Archives for November 2005

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated each Thursday. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

– Absurd Person Singular (comedy, PG, adult subject matter, closes Dec. 18, reviewed here)

– Avenue Q* (musical, R, adult subject matter, strong language, one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Chicago* (musical, R, adult subject matter, sexual content, fairly strong language)

– Dirty Rotten Scoundrels* (musical, R, extremely vulgar, reviewed here)

– Doubt* (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, implicit sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes Mar. 26, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd* (musical, R, adult situations, strong language, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

– Orson’s Shadow (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, very strong language, closes Dec. 31, reviewed here)

– See What I Wanna See (musical, R, adult subject matter, explicit sexual situations, strong language, closes Dec. 4, reviewed here)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

– Combined advance paid to Ernest Hemingway by Scribner’s in 1926 for The Sun Also Rises and The Torrents of Spring: $1,500

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $15,849.36

(Source: Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography)

“One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.”

Charles Baudelaire, Journal intime

O.K., it’s not that bad, but I don’t have quite enough steam left in the boiler to write and post the concluding installment of “All Over the Place” before bedtime. It’ll have to wait.

In lieu of same, I’ve posted four new Top Fives to divert you. Much, much more tomorrow.

First, though, a word from Morpheus….

– Fee paid to Neil Simon by Paramount in 1965 for film rights to The Odd Couple: $400,000

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $2,383,255.82

(Source: Rob Edelman and Audrey Kupferberg, Matthau: A Life)

“Fran

As a rule, New York drama critics are admitted only to those Broadway shows to which they’re formally invited, which usually means a press preview just prior to opening night. (Sometimes we’re asked back later in the run to cover a major cast change.) Because I go to the theater so often, and because tickets cost so much, it’s very unusual for me to see a play more than once, whereas I normally see a film at least twice if I really like it. Until last Saturday, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee was the only show I’d paid to see again since I started covering theater for The Wall Street Journal two and a half years ago. Well, not only did I do the same thing for Sweeney Todd, but I ordered my tickets immediately after coming home from the press preview. That’s how good I thought it was–and I felt the same way on Saturday. So did Ms. In the Wings, who was all but jumping up and down with excitement when the curtain fell at evening’s end. “I could see it again right now!” she said as we filed out of the theater.

I knew just what she meant. John Doyle’s revival of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece is so powerfully individual that you feel as if you’re seeing the show anew, no matter how well you think you know it–and I know Sweeney Todd very well indeed, having written about it in detail in A Terry Teachout Reader. I know some people, and even a few critics, have found the production disappointingly modest in scale, but I’m damned if I can see why that should stop them from appreciating the sheer audacity of Doyle’s concept, or the overwhelming punch with which his perfect cast brings it to life.

– I finally started revving the engine down on Sunday, having hit all four of my accumulated deadlines and taken all but one of my scheduled out-of-town business trips through the end of 2005. (I’m going to Baltimore on Saturday afternoon to see Centerstage’s production of No

I didn’t plan it this way, but all the links I’ve hoarded lately seem to fit that description. They’re also all from last week because I am living in the past.

Ross at The American Scene makes the case for an HBO White House drama:

It struck me that there’s an opening for a show that gives our nation’s capital the real HBO treatment–not the “Steven Soderbergh filming flacks with a handheld camera” approach, I mean, but the Sopranos/Deadwood/Rome approach. Start with the West Wing formula–idealistic, articulate people working in high-pressure jobs while keeping the nation’s best interests close to their hearts–and shove it through the looking glass. Send an anti-hero to Washington, and follow him (or her) up the ladder, all the way to the Presidency (if he’s a politician) or the Karl Rove role (if he’s an operative). Make the characters twisted, depraved, power-hungry, sexually voracious, occasionally violent–and make them appealing, too. Give us Deadwood at the Palm, the Sopranos with their hands on the nuclear football, Rome in the capital of the modern Roman Empire.

Outer Life stars in his own tale of–well, just go read it. I can’t possibly do it justice and might well wreck it. Be prepared to laugh at the misfortunes of another, is all I’ll say.

At Cathy’s World, Cathy Seipp’s pal Sandra Tsing Loh chips in a magnificent rant. The object of her righteous ire? PEN USA:

So. . . I was excited about the PEN Awards and marked my calendar. Then at my writer’s group meeting yesterday, I asked my friend Samantha Dunn if she was going. She had indeed been honored with a gracious invite to join the table of David Ulin, but snorted a remark along the lines of: “$250? I ain’t got it!”

This gave me pause. Then I went to the PEN website, and realized, in good conscience, what was I thinking?  I really cannot go!

In fact, if I had the babysitting I would be standing in front of the Biltmore in a placard literally PROTESTING this event.

Loh is as funny on paper as on the air, plus the sailor in her gets a furlough.