Archives for November 2006

“Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.”

Oscar Wilde, Pall Mall Gazette, Feb. 8, 1886

On Saturday I devoted my “Sightings” column in The Wall Street Journal to a cold-eyed consideration of the desperate state of dance in America:

Thirty-two million Americans tuned in the other night to see Emmitt Smith, formerly of the Dallas Cowboys, win the Cheesetastic Disco Ball Trophy on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” The network claims that the latest episodes of its primetime ballroom-dancing competition were the most widely viewed programs of the current TV season. That’s an impressive statistic no matter how you slice it, but it’s noteworthy for another, grimmer reason: If you want to see dance on TV, “Dancing With the Stars” is pretty much all there is.

Things were different in the ’60s and ’70s, when Edward Villella would fly through the air on “The Ed Sullivan Show” one week and swap one-liners with Tony Randall on “The Odd Couple” the next. Those were the days of the “dance boom,” the heady interlude when America was dance-crazy. Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Jerome Robbins, Broadway’s hottest musical-comedy director, made popular ballets like “Dances at a Gathering” on the side. Even George Balanchine was a celebrity, thanks in part to “Dance in America,” the PBS series that introduced a generation of TV viewers to ballet and modern dance.

Back then, dance was the most glamorous of the lively arts. Now it’s the one most in danger of slipping through the cultural cracks. New episodes of “Dance in America” are as rare as funny sitcoms. Mr. Baryshnikov was the last classical dancer to become famous, and he stopped appearing in ballet years ago. As for Balanchine, how many Americans under the age of 40 even know the name of the greatest choreographer of the 20th century, much less that he was as significant an artist as Pablo Picasso or Igor Stravinsky?…

Now the Journal has posted a free link to this column, which has been stirring up talk. To read the whole thing, go here.

After what seemed like an endless string of trips to everywhere imaginable, I find myself in New York City once more, a homecoming that reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s remark that “going right round the world is the shortest way to where you are already.” I don’t expect to see the inside of another airplane until I go home for the holidays, and that suits me fine.

When Harry Truman returned home to Missouri after a seven-year stint in the White House, a reporter asked him what he planned to do first. “Take the grips [i.e., suitcases] up to the attic,” he replied. Like Truman, I tossed my trusty rolling tote in the closet on Saturday afternoon, but then I headed straight back out the door. As I mentioned last week, I knew I’d have to fling myself into a marathon of plays and performances the moment I hit the city limits, and the only thing that made it possible for me to face that prospect with reasonable equanimity was the probable quality of the shows I’d be seeing.

On Saturday, for example, Maccers
and I caught a preview of Voyage, the first installment of the American premiere of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s trilogy of plays about the nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals who catapulted their country out of one tyranny and into another. The coming of The Coast of Utopia to the Vivian Beaumont Theater is by definition a major event, not only because we see so little of Stoppard’s work on Broadway (it’s been five-and-a-half years since a new Stoppard play was last performed there) but because this production is crawling with familiar faces (Billy Crudup, Jennifer Ehle, Ethan Hawke, Amy Irving, Br

“The desk calendar was turned to a date weeks ago, evidence of her indifference. As for copybook maxims there was one printed on the calendar, ‘Thursday the 12th. Darkness Comes Before Daylight.’ She could not help smiling, leafing through the pad for further philosophic gems, but why smile when the Platitude was the staff of life, the solace for heartbreak, the answer to ‘Why’ even though the oracle spoke in the priest’s own hollow voice. Underneath the woes of the world ran the firm roots of the platitudes, the calendar slogans, the song cues, a safety net to catch the heart after its vain quest for private solutions.”

Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King

Enough already with the leftovers–it’s time for the Friday Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. I render summary judgment on two off-Broadway shows in today’s paper, Paul Rudnick’s Regrets Only and a revival of Suddenly Last Summer:

Paul Rudnick reminds me of Nuke LaLoosh, the rookie pitcher in “Bull Durham” who had a million-dollar arm and a five-cent head. If it’s jokes you want, Mr. Rudnick’s your man, and most of them are funny to boot. For a stand-up comedian, that’d be more than enough–but Mr. Rudnick is a playwright, and “Regrets Only,” his latest effort, proves yet again that it takes more than punchlines to make a play….

Hank Hadley (George Grizzard), a ruggedly handsome fashion designer who just happens to be gay, is incensed when the husband (David Rasche) of his best friend (Christine Baranski) agrees to help President Bush draft a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage. Thanks to Mr. Rudnick’s jokes and the precision-tooled acting of his cast, “Regrets Only” stays afloat until intermission, at which point things get really, really stupid: Hank talks all the gays in Manhattan into going on strike, meaning that Broadway shuts down and nobody can get a hairdo. Curtain? Not quite, alas, for we have to sit through a semi-serious closing scene in which Mr. Rudnick whacks us over the head with his moral, which is that Gays Are People, Too.

I wonder whether it occurred to Mr. Rudnick that the second act of “Regrets Only,” in which gays are portrayed as playwrights, actors, hairdressers, caterers, florists, and travel agents, is itself a mortifyingly quaint piece of stereotyping….

Tennessee Williams is widely thought to be a great playwright–but not by me. Yes, he wrote one indisputably great play, “The Glass Menagerie,” and I can also see why so many people like “A Streetcar Named Desire” so much more than I do. Most of the rest of his vast output, however, strikes me as overblown and underbelievable, with “Suddenly Last Summer” locking up the booby prize for sheer absurdity. I’ve no idea how Williams’ reputation for seriousness survived its 1958 premiere, much less why the Roundabout Theatre Company has gone to the trouble of reviving what is surely the most unintentionally silly play ever written by a well-known author….

No free link. To read the whole thing, pick up a copy of today’s Journal and turn to the “Weekend Journal” section. Alternatively, go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you on-the-spot access to my review, plus plenty of other good stuff. (If you’re already a subscriber, the review is here.)

In my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I cast a cold eye on the desperate state of dance in America. Just a quarter-century ago, ballet and modern dance were vital, exciting, and (above all) popular. Now they’re at a frighteningly low ebb. What happened–and what can be done to pump up the volume?

To find out, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal, where you’ll find my column in the “Pursuits” section.

“You know, the Philistines have long since discarded the rack and stake as a means of suppressing the opinions they feared: they’ve discovered a much more deadly weapon of destruction–the wisecrack.”

W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

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

BROADWAY:
– A Chorus Line* (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
– Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)
– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
– Jay Johnson: The Two and Only (one-ventriloquist show, G/PG-13, a bit of strong language but otherwise family-friendly, 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)
– The Wedding Singer (musical, PG-13, some sexual content, reviewed here, closes Dec. 31)

OFF BROADWAY:
– The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)
– Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living In Paris (musical revue, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here)
– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:
– Heartbreak House* (drama, G/PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Dec. 17)
– The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (drama, R, adult subject matter and nudity, reviewed here, closes Dec. 9)