Archives for March 4, 2005

Last night I was all raving about Kelly Braffet’s novel Josie and Jack. Now I have a couple of addenda. First, in the earlier post I pronounced myself unimpressed by comparisons of the book to “Hansel and Gretel.” My (unstated) grounds were that the sister and brother in the fairy tale are victimized innocents whereas Josie and Jack are…not. Well, I’m a blockhead: I just rediscovered that the book’s epigraph comes straight from the Grimm Brothers’ story:

When the moon came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked them all up. H

It’s Friday, and I’ve got another triple-barreled drama column in today’s Wall Street Journal.

First out of the box is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which looks to me like a major contender for the title of Biggest Musical Hit of the Season, even though it has a familiar ring to it:

“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which opened last night at the Imperial, resembles “The Producers” so closely that Mel Brooks ought to ask for a half-point on the gross. Not only is it about a pair of unscrupulous buffoons who slip on their own banana peels, but Jeffrey Lane and David Yasbek, like Mr. Brooks before them, have turned every trick in the how-to-write-a-hit-show instruction manual, hiding their old-fashioned ways behind a thick veneer of comic songs lightly sprinkled with words you couldn’t even say on a Broadway stage 50 years ago, much less sing. Mr. Lane’s book is a fast-moving assembly line of pa-rum-pum jokes (“Do you think I should use an umlaut?” “No, you smell great”). Mr. Yazbek’s tunes are so utilitarian that they’ll have slipped your mind a good half-hour before the second-act reprises roll around. Sound familiar?

Original, in other words, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” isn’t–but it’s wonderfully, almost arrogantly entertaining all the same. John Lithgow (the suavely oily senior partner) and Norbert Leo Butz (his scene-stealing low-life sidekick) are the Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane of 2005…

I also flipped over David Mamet’s Romance:

Though it pretends to be a Marx Brothers-style courtroom farce, “Romance” is actually an Ionesco-like verbal fantasia whose subject is language itself. The seven characters, all of them nameless, are empty shells of clich

Go here and listen. Joy awaits you.

“A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.”

Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouv

The right-hand column has been extensively freshened in recent days, with an all-new set of Top Fives and updated links in the “Teachout in Commentary” and “Second City” modules.

This is your last warning: I’m giving two lectures next week in Washington, D.C., and you’re cordially invited to attend either or both.

Whee–I have been inundated with five-packs of movie quotes. From readers, from bloggers, from commenters on other blogs. It’s fun! It’s fantastic! It’s full of stars!* Aw…I love you guys. I love my gay dead son.**