Archives for January 7, 2005

I’m on the air today. To be exact, I’ll be sharing a microphone with John Schaefer this afternoon on WNYC’s Soundcheck. Here’s the official version of what we’ve got cooked up:

Rounding out Soundcheck’s week-long traversal of the musical highs and lows of 2004, music and drama critic Terry Teachout joins us to discuss some of his artistic highlights of 2004. From Diana Krall’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Black Crow”, to the reopening of the MoMA, to some of the New York Philharmonic’s most successful performances, Teachout and host John Schaefer will cover the year’s best. We also ask our listeners for their highlights. You can call in during the show or e-mail us at: soundcheck@wnyc.org.

Soundcheck airs in New York weekdays at two p.m. EST on 93.9 FM. You don’t have to be a New Yorker to join in the fun, though–WNYC can also be heard live via streaming audio by Web surfers around the world. To learn more about today’s broadcast, to “tune in” online, or to listen after the fact to the archived version of today’s broadcast, click here.

As Mr. Osgood says, see you on the radio.

(P.S. The photo of me on the Soundcheck Web site is a personal favorite.)

I took two weeks off from my Wall Street Journal drama column, but now I’m back this morning with reviews of Under the Bridge, the new Kathie Lee Gifford-David Pomeranz musical, and Daniel Goldfarb’s Modern Orthodox, which stars Craig “Music Man” Bierko, Jason “American Pie” Biggs, and Molly “Pretty in Pink” Ringwald.

Regarding Under the Bridge, grab your hat and hold on tight:

When the word got out that Kathie Lee Gifford had written the book and lyrics for a “family-friendly” musical that was all set to open Off Broadway, the resulting rumble of lip-smacking anticipation reminded me of nothing so much as the way many Manhattanites felt when it first hit them that Martha Stewart might actually do time. This, after all, is the town that brought you “Avenue Q,” a show so cynical that it contains a number called “Schadenfreude” (“Right now you are down and out and feeling really crappy/And when I see how sad you are/It sort of makes me…happy!”). I don’t have any strong opinions either way about Mrs. Gifford, but most of my friends affect to find her relentlessly cheery peppiness revolting, so much so that I couldn’t find anyone to accompany me to “Under the Bridge,” which opened last night at the Zipper Theatre.

Well, folks, I hate to disappoint you, but…I liked it.

“Under the Bridge” is a musical adaptation of Natalie Savage Carlson’s “The Family Under the Bridge,” the still-popular 1958 children’s book in which Armand, a homeless Paris bum (played in the show by Ed Dixon), comes to the rescue of the freshly widowed Madame Calcet (Jacquelyn Piro) and her three children (Alexa Ehrlich, Maggie Watts and Andrew Blake Zutty), whose landlord has put them out on the street because they can no longer pay the rent. It’s a sentimental heartwarmer of a tale, complete with the expected happy ending, and for the most part Mrs. Gifford has transferred it to the stage efficiently….

My feelings about Modern Orthodox were rather more complicated:

Daniel Goldfarb’s “Modern Orthodox,” now playing at Dodger Stages, is a very commercial comedy about a very interesting subject: the squirmy discomfort that certain secular Jews feel in the presence of their believing brethren….

Ben and Hershel are at once contemptuous of and oddly attracted to one another. Just as Ben is repelled by Hershel’s straight-from-the-shoulder vulgarity, so is Hershel horrified by Ben’s “ersatz” Jewishness: “Are you conservative?” “Reform. Er, secular, really. Whatever you’d call a high holiday Jew.” “A gentile.” (Pow!) Yet each sees in the other something he lacks–and for which he longs.

All this might well have added up to scaldingly hot stuff, but Mr. Goldfarb has opted for Neil Simon-type punchlines over Philip Roth-type satire….

You were expecting maybe a link? To read the whole thing–of which there’s a lot more–buy today’s Journal at your neighborhood newsstand, or go here to subscribe to the reasonably priced online version of the Journal. (That’s how I read me.)

– Publishers Weekly has a new editor, and major changes are in the offing. Sarah explains it all for you:

Is the magazine actually obsolete? Not as long as they keep the focus on what people pay most attention to–the reviews. One thing I have noticed of late is that more and more of these reviews appear closer to the publication date, which seems rather pointless–if it’s a trade publication, shouldn’t it be ahead of the curve of newspaper reviews or online pundits? A month is too short a lead time; two or three might work better in order to keep PW as a leading contributor to industry dialogue instead of morphing into a dinosaur….

– Tyler sends an open letter to the Big Cheese at the Museum of Modern Art:

You’ve got operational problems, Glenn. The crowds in your museum are so massive that it’s endangering the art. I saw people bumping into sculptures, even paintings, because the galleries were so crowded. And you need more guards–the fourth floor galleries and the contemporary galleries were so full of people that anyone who wanted to touch a painting could. Heck, I saw women with strollers bumping into the art. If Gordon Matta-Clark was alive, he’d be comin’ after you with a chainsaw after what I saw people doing to his work in your museum.

And the cameras, Glenn. You must ban cameras from the building. I must have seen about 100 flashes go off in five hours. The guards simply can’t keep up with every camera flash that happens. It’s bad for the art and it’s bad for the viewing experience of everyone else in the room….

– Jolly Days sharply reduces the number of degrees separating Renata Tebaldi from Jason Alexander:

Renata Tebaldi’s death sent me surfing to Apple’s iTunes store. I purchased what is a high point in human expression, certainly in 20th century western performance, Tebaldi’s O mio babbino caro. This painfully beautiful, far-too-short piece, sitting in the midst of a comic opera that could have been plotted by Larry David — amazing….

This Puccini piece is almost more perfect for its surprising launching pad: Gianni Schicchi. Puccini’s genius enlivens an ancient tale derived from a 14th century commentary on Dante’s Florence. (The plot is often incorrectly associated with a passage in Dante’s Divine Comedy) It could easily be a plot concocted by Seinfeld‘s George to get Susan’s money — with Kramer mucking it up again no doubt….

That’s what we recovering musicians call an enharmonic modulation….

– My competitor-pal Robert Gottlieb, author of that other Balanchine book, has a damned good roundup of the year in dance in his New York Observer column:

The year ended with a bang, not a whimper. The Trocks–O.K., fact-checkers, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo–turned up for two weeks of fun and games at the Joyce, and even though there were longueurs, they gave us a very needed shot in the arm. Because, let’s face it, 2004 was a bumpy ride….

If you’re even halfway interested in ballet or modern dance, this one’s an absolute must-read.

UPDATE: For more on the Trocks, go here.

– Rachel Howard, who blogs at Footnotes, is about to publish a memoir (which I intend to read the second it comes out), and the prospect of going public about a dark episode in her past is causing her to think some interesting thoughts about blogging:

I’m not hesitant to share unflattering details about myself, at least not in hardback. Yet posting on this website–so much less exposing–still feels like such an unnatural and worrisome process. I didn’t come to blogging freely; my husband, a political blog addict, insisted I should do it and found the designer for this site. The blog has proven useful: It aggregates my freelance work and gives me an online calling card. But I’ve never truly taken to it. Not for me the casually confidential working diary of a Terry Teachout or the biting, devil-may-care running commentary of an Old Hag. Every time I type an entry I have to think “Is this interesting to anyone but me? Does it tell too much about me? Too little?” and worst of all, “Why am I doing this?” And usually the true answer is because I think I should. As for why I think I should, I’ll leave the further psychologizing to the therapist’s office.

Why the reticence online when I’m so unguarded in my memoir? I blame the conversational nature of blogging. I’m not shy, but I’m not a chatty person. I can fake outgoingness at a party for about as long as it takes to greet the hostess, and by forty-five minutes I’m trying to nudge my husband toward the door. I detest talking about myself except with known friends, or even talking about my opinions, and if pressed to make small talk at a social gathering, I usually end up interviewing others. Writing has always been different. In writing a memoir or a novel, I’m not forcing myself upon anyone; no one has to nod along with fake interest. If I work hard enough on a page, someone may want to read it. If I fail to engage them, they can put it down….

Next week at “About Last Night”: the unvarnished truth about my sex life, in five daily installments! (O.K., maybe we’ll do Our Girl’s sex life instead.)

“Art depends on the solitude of inspired, talented, or neurotic egotists. In its expression, it may ease their agonies (for half an hour); it may bring delight and consolation to some–those hearing Mahler’s Ninth one night in San Francisco. But Mahler’s Ninth on that occasion did not house one homeless person. Renoir’s La Grande Illusion, unequalled in its antiwar sentiments, was prelude to a fresh war. The moment art finds or claims any utility it is dragged before the court of justification, and that is a forlorn process. I think it is correct to see, and insist, that art demands the single-minded, profitless dedication of time, life, and materials to the quest.”

David Thomson, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood