About Last Night

“A neurotic person with gooseflesh and teeth a-chatter, trying hard to be brave.”
Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams

Five years ago I was putting the finishing touches on the copyedited manuscript of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. Paul Moravec and I had proofread and signed off on the orchestral score to The Letter a few weeks earlier. I was still having trouble getting used to the fact that an opera I’d helped to write would be professionally produced that summer. I had no idea that I’d write the first draft of a play about the subject of my latest book less than a year later, and I’d have laughed in your face if you’d told me in 2009 that it would be commercially produced off Broadway.
Well, it happened. Satchmo at the Waldorf opens at the Westside Theatre tomorrow night. No matter whether it hits or misses, they can’t take that away from me: I wrote a play that made it all the way to New York.
I haven’t talked much about it, in this space or elsewhere, but it’s not exactly a secret that working drama critics rarely write plays, at least not in this country. One who did, Wolcott Gibbs, wrote a comedy called Season in the Sun that opened on Broadway in 1950, an occurrence sufficiently extraordinary that Life actually ran a feature story the following week called “A Critic Awaits His Critics.” It was accompanied by photographs of a sickly-looking Gibbs sitting in a Times Square nightclub on opening night, waiting for the morning papers to come out so that he could see what his colleagues had to say about it. Given his well-known predilection for booze, I suspect he’d prepared himself for the worst.
The first paragraph is worth repeating here:

When word got around in the theater last summer that the most acid of all play critics, The New Yorker‘s Wolcott Gibbs, was having a play of his own produced, a lot of vengeful actors and playwrights prayed that Gibbs would fall on his face. Last week when Gibbs’ play, Season in the Sun, finally opened, a highly expectant swarm of first-nighters, whiffing blood like spectators at a Roman circus, were on hand to watch Gibbs come to grief or glory.

As it turned out, he got good reviews, and Season in the Sun ran for 367 performances. But I’m sure that there are plenty of people who’d be glad to see Satchmo at the Waldorf do otherwise. I can’t say that I blame them, either. It goes without saying that I sometimes have occasion to write sharply in The Wall Street Journal about shows that I don’t enjoy. Nobody likes being written about that way. If it happens to me, I won’t like it.
On the other hand, this isn’t my first trip in front of the firing squad: Satchmo has already been produced and reviewed in four other cities, and I’ve also written three opera libretti and half-a-dozen books, some of which, shall we say, got better notices than others. Getting reviewed, favorably or not, is anything but a new experience for this first-time playwright.
For me, the big surprise was that the theater people whom I’ve met in the course of working on Satchmo have without exception been amazingly generous and welcoming. They all say variations on the same thing: Good for you. You’ve stepped up to the plate. Now you know how it feels. I wish you the very best of luck. I think they mean it, too.
In any case, the waiting is almost over, and after two weeks of previews, I know that Satchmo at the Waldorf is capable of pleasing New York audiences, all of whom have received it warmly so far. And I know what it feels like to work with John Douglas Thompson, Gordon Edelstein, and the best design and production team on the planet. It’s been a wholly blissful experience–one that I never expected to have, and one whose memory I’ll treasure for the rest of my life.
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My sister-in-law took this snapshot of Mrs. T and me standing in front of the Westside Theatre yesterday afternoon:

A rare 1958 TV interview with Louis Armstrong:

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

“Play-writing, like begging in India, is an honorable but humbling profession.”
Moss Hart, Act One

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two rare and interesting off-Broadway revivals, Keen Company’s Middle of the Night and the Mint Theater’s London Wall. Here’s an excerpt.
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Paddy Chayefsky doesn’t exactly need to be “revived,” seeing as how “Network” is even more admired now than when it first came out in 1976. But nowadays most people know him only for that ferociously prophetic satire of broadcast news and for “Marty,” the 1953 live-TV drama whose film version snagged a best-picture Oscar and turned him into a Hollywood screenwriter. Few recall that Chayefsky also wrote two stage plays, “Middle of the Night” (1956) and “The Tenth Man” (1959), that both had long runs on Broadway but haven’t been seen in New York for years.
Now Keen Company, the Off-Broadway troupe that specializes to consistently fine effect in what its mission statement refers to as “sincere plays,” has exhumed “Middle of the Night,” the story of a 53-year-old New York widower (Jonathan Hadary) who falls hard for his 23-year-old secretary (Nicole Lowrance). Adapted for the stage by Chayefsky from one of his hour-long “Philco Television Playhouse” scripts, it’s a kitchen-sink midlife-crisis drama with a strongly ethnic flavor–Jerry is a down-to-earth Jewish garment manufacturer, Betty a needy, emotionally immature Gentile…
Mr. Hadary and Ms. Lowrance make an affecting couple, and Jonathan Silverstein’s pointed staging succeeds in papering over most of the flaws. The result is a cultural period piece that still has the power to touch the heart…
John Van Druten, who used to be big (he wrote five Broadway hits in the ’40s and ’50s) and is now forgotten, has lately come to the attention of the Mint Theater Company, another first-class Off-Broadway troupe that specializes in “worthy but neglected plays.” The Mint has just mounted the U.S. premiere of his “London Wall,” a 1931 comedy set in a London law office. Unlike “Middle of the Night,” this witty, impeccably crafted tale of a quartet of working women and the benighted men for whom they work has a distinctly contemporary flavor, enough so that you’ll come away wondering whether Van Druten might deserve credit for inventing the workplace comedy long before it found favor on TV.
Part of what makes “London Wall” so involving is that Van Druten heightens the play’s emotional stakes by homing in on the plight of Blanche Janus (perfectly played by Julia Coffey), the firm’s sardonic, wised-up senior secretary, who is 35, a notch or two older than her colleagues, and all too aware of what awaits her should she fail to find a husband: “Well, what else am I to do? Stick here, and go on living at home looking after father? I’m the only one left. And then he’ll die, and then what else is there? Rooms, or a boarding house, or a club for women who can’t get married? Earning three pounds a week for the rest of my life. No!” Yes, “London Wall” is a romcom with a (mostly) happy ending, but the fact that Blanche is up against it–and knows it–keeps you from getting too cozy…
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Read the whole thing here.

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I offer my thoughts on the continued silence of Gustavo Dudamel and Valery Gergiev regarding human-rights abuses in their native lands. Here’s an excerpt.
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Gustavo Dudamel, the 33-year-old Venezuelan conductor who is music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, is also a loyal alumnus of El Sistema, Venezuela’s much-admired public music-education program. He continues to support El Sistema and to lead concerts by government-funded youth orchestras–and declines to criticize the repressive policies of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s autocratic president, which have led to public protests that are being suppressed violently.
“I’m a musician,” Mr. Dudamel has explained. “If I were a politician, I would act as a politician for my own interest. But I’m an artist, and an artist should act for everybody….I cannot allow El Sistema to become a casualty of politics. Regardless of political or public pressure, I will continue this work in Venezuela and throughout the world.”
If his response has a familiar ring, it’s because you’ve heard similar words from another internationally famous conductor, Russia’s Valery Gergiev. Mr. Gergiev, who is a longtime supporter of the thuggish Vladimir Putin regime, is being harshly criticized by colleagues for not speaking out against Mr. Putin’s anti-gay policies. His response? “It is wrong to suggest that I have ever supported anti-gay legislation and in all my work I have upheld equal rights for all people. I am an artist and have for over three decades worked with tens of thousands of people and many of them are indeed my friends.”
Are either of those slippery statements good enough? And do artists have a responsibility to protest against moral injustice?
Let’s start with what ought to be a given: No artist is obliged to create political art, however worthy the cause. To do so is to run the risk of undermining the seriousness of his art by enlisting it in the service of propaganda. On the other hand, every artist is subject to the same moral obligations as his fellow men. Even a genius has no right to shrug off the universal claims of common decency–and it’s no secret that great artists as a group have an unfortunate way of doing whatever they think will best serve their own purposes….
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Read the whole thing here.

“The pencil in his hand began to make quick, darting marks on the manuscript, bracketing the cuts on page after page. It was astonishing to find how much of what we had written was unnecessary, how we had underestimated an audience’s ability to grasp what was needful for them to know without restating it not once but sometimes two or even three times. It was reassuring to find that so meticulous a craftsman as George Kaufman himself still had to learn the hard way the ever-constant lesson of economy.”
Moss Hart, Act One

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:

• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• No Man’s Land/Waiting for Godot (drama, PG-13, playing in rotating repertory, closes Mar. 30, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• 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)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• Outside Mullingar (comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 16, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Hamlet/Saint Joan (drama, G/PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway productions, playing in rotating repertory, closes Mar. 9, original productions reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN ORLANDO, FLA.:

• The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, Parts I and II (drama, G/PG-13, playing in rotating repertory, closes Mar. 9, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN GLENCOE, ILL.:

• Port Authority (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WEST PALM BEACH, FLA.:

• Old Times (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)