Archives for August 2008

“The stars are the apexes of what triangles!”
Henry David Thoreau, Journals (Oct. 5, 1847)

Today’s entire Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted to a review of the New York revival of Hair. Here’s an excerpt.
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The gray-ponytail set is turning out in force to see the Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park revival of “Hair,” the peace-love-and-dope musical that transferred to Broadway 40 years ago, ran for 1,750 performances and sent convulsions through the theatrical establishment whose ripples can be felt to this day. “Hair” was one of the first shows to feature a rock score, and though it didn’t win the best-musical Tony–the top honors that year went to “1776,” a world-class irony–Galt MacDermot’s music was the thin end of the wedge that ultimately opened up Broadway to the music of the baby boomers and their children. Small wonder that this production, the first major New York revival of “Hair” since 1977, should be causing such a fuss in the Year of Obamamania. If you were a 20-year-old hippie in 1968, it must be quite a thrill to watch a bunch of pretty kids onstage in Central Park celebrating yourself when young….
So how does “Hair” look 40 years on? Pretty thin, alas, though the damn-the-torpedoes staging and choreography of Diane Paulus and Karole Armitage and the impassioned singing and dancing of the cast (Caren Lyn Manuel and Patina Renea Miller are especially good) succeed in making it seem marginally fresher than it really is. Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s artistic director, has written yet another of his eye-rollingly fatuous program notes, this one assuring us that “Hair” was “a contemporary play influenced by the sweep and scale of Shakespearean dramaturgy.” The truth is that “Hair” was and is a poorly crafted revue whose second act disintegrates before your eyes. James Rado and Gerome Ragni, who collaborated on the book and lyrics, didn’t know the first thing about how to write a musical, and their idea of scintillating wit was to rhyme “pederasty” with “Why do these words sound so nasty?”
Even Mr. MacDermot’s music, the show’s only remaining claim to distinction, is no better than catchy. Lest we forget, 1968 was the year of “Beggar’s Banquet,” “Crown of Creation,” “Electric Ladyland,” “Music from Big Pink,” “Wheels of Fire,” and any number of other now-classic rock albums that make “Hair” sound like a medley of AM-radio jingles….
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Read the whole thing here.

“On the stage one must not confuse the nature of a personality with the naturalness of a person.”
Karl Kraus, Beim Wort genommen (trans. Harry Zohn)

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) 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:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County * (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

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

• Boeing-Boeing * (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, reviewed here)

• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN LENOX, MASS:

• Othello/All’s Well That Ends Well/The Ladies Man (Shakespeare/Feydeau, PG-13, not suitable for children, playing in festival repertory through Aug. 31, reviewed here)

IN GARRISON, N.Y.:

• Cymbeline/Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, PG-13, playing in festival repertory through Aug. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• A Chorus Line * (musical, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Aug. 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN SAN DIEGO:

• The Pleasure of His Company (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,

The exuberant voices of music,

Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness

That makes beauty; the mind

Knows, grown adult.

Robinson Jeffers, “Boats in a Fog”

Orson Welles reads the opening section of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“All truth is profound.”
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick