Archives for 2007

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column contains the first fruit of my recent travels, a rave review of a rare revival of Tobacco Road by Triad Stage, a company based in Greensboro, N.C. I also review the New York premiere of Stephen Lang’s Beyond Glory and a production of Pirates! (an updated version of The Pirates of Penzance) at Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J.:

Why did “Tobacco Road” disappear from American stages? Now that I’ve finally seen it, I haven’t a clue, for it turns out to be an immensely powerful piece of theatrical goods. Needless to say, some of the impact of the original 1932 production must have derived from the fact that few New York playgoers then knew anything whatsoever about the poverty-wracked corner of America that Erskine Caldwell and Jack Kirkland portrayed so frankly. But “Tobacco Road,” unlike “Inherit the Wind,” is not a sniggeringly condescending travelogue about life in the hookworm-and-incest belt of the Deep South. It combines humor and horror to strikingly modern effect, and its unattractive characters are portrayed with an unsentimental sympathy that fills the viewer with pity….
It took long enough, but “Beyond Glory,” Stephen Lang’s fire-eating portrayal of eight recipients of the Medal of Honor, has finally opened Off Broadway two years after I saw it at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. “Mr. Lang’s one-man play is no simple-minded piece of flag-waving,” I wrote in this space in 2005. “It is an unsparingly direct portrait of men at war, pushed into narrow corners and faced with hard choices. It is also one of the richest, most complex pieces of acting I’ve seen in my theatergoing life.” I went back to see it again last week, and I stand by every word of my original review….
Purists who believe that “Pirates” is perfect as is should note that Arthur Sullivan’s elegantly Mendelssohnian score has been rewritten by John McDaniel in the manner of a Broadway musical, W.S. Gilbert’s witty libretto has been rewritten by Nell Benjamin (lately of “Legally Blonde”) in the manner of a Three Stooges short, and Gordon Greenberg’s staging is loud, frenetic and nudgingly naughty. At first I bristled, but then I gave in, went with the flow and ended up having a fine time, in part because of the ever-gratifying presence of Farah Alvin, one of New York’s very best musical-comedy singers, whose voice, as always, is brilliant and true….

No free link. Pick up a copy of this morning’s Journal to read the complete review, or go here to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you immediate access to my column and all the rest of the Journal‘s extensive arts coverage. (If you’re already a subscriber, the column is here.)

In this week’s “Sightings” column, published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I report on Goldstar Events, a California-based discount ticket service that uses innovative new Web-based technology to sell half-price fine-arts tickets to under-40 buyers who don’t normally make a habit of going to the opera, the ballet, or the theater.
What’s Goldstar’s secret–and what lessons can it teach to cash-strapped performing groups and presenters? To find out, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and turn to the “Pursuits” section.

“Irene sporadically reviewed novels and poetry, and although she wasn’t professionally affiliated with any particular magazine or publication, her reviews tended to cluster in The Village Voice and The New York Review of Books and The New York Times Book Review, an impressive résumé that might have suggested her opinion was valuable and worth cultivating, an implication belied by her unqualified championing of purple-prosy memoirish semiliterate ‘novels’ by minority, lesbian, or otherwise disadvantaged women, and her ecstatic spasms of devotion for ‘feminist’ poets like my mother, whom she had recently dubbed, without a trace of irony, ‘Walt Whitman with a womb’ in The Voice.
“My mother, to her own discredit, had seen nothing to question in this praise, not a whiff of hyperbole or fatuity. The day it came out, I had been at her apartment, and had cringed through her side of the ensuing telephone conversation with Irene. ‘Such high praise,’ she’d said breathily, ‘coming from such a brilliant critic. I’m actually weeping, Irene!’ Her friendship with Irene itself betrayed this same lack of discrimination, a selective gullibility and glibness I had always found deplorable in her; she was so easily taken in by some things and some people, including herself.”
Kate Christensen, Jeremy Thrane

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)
• The Drowsy Chaperone (musical, G/PG-13, mild sexual content and a profusion of double entendres, reviewed here)
• Frost/Nixon * (drama, PG-13, some strong language, reviewed here, closes Aug. 19)
• 110 in the Shade * (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here, extended through July 29)
• 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:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND:
• LoveMusik * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Sunday)
• Talk Radio (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes Sunday)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK:
• Crazy Mary (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 26)

CLOSING SOON:
• Company (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter and situations, reviewed here, closes July 7)

“Poor Sebastian. Whether I liked it or not, he and I were the same kind, sensitive plants who felt everything very strongly, our lily-white hands clasped to our frail chests, earnestly importuning: ‘Lord, I do fear/Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year/My soul is all but out of me. Let fall/No burning leaf–prithee, let no bird call.’ My old neighbor Dina Sandusky was another such teabag who hadn’t steeped quite long enough in the pot. So was Felicia and so, come to think of it, were all the people I tended to attract, except Ted. In a science fiction movie, our species would have been depicted as gelatinous quivering forms with two giant rubber eyeballs on springs, gaping mouths with oversized taste buds, extruded bundles of nerve endings, our primary functions gustatory, aesthetic, contemplative, and emotional. What good were we? Maybe we served as processing plants for the psychic by-products of commerce, politics, advertising, technology, the excess emotions of Type-A super-achievers with no time to deal with such useless things themselves; their raw passions and inchoate yearnings left them and found us, blew across our inner landscapes, strummed the aeolian harps of our rib cages, caused seismic tremors in our brain pans.”
Kate Christensen, Jeremy Thrane