Archives for March 2006

“I need to feel a love and immediate contact with a picture. I do not like to be lectured by it or instructed to work out a puzzle. Why shouldn’t art please immediately?”

Peter Pears (quoted in Christopher Headington, Peter Pears: A Biography)

It’s Friday, and I’m strictly off Broadway in this week’s Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. On tap are BAM Harvey’s Hedda Gabler, starring Cate Blanchett, and Lincoln Center’s Bernarda Alba, starring Phylicia Rashad:

Everyone who goes to the movies knows how good Cate Blanchett is, which is why the Australian production of “Hedda Gabler” in which she’s currently touring is such a hot ticket. But acting in front of an audience is different from acting in front of a camera, and this was her U.S. stage debut. So how’d she do? Stupendously well–except that she reminded me of an old-time movie star. One particular old-time movie star, in fact: Bette Davis.

That’s not a knock. Davis was matchless in the right kind of part, and “Hedda Gabler” might well have been her cup of wormwood, especially in the tightened-up, lightened-up “adaptation” of Henrik Ibsen’s 1890 play by Andrew Upton (Ms. Blanchett’s husband) that the Sydney Theatre Company has brought to Brooklyn….

Speaking of scary women, there’s another show in town that you should rush to see: “Bernarda Alba,” Michael John LaChiusa’s musical version of the 1936 play by Federico Garc

I’ll be in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, though not with my biweekly column (that’s next Saturday). Instead, I’ve contributed the latest installment to “Masterpieces,” the Journal‘s regular feature about important works of art. This time around I’ve written about one of my favorite jazz albums, Jim Hall’s Concierto, whose title track is a jazz version of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez that also features Chet Baker and Paul Desmond.

Irreverent jazz musicians have been swinging the classics for almost as long as jazz itself has existed. Jelly Roll Morton was playing a stomping version of the “Miserere” from Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” in the whorehouses of New Orleans a century ago. Since then the practice of turning familiar pieces of classical music into jazz instrumentals has acquired an impeccable pedigree extending from Art Tatum’s jaunty reworking of Dvorak’s “Humoresque” all the way to John Lewis’ silvery bebop riffs on Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier.” But of the many classical works to receive the jazz treatment, the one that continues to be updated most often–and most successfully–is a guitar concerto by a blind Spanish composer who sought to portray in music his anguish over the suffering of his sick wife….

As always, there’s lots more where that came from. See for yourself–buy a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and look me up.

“The law is not designed to make us honorable, only bearable.”

Marie C. Malaro, Museum Governance

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. 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:

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

– Bridge & Tunnel (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)

– Chicago (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

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

– The Light in the Piazza (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)

– The Pajama Game (musical, G, reviewed here, closes June 18)

– Sweeney Todd (musical, R, adult subject matter, 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:

– Abigail’s Party (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Apr. 8)

– Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, extended through May 7)

– I Love You Because (musical, R, sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here, closes April 9 and moves to Broadway April 18)

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

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:

– The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, reviewed here, closes Saturday)

Life is first boredom, then fear.

Whether or not we use it, it goes,

And leaves what something hidden from us chose,

And age, and then the only end of age.

Philip Larkin, “Dockery and Son ”

The Prep correspondence continues apace! Over here, Kenneth has posted a response to my first post. More to come tonight or tomorrow in this very space.

“I suppose there is a lot of fun to be had from reading the quotations on any dust-jacket more than five years old, simply because of reviewers’ besetting vice, that of taking, or appearing to take, their contemporaries too seriously.”

Philip Larkin, “Lies, Fleas, and Gullible Mayflies”