Archives for January 2007

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains the first of a series of theatrical reports from the road. This time around I review a Cherry Orchard in Boston and a Noises Off in Washington:

It says much about the artistic health of Broadway that none of Anton Chekhov’s plays has been seen there since 2000, and that two decades have gone by since “The Cherry Orchard” was last produced there (unless you count the Russian-language road-show version that ran for a week and a half in 1997). So when Boston’s Huntington Theatre cast Kate Burton as Madame Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s last and greatest play, I knew I had to go see it–and her. Nowadays Ms. Burton is best known as a TV star, but she is also one of the finest stage actresses we have, and in “The Cherry Orchard” she made an impression so strong and vibrant that I can still see her clearly in my mind’s eye a week after the fact….

The Marxist reading of “The Cherry Orchard” as a snapshot of Russia on the eve of much-needed revolution was fashionable throughout much of the 20th century, but has grown less stylish of late. “You can never make a play this great about politics,” says Nicholas Martin, the Huntington’s artistic director, who has chosen instead to stress the comic side of “The Cherry Orchard.” He gets his laughs and then some, but the broadness of his straightforward staging, which borders at times on slapsticky crudity, seemed to me to veer rather too far in the opposite direction….

I don’t know if “Noises Off” is the funniest play ever written, but it’s definitely the funniest play I’ve ever seen, and Washington’s Arena Stage has given it a perfect revival. I mean it: I can’t think of a single way in which this production could possibly have been improved….

No link, naturally, so get yourself a Journal and read the whole thing there, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, thereby giving you immediate access to my column and all the rest of the Journal‘s Friday arts package. (If you’re already a subscriber, the column is here.)

In my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I examine the hottest dance story of the month, if not the decade: Christopher Wheeldon’s recently announced decision to leave New York City Ballet and launch his own classical ballet company. Yes, Wheeldon is the biggest choreographic talent to come along since Mark Morris–but is that fact alone enough to guarantee the kind of heavy-duty charitable cash flow necessary to bankroll a twenty-member dance troupe? Or might he possibly have something else in mind?

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

“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

I’m sitting in my hotel room in Washington, D.C., having just eaten a very good breakfast downstairs. Last night I chatted with Our Girl on the phone, then read the first chapter of Bleak House before putting out the light, thus embarking on the fulfillment of one of my New Year’s resolutions. This morning I spent an hour surfing the Web and catching up on my e-mail, then read the Washington Post on paper, something I almost never do anymore. In a few minutes I’ll head for the Phillips Collection, where I plan to pass the middle part of the day looking at art, followed by a couple of hours’ worth of writing. Tonight I’ll be seeing the Signature Theatre Company’s new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

The sky is blue, the wind is blowing, and for some reason I find that a sentence from one of Justice Holmes’ letters is running through my head: “Life grows more equable as one grows older; not less interesting, but I hope a little more impersonal. An old man ought to be sad. I don’t know whether I shall be when the wind is west and the sky clear.”

Enjoy your day. I plan to.

– I must have watched It’s a Wonderful Life a half-dozen times, and every time I notice the piano player who pounds out a smoking-hot stomp tune at Nick’s, the boisterous speakeasy in which Clarence, Jimmy Stewart’s hapless guardian angel, makes the mistake of ordering mulled wine from the tough-guy bartender (“We serve hard drinks in here for men who want to get drunk fast, and we don’t need any characters around to give the joint