Archives for December 3, 2004

“Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings 1950-1964” closes Saturday at Lucas Schoormans Gallery. It’s the first Morandi exhibition in New York since 1981. God only knows when there’ll be another one. Please don’t miss it.

(To read what I wrote about this remarkable show last month in the Washington Post, go here.)

The gallery, which is at 508 W. 26th St., has just published an exquisite little catalogue. To order a copy, e-mail info@lucasschoormans.com, or call 212-243-3159. I suspect that supplies are limited, so don’t dally.

Friday again, and I’ve reviewed two shows in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Pacific Overtures and Playwrights Horizons’ Rodney’s Wife.

Pacific Overtures is a triumph:

This is one of the most entrancingly beautiful shows ever to come to Broadway. Even if you don’t like it, you won’t be sorry to have seen it.

Originally produced in 1976, “Pacific Overtures” tells the once-familiar story of the naval expedition led by Commodore Perry that opened Japan to the West in 1853–but tells it from the Japanese point of view. The characters are played by Asian-Americans (Perry is a giant monster in a mask). John Weidman’s book makes use of narrative techniques derived from Noh theater, while Mr. Sondheim’s iridescent score melds the spare, percussive textures of Japanese music with his own Ravel-perfumed harmonies.

What makes this production still more individual is that it has been staged and choreographed by a Japanese director, Amon Miyamoto. When I first saw it a few years ago at the Lincoln Center Festival, it was even sung in Japanese (with English supertitles). That deliciously distancing touch is gone from this English-language version, but Mr. Miyamoto and his designers have otherwise been careful to present “Pacific Overtures” in an idiomatically Japanese style, with simple d

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!