Archives for 2007

In this week’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I report from New York on the premiere of A.R. Gurney’s latest play, Crazy Mary, then look back to the last of the shows I saw during my recent swing through the Northeast, the Studio Theatre’s revival of Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead in Washington, D.C.:

Comparisons between playwrights and novelists are almost always misleading, but I’d say it’s more or less accurate to think of A.R. Gurney as the John P. Marquand of American drama. Like Marquand, Mr. Gurney writes about WASPs and their discontents, and his ruefully funny studies of a ruling class in decline are too often dismissed as trivial by critics who take no interest in the inner lives of the insufficiently underprivileged. Also like Marquand, he is prolific to a fault, and his work is as unevenly inspired as it is unfailingly professional. I’ve reviewed several of his plays in this space, always with pleasure–I like his best work very much–but rarely with outright enthusiasm. Thus I’m glad to report that “Crazy Mary,” Mr. Gurney’s new portrait of life among the white-bread set, is a highly impressive piece of work, a serious comedy that succeeds in wringing honest laughs out of an awkward subject.
The Mary in question is a middle-aged manic depressive (Kristine Nielsen) who has spent the past three decades stashed away in a high-priced Boston sanitarium to which her late father consigned her after she made the fatal mistake of sleeping with the gardener. In addition to being crazy, Mary is loaded–she inherited all her father’s money–and when Lydia (Sigourney Weaver), Mary’s second cousin once removed, becomes her legal guardian after a death in the family…well, you figure it out, if you can. Every twist in the plot of “Crazy Mary” took me by surprise, and none of them disappointed me in the slightest….
I’m spending the first part of the summer checking out regional productions of the plays of Tom Stoppard, whose “The Coast of Utopia” took New York by storm this past season. My most recent trip was to the Studio Theatre, which is putting on “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” as its contribution to “Shakespeare in Washington,” the city-wide, season-long celebration of the Bard currently underway in the nation’s capital. I’ve been hearing good things about the Studio Theatre for the past couple of years, and this revival confirmed them all. It’s the best “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” I’ve ever seen on stage….

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

No self-respecting New York-based drama critic can fail to take note of the annual Tony Awards, and in this week’s “Sightings” column, published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I make a few predictions about who’s likely to win what–and reflect on what, if anything, those likely victories will tell us about the current state of American theater.
To learn more, pick up a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and turn to the “Pursuits” section.

“In reading exam papers written by misled students, of both sexes, about this or that author, I have often come across such phrases–probably recollections from more tender years of schooling–as ‘his style is simple’ or ‘his style is clear and simple’ or ‘his style is beautiful and simple’ or ‘his style is quite beautiful and simple.’ But remember that ‘simplicity’ is buncombe. No major writer is simple. The Saturday Evening Post is simple. Journalese is simple. Upton Lewis is simple. Mom is simple. Digests are simple. Damnation is simple. But Tolstoys and Melvilles are not simple.”
Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature (courtesy of The Rat)

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)
• Frost/Nixon * (drama, PG-13, some strong language, reviewed here, closes Aug. 19)
• LoveMusik * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)
• 110 in the Shade * (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here, extended through July 29)
• Talk Radio (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, 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)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children old enough to enjoy a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY:
• A Moon for the Misbegotten * (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes June 10)

“Before I left home seven years ago I used to walk endlessly at night along the streets, tormented because there was a barrier between me and the steady solemn magnificence of those skies whose brilliance beat the thin little town into the soil. I saw them, but I was alien to them. This barrier is the urgent necessity of doing the next thing, of getting on with the business of living; whatever it is that drives us on. But on that first night there was no barrier, nothing; and I was effortlessly and at once in immediate intimacy with the soil and its creatures.”
Doris Lessing, Going Home

“Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes

Terry reports that his computer has blown a gasket and his access to email for the next week will be intermittent if at all. Please plan accordingly.
For my part, I am slouching back toward blogging and will resume being part of the scenery around here presently.

I depart this morning for a long-overdue visit to Smalltown, U.S.A., where I plan to hang out with my family and do as little as possible.
I don’t plan to blog from home. I’m overblogged, which feels not unlike being overcaffeinated. Except for the daily almanac entry and the usual weekly theater-related posts, you won’t be hearing from me again until next Tuesday.
Later.