Temperature 100 on the nose, and she soaks herself in a hot tub.” It is, in fact, the quintessential hot-weather play, a steamy tale of subtropical passion gone wrong, and William Brown’s stark, deliberately unpoetic revival makes the most of Wisconsin’s sometimes brutal midsummer climate….

It is a truth universally acknowledged by actors that good casting is two-thirds of good directing. If so, then Mr. Brown, whose recent Chicagoland staging of John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt” already ranks as a highlight of the season, deserves all the credit in the world for casting Tracy Michelle Arnold, an actor of colossal force and incisiveness, as Blanche. Too often Blanche is played as a fluttery lost soul, when in fact she’s a strong, unabashedly sexual woman whose only “sin” is the bone-bred prudery that prevents her from coming to terms with the tug of her sexual urges. Ms. Arnold and Mr. Brown are clearly on the same page here…

Davis McCallum, the new artistic director of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, has made his company debut with a production of “The Winter’s Tale” that labors under the disadvantage of playing in repertory with Eric Tucker’s outrageously innovative five-actor version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” So let me say right up front that Mr. McCallum, whose off-Broadway directorial work has left no doubt of his exceptional talent, needn’t worry about playing second fiddle to anybody. His “Winter’s Tale” is a festive, fanciful garden-party romp that makes creative use of the full depth of the huge lawn of the Boscobel House and Gardens, on which the company pitches the jumbo tent under which it performs each summer….

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To read my review of A Streetcar Named Desire, go here.

To read my review of The Winter’s Tale, go here.

William Brown talks about his APT production of A Streetcar Named Desire:

Frank Sinatra sings “Witchcraft,” written by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh, on The Frank Sinatra Show, originally telecast on February 7, 1958. The arrangement is by Nelson Riddle:

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

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will.”

George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah

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, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hand to God (black comedy, X, absolutely not for children or prudish adults, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, many performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On the Town (musical, G, contains double entendres that will not be intelligible to children, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, ideal for bright children, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)
• 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)
• Shows for Days (comedy, PG-13, sexual situations, closes Aug. 23, reviewed here)

IN GARRISON, N.Y.:
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Aug. 28, reviewed here)

IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• Sweet Charity (musical, PG-13, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)
• The Twelve-Pound Look (one-act comedy, G, not suitable for children, closes Sept. 12, reviewed here)
• You Never Can Tell (Shaw, PG-13, closes Oct. 25, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN GLENCOE, ILL.:
• Doubt (drama, PG-13, closes Aug. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:
• Lost in Yonkers (drama, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes Aug. 1, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA.:
• Love Letters (drama, PG-13, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN MADISON, N.J.:
• The Guardsman (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)