Archives for January 2007

“Idleness is the beginning of all vice, the crown of all virtues.”

Franz Kafka, notebook entry, Nov. 30, 1917

If you read my Wall Street Journal drama column, you know that I take regional theater very seriously indeed. In fact, I’m the only New York-based drama critic who routinely covers productions all over America. In addition to covering Broadway and off-Broadway openings, I reviewed plays in fourteen states and the District of Columbia in 2006. I expect to range no less widely in 2007.

As I wrote in my “Sightings” column last June:

The time has come for American playgoers–and, no less important, arts editors–to start treating regional theater not as a minor-league branch of Broadway but as an artistically significant entity in and of itself. Take it from a critic who now spends much of his time living out of a suitcase: If you don’t know what’s hot in “the stix,” you don’t know the first thing about theater in 21st-century America.

I’ve just started working on my travel schedule for the summer of 2007. How can you increase your chances of persuading me to come see your company? Here’s an updated version of the guidelines I use for deciding which out-of-town shows to see–along with some free suggestions for improving the way you reach out to the press:

– Basic requirements. I only review professional companies. I’m also more likely to review Equity productions, but that’s not a hard-and-fast rule, especially if I’m already coming to your city to see another show. In addition, I don’t review dinner theater, and it’s unusual (but not unprecedented) for me to visit children’s theaters or companies that produce only musicals.

– You must produce a minimum of four shows each season… That doesn’t apply to summer festivals, but it’s comparatively rare for me to cover a festival that doesn’t produce at least three shows a year.

– …and most of them have to be serious. I won’t put you on my drop-dead list for milking the occasional cash cow, but if you specialize in such regional-theater staples as The Santaland Diaries, Tuesdays With Morrie, and anything with the word “magnolias” in the title, I won’t go out of my way to come calling on you, either.

– Repeat performances. I almost never cover new or newish plays I’ve already reviewed in New York–especially if I panned them. The chances of my coming to town to see your production of The Clean House or Rabbit Hole, for instance, are well below zero. (Suggestion: if you’re not reading my Wall Street Journal drama column, you probably ought to be.)

– Repertory is everything… I won’t visit an out-of-town company I’ve never seen to review a play by an author of whom I’ve never heard. What I look for is an imaginative, wide-ranging mix of revivals of major plays–including comedies–and newer works by living playwrights and songwriters whose work I admire. Some names on the latter list: Alan Ayckbourn, Nilo Cruz, Horton Foote, Amy Freed, Brian Friel, Adam Guettel, A.R. Gurney, David Ives, Michael John LaChiusa, Warren Leight, Kenneth Lonergan, Lisa Loomer, David Mamet, Martin McDonagh, Itamar Moses, Lynn Nottage, Austin Pendleton, Harold Pinter, Oren Safdie, John Patrick Shanley, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Stoppard.

I also have a select list of older plays about which I’d like to write that haven’t been revived in New York lately (or ever). If you’re doing The Beauty Part, The Cocktail Party, The Entertainer, Hotel Paradiso, Man and Superman, Rhinoceros, Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Visit, What the Butler Saw, or anything by Jean Anouilh, No

The Wall Street Journal has posted a free link to my most recent “Sightings” column, which ran in the “Pursuits” section of Saturday’s paper:

What is intellectual property? Who owns it–and who deserves to get paid for it? Playgoers and music lovers don’t often have occasion to ask such rarefied questions, but they’ve lately become important to the producers of a Broadway musical and the members of a British rock group.

– In November the director, choreographer and designers of the Broadway production of “Urinetown” publicly accused the Carousel Dinner Theatre of Akron, Ohio, and the Mercury Theater of Chicago of copying their work without permission and demanded royalty payments in return. The Akron and Chicago companies denied the charges and sued the Broadway production team for defamation.

– Last month a London judge awarded 40% of the copyright of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” to Matthew Fisher, the group’s ex-organist. Mr. Fisher, who had asked for 50%, doesn’t claim to have written the song, but he did write the Bach-like organ countermelody heard on the group’s 1967 recording of “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” which sold 10 million copies. Judge William Blackburne called the countermelody “a distinctive and significant contribution to the overall composition and, quite obviously, the product of skill and labor on the part of the person who created it.”

At first glance these two cases may appear unrelated–but I wouldn’t be surprised if they both become landmarks in the evolution of copyright law….

Don’t stop now–there’s much more (including, believe it or not, a highly relevant plug for Erin McKeown’s new CD, Sing You Sinners).

To read the whole thing, go here.

“Work is the best of narcotics, providing the patient be strong enough to take it.”

Beatrice Webb, diary entry, March 8, 1885

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted to a pair of small-scale off-Broadway revivals that I loved, the Peccadillo Theater Company’s Room Service and the Irish Repertory Theatre’s Meet Me in St. Louis:

“Room Service” is a hard-charging farce about a fast-talking Broadway producer with a heart of brass who can’t raise enough cash to pay his hotel bill. Written by John Murray and Allen Boretz, it opened on Broadway in 1937, ran for 500 performances and was sold to Hollywood as a vehicle for the Marx Brothers, who filmed it the following year to modest comic effect (it wasn’t exactly their kind of show). The Peccadillo Theater Company, an Off Broadway troupe that specializes in “forgotten American classics,” has brought it back to town for the first time since 1953. Farce is the trickiest of theatrical genres to pull off–it requires on-the-nose timing and cocksure bravado–but this production, directed with zany aplomb by Dan Wackerman, is funny enough to take your mind off anything short of a death sentence….

As the producers of “High Fidelity” learned to their dismay, few coups are harder to carry off than turning a popular movie into a successful stage show. Vincente Minnelli’s “Meet Me in St. Louis,” among the half-dozen best film musicals ever made, was adapted for the stage by Hugh Wheeler and brought to Broadway in 1989. It closed its doors seven months later–not a bad run, but not a good one, either. Now the Irish Repertory Theatre has slimmed it down to Off Broadway proportions and given it a revival so stylish that I can’t help but wonder why the original production (which I didn’t see) failed to ring the bell….

No free link, so pick up a copy of this morning’s Journal, which will also give you the opportunity to peruse the paper’s brand-new and much-discussed redesign. Alternatively, go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you instant access to my review, plus the rest of the Journal‘s weekend arts coverage, which is soooo not for billionaires only. (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 look at two seemingly unrelated court cases that turn out to have a great deal in common. One is the fast-brewing imbroglio triggered when the director, choreographer, and designers of the Broadway production of Urinetown publicly accused two regional theater companies of stealing their ideas. The other is the decision of a London judge to award forty percent of the copyright of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” to the organist who played on the original Procol Harum recording–even though he didn’t write the song.

Are these cases watershed moments in the ongoing redefinition of intellectual property rights? For the answer, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal, where you’ll find my column in the “Pursuits” section.

“To have a large audience is not obscene. To want one is.”

Ned Rorem (quoted in W, Oct. 10, 1980)

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:

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

– A Chorus Line* (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– Company* (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter and situations, reviewed here)

– The Drowsy Chaperone* (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, 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 Vertical Hour* (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Apr. 1)

– Voyage (The Coast of Utopia, part 1)* (drama, G, too intellectually complex to be suitable for children of any age, reviewed here, closes May 12)

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)

– The Voysey Inheritance (drama, G, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Feb. 10)

CLOSING SOON:

– Two Trains Running (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Jan. 28)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK:

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here, closes Jan. 14)