Archives for December 22, 2006

One of the minor ironies of my job is that in order to take time off, I have to see shows in advance and stockpile columns to be published in my absence, meaning that I usually end up spending good-sized chunks of my holidays recovering from the spasms of overwork that make them possible. In the five days preceding my trip from New York to Smalltown, U.S.A., for instance, I saw four shows, filed three Wall Street Journal columns and a Commentary essay, and caught a cold. On Wednesday I went to bed at two and arose at five-thirty, and by three o’clock that afternoon I was knocking on my mother’s back door halfway across the country, suitcase in hand. I slept for ten hours that night and took a two-hour nap the following day, after which I felt like myself again, more or less.

Outside of sleeping, I haven’t done much since I got here. My mother and I watched Cool Hand Luke and To Have and Have Not and took a drive around town to look at the Christmas lights. I check my e-mail from time to time, but it isn’t easy to surf the Web with a dialup connection nowadays, so instead I’ve been watching The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, which is a bit like listening to a kindergarten teacher from an upper-middle-class suburb cheerily reading horror stories out loud to her class.

I’ve finished one of the books I brought with me to Smalltown, a dullish biography of Tom Stoppard, and now am trying to decide whether to read myself to sleep with Bleak House, Fathers and Sons, or Master and Commander. I need to make up my mind pretty soon, for it’s drawing close to midnight and my eyelids are growing heavy. The only sounds I can hear are the soft whir of my iBook, the flickering whisper of rain on the rooftop, and an out-of-tune train whistle wailing in the distance. All my pieces are written, all my shows seen. For the moment, the rest of my life can take care of itself.

In place of the usual reviews, I’ve devoted this morning’s Wall Street Journal drama column to a retrospective look at the best American theater of 2006:

One of the things I’ve learned about American theater since becoming the Journal’s drama critic three years ago is that it stretches from sea to shining sea. Yes, Broadway is where the money is, but most of the best shows in America are to be found Off Broadway or out of town. I reviewed plays in 14 states and the District of Columbia during 2006, and saw good things nearly everywhere I went. For those who thrill to the inexplicable, irreplaceable magic of live theater, those are truly glad tidings.

Unadventurous playgoers who stick to the well-worn rut that runs between 42nd and 54th Streets in Manhattan have a way of forgetting that there is often (if not always) an inverse relationship between the artistic quality of a play and the size of its production budget. Among the most pleasing shows I saw in 2006, for instance, were four revivals, three Off Broadway and one in Chicago, produced by vest-pocket companies that between them didn’t have a quarter to spare on frills or furbelows….

No free link, so to find out what they were, and much, much more, pick up a copy of the Friday paper. (Believe me, you can afford it.) Alternatively, go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you immediate access to my review, plus the rest of the Journal‘s end-of-the-year wrapup of the cultural highlights of 2006. (If you’re already a subscriber, the column is here.)

The Museum of Modern Art is currently presenting Franz Waxman: Music for the Cinema,
a month-long 21-film retrospective of the work of the man who scored Sunset Boulevard, Rebecca, The Bride of Frankenstein, and hundreds of other golden-age Hollywood films.

Though Waxman won two Oscars (for Sunset Boulevard and A Place in the Sun) and is ranked at least as highly as Erich Wolfgang Korngold or Max Steiner by most film-music connoisseurs, his name is much less well known to the public at large. I decided to try to do something about that–as well as to draw attention to the MoMA series–by devoting my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, to a discussion of Waxman’s work.

If that piques your interest, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal, where you’ll find my column in the “Pursuits” section.

“A dilettantism in nature is barren and unworthy. A fop of fields is no better than his brother on Broadway.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”