January 27, 2012
TT: Into the (spot)light
In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway premiere of Wit and the Florida premiere of The Motherf**ker with the Hat. Here's an excerpt.
* * *
Margaret Edson's "Wit" is one of a surprisingly large number of plays that managed to win a Pulitzer Prize without first making it to Broadway. Fourteen years after it opened Off Broadway, "Wit" is finally being presented by the Manhattan Theatre Club in its Broadway house. Why the delay? No doubt the release of Mike Nichols' 2001 cable-TV version, which starred Emma Thompson, had something to do with it. The biggest roadblock, however, is that "Wit" is the story of the death of a woman suffering from late-stage ovarian cancer. The only way to get so dark a play to Broadway nowadays is to hire a big name, and it seems more than likely that this revival, directed by Lynne Meadow, would never have opened there had Cynthia Nixon not agreed to be the star.
Unfortunately, Ms. Nixon's acting is part of what's wrong with the production, for she plays Vivian Bearing, the austere, loveless scholar of 17th-century poetry around whose terrible plight "Wit" revolves, as though she were a precocious schoolgirl rather than a full-grown, forbiddingly chilly intellectual. Only when suffering strips away Vivian's defenses does Ms. Nixon come into her own, and by then it's too late for her to overcome the lightweight impression that she's already made.
What else is wrong with this "Wit"? In 1998 it was still comparatively unusual to see a fatal illness portrayed in anything like a candid way onstage or on the screen. Nowadays, though, such portrayals are common enough that the play's initial shock effect has been significantly diminished...
The best new play of 2011 had the worst title, which helps to explain why Stephen Adly Guirgis' "The Motherf**ker with the Hat" (as it was officially billed) barely eked out a 112-performance run on Broadway. Now it belongs to the regional theaters, and GableStage, one of Florida's top companies, has mounted a first-class production that confirms my initial impression of its excellence.
Mr. Guirgis' play is an anti-romantic romcom about the effects of the therapeutic culture on a group of substance abusers. It's smart, concise (95 minutes, no intermission) and full of pointed punch lines ("If you ever need money for rehab or an exorcism, let me know"). All five characters are drawn with sympathetic sharpness, meaning that the play must be cast very, very well in order to hit the bull's-eye. Chris Rock, the star of the Broadway production, is new to the stage, and his performance, not surprisingly, was promising but far from great. By contrast, GableStage's Ethan Henry, who has plenty of regional-theater experience, is self-assured and commanding in the same role, that of a slick, sociopathic scamster. Gladys Ramirez shines no less brightly as Veronica, the foul-mouthed working-class babe whose brass-plated charms set Mr. Guirgis' farce-style plot in motion....
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
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TT: Almanac
"But all the authorities, it is pleasant to know, report that the final scene, though it may be full of horror, is commonly devoid of terror. The dying man doesn't struggle much and he isn't much afraid. As his alkalies give out he succumbs to a blest stupidity. His mind fogs. His will power vanishes. He submits decently. He scarcely gives a damn."
H.L. Mencken, "Exeunt Omnes"
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January 26, 2012
TT: The things we do for love (of Louis)
This is the scene in my living room, where an Italian TV crew has just set up an improvised studio in which I'll be talking about Louis Armstrong for a documentary:
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TT: So you want to see a show?
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:
• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren't actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Seminar (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 4, reviewed here)
• Stick Fly (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)OFF BROADWAY:
• The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (monologue, PG-13, closes Mar. 4, 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)
• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)CLOSING SOON IN SAN DIEGO:
• Dividing the Estate (drama, PG-13, remounting of Broadway production, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 12, reviewed here)CLOSING SOON IN SANTA MONICA:
• Our Town (drama, G, remounting of off-Broadway production, suitable for mature children, closes Feb. 12, original run reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY IN WEST PALM BEACH:
• The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (drama, PG-13, not suitable for young children, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Chinglish (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, reviewed here)Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace."
John Cowper Powys, The Meaning of Culture
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January 25, 2012
TT: Snapshot
José and Amparo Iturbi play the first of Emmanuel Chabrier's Trois valses romantiques:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)
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TT: Almanac
"Ambition is the last refuge of the failure."
Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young
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January 24, 2012
TT: Home from the sea
A warm breeze mussed my hair as I sat by the pool of the Biltmore Hotel, shuffling through the six thousand tunes on my iPod and thinking of nothing in particular. Having spent the whole morning writing, I felt entitled to spend the whole afternoon basking in the sun. Life is almost never as fair as that, but sometimes things do end up working out the way you think they should, and I was more determined than usual to make them do so.
Having chosen long ago to strap myself to the wheel of ambition, I now spend much of my time--probably too much--staring at the stage of a theater or the screen of my laptop, doing my best to write as well as I can between now and the next deadline. It's the life I wanted, insofar as anybody can know what he wants before he gets it, and I usually find it satisfying. At some point along the way, though, I lost the ability to sit and do nothing. On those infrequent occasions when I find myself with nothing to do, my brain slips back into gear, my fingers start twitching, and before long I'm sitting at the computer once more, tapping away at the keys.
In recent years I've learned what most ambitious people figure out sooner or later, which is that the only way to break free from the clutches of self-imposed responsibilities is to rip yourself out of your daily routine, however briefly, and go to a place where you can't work. Distraction is the key, and for me the sight and sound of moving water is the most powerful of distractions, so I went down to the pool of the Biltmore Hotel, sat beside Mrs. T, and let my mind wander. Though no one was swimming--it wasn't quite warm enough--the breeze made the surface of the water shimmer so delicately that I found it hard to concentrate on my book. I looked at the water and listened to music, and was, for a time, content.
We have it on the best of authority, alas, that nature abhors a vacuum, and in my experience she looks for opportunities to fill it with unwelcome thoughts. On this golden afternoon, the occasion for those thoughts was, much to my surprise, a song by Johnny Mercer that my iPod chose to play for me:
Ah, the apple trees,
Sunlit memories,
Where the hammock swung,
On our backs we'd lie;
Looking at the sky,
Till the stars were strung,
When the world was young.
"When the World Was Young" is, of course, the most gently nostalgic of songs, and no sooner did it start to play than I set sail on the sea of nostalgia, floating idly from memory to memory. Some were sweet, others hurtful--nostalgia can sting like a frightened bee--but all had in common the salient aspect of the emotion that triggered them, which is that they were inaccessible. I longed to be present, to seize the day, and instead I found myself grasping vainly at the unchangeable past, which is ever and always a recipe for unappeasable regret.
Suddenly my memory dredged up a long-forgotten image, one so unexpected that it made me speak out loud. "Do you remember what we were doing three years ago?" I asked Mrs. T. "We were staying at the Biltmore, sitting by the pool, and I was phoning in corrections to the galley proofs of Pops. I was talking to an editor in Boston, and I think maybe it was snowing there."
"I think you're right," she replied.
In an instant my mind snapped back three years, and regret quickly gave way to delight. For in the winter of 2009 I was not only correcting the galleys of Pops but making my final changes to the libretto of The Letter, my first opera, and I had no idea how completely those two projects were destined to upend my life. If you'd told me that the success of Pops and The Letter would soon inspire me to write a play, I would have laughed at you. If you'd gone on to tell me that the play in question was going to be produced by one of my favorite theater companies, acted by one of my favorite actors, and staged by one of my favorite directors, the laughter would have been raucously dismissive.
As I mulled over the improbable coincidence, a phrase popped into my head: This moment, this minute... I knew that it came from a song, but I couldn't recall its name. Then I picked up my iPod and searched for recordings by Mabel Mercer, and seconds later her voice filled my ears:
This moment, this minute,
And each second in it
Will leave a glow upon the sky,
And as time goes by,
It will never die.
Johnny Mercer wrote those words, too. They're the verse to "My Shining Hour," a song that he wrote with Harold Arlen in 1943, midway through World War II. As Mabel Mercer sang them with the matchless warmth and gravity that were hers alone, I steered my boat home from the sea of nostalgia and gratefully embraced the present. To do anything else, I knew instinctively, would be to insult the fate that has given me so much of what I wanted out of life, plus innumerable good things that I didn't know I wanted, or never dared to dream of being given.
For all the seductive power of nostalgia, it is only in the present that we can hope to do anything that will be worth remembering in the future. "Why are you stingy with yourselves?" George Balanchine used to ask his dancers. "Why are you holding back? What are you saving for--for another time? There are no other times. There is only now. Right now."
I'll try to remember those words the next time I find myself sitting by a swimming pool on a golden afternoon.
* * *
Blossom Dearie sings "When the World Was Young":
Joan Leslie and Fred Astaire dance to "My Shining Hour" in The Sky's the Limit, the film for which the song was written:
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TT: Almanac
"Ambition has no rest!"
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu
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January 23, 2012
TT: Two on the road
Mrs. T and I departed Florida's Sanibel Island with the utmost reluctance on Saturday morning. We then drove across the peninsula to Miami Beach, had lunch at Joe's Stone Crab, made our way to Coral Gables, and checked into the Biltmore Hotel. In short, we reversed the first half of our itinerary of three years ago, leaving out the part where I then went from Miami to New York to San Francisco to San Diego to Kansas City to Chicago to New York to Connecticut to Lenox, Massachusetts. I'd forgotten how much travel I packed into that marathon. The thought of it makes me shudder now, even though it was fun--mostly--while it was happening.
Things are different this time around. On Tuesday we're driving up to Winter Park, and I'll be flying back to New York on Wednesday to see Wit, Look Back in Anger, and the DiCapo Opera Theatre's production of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul, after which I return to Winter Park and stay put, more or less, until the end of February. That's kid stuff!
From the (admittedly narrow) point of view of a drama critic, one of the most convenient things about the Biltmore is that GableStage, the company that I came to Coral Gables to see, is in the same building as the hotel, meaning that it's a five-minute stroll from our hotel room to the lobby of the theater. I can think of a number of other hotels that are unusually close to a major regional theater, among them San Francisco's Hotel Diva, but the only other company in America, so far as I know, that shares a roof with a first-class hotel is the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, where Mrs. T and I saw The Norman Conquests six years ago in the middle of an eyelash-freezing cold spell. It was nice enough not to have to go outside to get to the theater, but this is even nicer.
While we're always glad to be at the Biltmore, we already miss Sanibel and can't wait to arrive in Winter Park, where I plan, among other interesting things, to conduct a public conversation with Pat Metheny and roll up my sleeves and write three chapters of Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington. Time and inspiration permitting, I'll also try to get started on the first draft of my next opera libretto. Today, though, I'll settle for writing the second half of Friday's Wall Street Journal column, a review of the show that Mrs. T and I saw last night at the Biltmore, after which we'll have breakfast and pay a visit to the pool.
See you around, somewhere or other.
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TT: Found object
I'm always intrigued by the ill-sorted books that lurk randomly on the shelves of hotels and inns. Our room in the Biltmore Hotel, for instance, contains a bookshelf on which can be found the following volumes:
• A Trial by Jury, D. Graham Burnett's account of the experience of serving on the jury for a murder trial
• Viana La Place's La Bella Cucina: How to Cook, Eat, and Live Like an Italian
• Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround, by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
• A Reader's Digest Select Editions volume from 2000 containing condensed versions of novels by Nelson DeMille, Linda Nichols, Michael Palmer, and Jennifer Chiaverini
• Pandora's Daughter, a novel by Iris Johansen
• Stormy Petrel, a novel (I think) by Mary Stewart
• The Runway of Life, a self-published book by Peter Legge whose genre was not apparent to me in the modest amount of time I was prepared to spend flipping through it
• Little Women
• Webster's New Century Dictionary
No doubt a more imaginative person than I could write a witty poem or a wistful short story about these nine books, just as Mrs. T is capable of whipping up an edible meal out of whatever happens to be in our refrigerator at any given moment. Alas, all I can do is post their titles and wonder: did any of their authors ever imagine that the books over which they once slaved so hopefully would end up gathering dust in a resort hotel in Florida?
While we're on the subject, here's another question: will the day ever come when I stumble across a book of mine in a similar setting? And if I do, will I have the grace to smile wryly and reflect on the vanity of human wishes?
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TT: Just because
An excerpt from Sinatra: An American Original, originally telecast on CBS in 1965, in which Frank Sinatra is seen recording "It Was a Very Good Year." The conductor is Gordon Jenkins and the narrator is Walter Cronkite:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)
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TT: Almanac
"Where ambition can be so happy as to cover its enterprizes, even to the person himself, under the appearance of principle, it is the most incurable and inflexible of all human passions."
David Hume, The History of England
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January 20, 2012
TT: A good day's work
This recording of Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, which I mentioned in my Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column about Lauridsen, went to #9 on Amazon's classical-music chart today. That makes me really, really happy. I love it when something I write makes a difference in the life of a first-rate artist.
Needless to say--I hope--I never cease to be grateful to the Journal for permitting me to use one of the world's biggest journalistic megaphones, and trusting me to use it responsibly. On days like this, though, I'm even more grateful than usual.
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TT: The edge of hopelessness
In today's Wall Street Journal I report on a rare and important revival of The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds at Palm Beach Dramaworks. Here's an excerpt.
* * *
It's puzzling to watch a good play fall out of fashion. Paul Zindel's "The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" was written in 1964, opened Off Broadway in 1970, wowed the New York critics, won a Pulitzer Prize, was turned into a movie by Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in 1972 and looked like a deservedly sure thing in the posterity sweepstakes for many years thereafter. But while it continues to be performed by students and amateurs to this day, I'm not aware of any major professional staging that's taken place in recent years.
Palm Beach Dramaworks' new production of "The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" would be worthy of note for that reason alone. Fortunately, there's a better reason to see it: William Hayes, the company's artistic director, has given Mr. Zindel's play the kind of revival of which every frustrated playwright dreams, one so profoundly comprehending and persuasively acted that you'll leave the theater wondering how "Gamma Rays" could ever have been forgotten, however briefly. Enhancing the immediacy of the staging is the troupe's unusually shallow 218-seat theater, whose last row of seats is only 34 feet from the stage. The handsome new venue, which opened in November, manages to preserve the striking intimacy of the fast-growing company's old 84-seat performing space.
At first glance there doesn't seem to be much to "Gamma Rays." It's a one-set drama about the plight of a fatherless family teetering on the edge of abject poverty, a subject that has been done to death ever since "The Glass Menagerie" opened on Broadway in 1945. It has five characters, all of them women, one of whom has a bit part and one of whom never speaks, and it is dominated, as is customarily the case with such plays, by the unhappy mother, whose soul has been crushed by the struggle for survival. It is (mostly) told from the point of view of one of her children, a sensitive young girl who is clearly the author's alter ego, and its tone alternates between delicate poetry and harsh realism.
You've heard it all before? Maybe--but not like this.
To be sure, Mr. Zindel's plot is as simple as his premise. Tillie Hunsdorfer (Arielle Hoffman), the sensitive child, has been encouraged by one of her teachers to compete in a science fair, and she and Ruth (Skye Coyne), her older, epileptic sister, long desperately for Beatrice (Laura Turnbull), their mother, to come to the awards ceremony. But Beatrice, incapacitated by self-pity and drink, is no longer capable of summoning up any love for her children, and when they lose patience with her at last, she lashes out in a way that is shocking enough to make the audience gasp with horror.
Stock stuff, in other words, but Mr. Zindel has charged it with the kind of passionate feeling that can ennoble the least orginal of scripts, and no sooner does "Gamma Rays" get under way than you are drawn irresistibly into the Hunsdorfers' unhappy lives. He also takes care to provide just enough hope to make the play bearable, though never so much as to undercut its hard-earned anguish....
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
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TT: The best composer you've never heard of
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I write about Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen, a film documentary that will receive its first public screening next month. Here's an excerpt.
* * *
It's been a long time since an American classical composer became famous, much less popular. Philip Glass was probably the last one whose name would become passably well known to the public at large, and even Mr. Glass isn't nearly as famous as, say, Aaron Copland. That says a lot about the marginal place of high culture in America--none of it good.
So who ought to be famous? Or, to put it another way, who's writing classical music these days that's accessible enough to satisfy lay listeners, yet serious enough to impress trained musicians?
Morten Lauridsen, that's who.
Don't be surprised if Mr. Lauridsen's name is unfamiliar to you. If you sing in a choir or go out of your way to listen to new choral music, there's a better-than-even chance that you'll have heard of him. If not, not. Though Mr. Lauridsen's music is more widely performed than that of any other contemporary choral composer, he doesn't get talked about on TV or written about in magazines, and highbrow music critics typically ignore his premieres. Yet he has no shortage of ardent fans, one of whom, the poet Dana Gioia, describes him as "one of the few living composers whom I would call great."
Mr. Gioia, the past chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, speaks these words of praise in a film documentary called "Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen" that will receive its premiere on Feb. 7 in Palm Springs, Calif., followed by screenings in Cincinnati, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and other locations. The film, directed by Michael Stillwater, is a heartening rarity, a thoroughly intelligent classical-music program that strikes an appropriate balance between words and music. Most of the talking is done by Mr. Lauridsen himself and all of it is to the point, but plenty of time is devoted to the music that is the true point of "Shining Night," and by film's end you'll know what it sounds like and whether you want to hear more of it--as I expect you will....
Says Mr. Lauridsen: "There are too many things out there that are away from goodness. We need to focus on those things that ennoble us, that enrich us." The musical language in which he embodies this simple belief is conservative in the best and most creative sense of the word. His sacred music is unabashedly, even fearlessly tonal, and his chiming harmonies serve as underpinning for gently swaying melodic lines that leave no doubt of his love for medieval plainchant. Nothing about his music is "experimental": It is direct, heartfelt and as sweetly austere as the luminous sound of church bells at night....
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
The trailer for Shining Night:
Stephen Cleobury and the King's College Choir perform Morten Lauridsen's "O magnum mysterium" in 2009:
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TT: Almanac
"The musical canon is not decided by majority opinion but by enthusiasm and passion, and a work that ten people love passionately is more important than one that ten thousand do not mind hearing."
Charles Rosen, Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New
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January 19, 2012
TT: Family album
I spent the morning writing, after which Mrs. T and I went out on a dolphin cruise:
This is where we're staying, seen from the boat...
...and from the beach:
As usual, we ended the day by watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico:
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TT: So you want to see a show?
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:
• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, extended through Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, reviewed here)
• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren't actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Seminar (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 4, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Stick Fly (serious comedy, PG-13, 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)
• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)IN SAN DIEGO:
• Dividing the Estate (drama, PG-13, remounting of Broadway production, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 12, reviewed here)IN SANTA MONICA:
• Our Town (drama, G, remounting of off-Broadway production, suitable for mature children, closes Feb. 12, original run reviewed here)CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Chinglish (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY IN FORT MYERS, FLA.:
• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 22, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)Posted at 12:00 AM | permalink | email this entry
TT: Almanac
"Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart."
James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest
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