Archives for January 21, 2005

It’s Friday, and I’m in The Wall Street Journal with a review of Harold and Maude: The Musical, plus a report on Harvey Fierstein’s debut as Tevye in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof.

The former was, eh, not so hot:

For years now, Tom Jones, whose list of credits includes the book and lyrics for “The Fantasticks,” has had his eye on “Harold and Maude,” the 1971 cult movie about a 20-year-old suicidal misfit who falls hard for a fey 80-year-old widow. When Harvey Schmidt, his longtime collaborator, declined the challenge of writing music for so quirky a project, the undaunted Mr. Jones teamed up with a younger composer, Joseph Thalken. They brought the finished product to New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, where “Harold and Maude: The Musical” is running through Feb. 6, with Estelle Parsons playing the part created in the film by Ruth Gordon.

Would that the fruits of Mr. Jones’ protracted labors were more satisfying. Alas, “Harold and Maude” doesn’t fly, in part because the redeeming peculiarities of the film, an all-you-need-is-love-love-love period piece, have been carefully watered down by Mr. Jones to accommodate easily ruffled suburban sensibilities. What’s left is a decorously brief fling between Harold and Maude that still fails to pass the eeuuww test, portrayed with a starry-eyed tweeness that made my teeth itch….

The latter was, somewhat to my surprise, really fine, if a bit odd in spots:

Mr. Fierstein, last seen on Broadway in “Hairspray,” isn’t an obvious candidate for the part of Tevye. Aside from not getting to wear a dress, he has to sing several demanding songs, and his voice, which sounds like a bullfrog stuck in a double bass, makes a decidedly odd impression in “Sunrise, Sunset” and “Sabbath Prayer.” (Believe it or not, he croaks some of his numbers in keys so low that the orchestra has to transpose them up to meet him in the middle.) Still, he more than makes up in comic prowess for what he lacks in vocal luster, and though he hasn’t combed all the “Hairspray” out of his intermittently flouncy mugging, Mr. Fierstein rises effortlessly–as well as believably–to “Fiddler”‘s not-infrequent moments of high drama….

No link, and there’s much, much more, including a review of a third show, Washington’s Arena Stage revival of Hallelujah, Baby! To see what you’re missing, buy a copy of today’s Journal (duh), or click here and get with the program.

“Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian’s life can be that moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx–my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me–we’re sinning! We’re succeeding! We’re human after all!).”

Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Pardon me for not having done the usual this morning. I was prepping last night in order to conduct the very first interview for my Louis Armstrong biography, and today I spent six amazingly absorbing hours talking to George Avakian, who knew Armstrong from 1940 on and was his record producer in the mid-Fifties. Avakian, who was born in 1919, appears to remember everything that ever happened to him, and revels in sharing his memories with serious-minded interviewers who’ve done their homework. I had, and I filled up four cassettes with his detailed recollections of Armstrong, on and off the job. We’re not quite done yet, but I covered a lot of ground, and I expect to start writing the first draft of the prologue some time next week.

It isn’t easy to write a biography of a man you never met, even someone like Armstrong who left behind a substantial body of correspondence and reminiscence. By the time I started writing about H.L. Mencken, who died in 1956, everyone who had known him at all well was long gone, and I had to work from written source material alone. Though Armstrong died in 1971, there aren’t many people left who knew him well enough to speak with confidence about his character and personality, much less who collaborated with him closely enough to describe his working methods. Oral-history transcripts are precious, sometimes priceless, but the one thing you can’t do with them is ask the interviewees your own questions. When I turned on my tape recorder this morning, I felt as if magic casements were about to open, and when I turned it off late in the afternoon, I knew they had.

Anyway, my apologies for not posting my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser, which will go up shortly, along with today’s almanac entry. Now you know why, and I bet you don’t blame me one bit….

Last night the ipod played Lucinda Williams’s “Jackson” and the Breeders’ “Drivin’ on 9” practically back-to-back, which I thought was awfully clever of it. These are my two favorite songs about driving–songs while driving, really–dating back to well before I was a driver myself. Driving can be an opiate, and the narrators of both songs seem under its influence. They treat the names of their destinations like talismans, hopefully investing them with emotional significance the places haven’t actually yet taken on. Musically, both songs have simple, even na