Archives for May 30, 2008

“I think it’s good to admit what a wolfish thing art is; I trust writers who know they aren’t nice.”
Kay Ryan

His New York Times obituary is here. Alas, it neglects to mention this Carol Burnett Show sketch, the funniest ever telecast on a variety show. I saw it as a boy and never forgot it.

My summer travels for The Wall Street Journal have now begun in earnest. In today’s drama column I review two regional-theater revivals, the Huntington Theatre Company’s She Loves Me in Boston and Hartford Stage’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore in Hartford, Connecticut. Both are of excellent quality, but The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore is strictly for Tennessee Williams fans. Here’s an excerpt.
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What’s the best musical ever written? That depends on whether I saw “The Fantasticks,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Guys and Dolls,” “Gypsy,” “Kiss Me, Kate,” “On the Town” or “Sweeney Todd” last. But I’m never in doubt about my number-two choice: “She Loves Me” is the most sweetly romantic musical imaginable, the theatrical equivalent of a hot-fudge sundae with two spoons, and the Huntington Theatre Company’s new revival serves it up in a fancy dish. Smartly staged, attractively designed and well cast, this production is a great way to get to know a show beloved of musical-comedy buffs but inexplicably little known to the playgoing public at large….
Kate Baldwin, who was so memorable in the outstanding revival of “A Little Night Music” presented by Baltimore’s CenterStage earlier this season, is even better this time around as Amalia, the lovelorn clerk who doesn’t know that she’s fallen for one of her colleagues. Not only is she a fine actress, at once spirited and affecting, but she also has the vocal chops necessary to nail the high C in “Ice Cream” and make it stick….
I’ve never been able to get on Tennessee Williams’ wavelength, and if you share my disability, be warned that “The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore” probably won’t help you tune in. This 1963 play, which flopped twice in a row on Broadway, is one of Williams’ ripest exercises in southern-fried Gothicism, a parable about a rich, imperious and scared old lady with the improbable name of Flora Goforth (Olympia Dukakis) who is dictating her memoirs to an uptight Ivy League prig (Maggie Lacey) in a frantic attempt to set the record straight before she dies of cancer. Enter Chris (Kevin Anderson), a ne’er-do-well sculptor-poet who lives off rich, imperious and scared old ladies, then moves on as soon as they kick off. Is he a gigolo, a parasite, the Angel of Death or some combination of the above? Will he sleep with Flora’s secretary, thus awakening her stunted sexuality? Will Flora finish her book, coax her sculptor-poet into the sack and die happy? Yada yada yada yada yada, and then some….
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Read the whole thing here.

“I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”
Tennessee Williams (quoted in the New York Times, Mar. 18, 1965)