Archives for December 2008

My drama column in this morning’s Wall Street Journal consists of a retrospective look at the best shows and performances that I reviewed in 2008. Regular readers of the Journal and this blog will recall the enthusiasm with which I traveled from coast to coast in search of good theater, and it was a pleasure to remember some of the exciting nights that I spent on the aisle–most of them, as it happens, out of town.
Some highlights:
• I chose the amazing Zoe Kazan, who spiced up Broadway with her performances in Come Back, Little Sheba and The Seagull, as the most promising young actor of 2008.
• Itamar Moses, author of Back Back Back and The Four of Us, was my pick for the year’s best young playwright.
• For me, the best Broadway shows of the year just past were an easy call: I went for Gypsy and Dividing the Estate.
• Writers’ Theatre, based in Glencoe, Illinois, was my pick for America’s best drama company in 2008, and its extraordinary revival of William Inge’s Picnic was my favorite show of the year.
Read the whole thing here–there’s much, much more….

“I never thought of anything but a long full life with my love, but a heavy foreboding hit me about two years into this planned bliss, when he said firmly that we must never go back to the fishing village where we had spent our first Christmas. And a cruel mixture of disbelief and sadness filled me as I came to understand how thoroughly and firmly he stood by his conviction, that if people know real happiness anywhere, they must never expect to find it there again.”
M.F.K. Fisher, afterword to The Sophisticated Traveler

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)

• Equus (drama, R, nudity and adult subject matter, closes Feb. 8, 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)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 11, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Boeing-Boeing (comedy, PG-13, cartoonishly sexy, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

• Dividing the Estate * (black comedy, G, far too serious for pre-teens, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

• Irving Berlin’s White Christmas * (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• My Vaudeville Man! (musical, G, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN MADISON, N.J.:

• The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, not suitable for small children, reviewed here)

Joy rises in me, like a summer’s morn.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “A Christmas Carol”

Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, “The Lord’s Bright Blessing” (from Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol):

Louis Armstrong recites Clement Moore’s “‘The Night Before Christmas,” recorded at his home in Queens on February 26, 1971:

Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat,

And therefore let’s be merry.

George Wither, “Poem on Christmas”

Mrs. T, my mother, and I spent three hours at the mall north of Smalltown doing next-to-last-minute Christmas shopping yesterday afternoon. It’s a good thing that we got it all done, because I went outside this morning, put one foot on the pavement, and flew through the air. Smalltown is covered with a sheet of ice. It took me a good five minutes to chip the stuff off our canary-yellow rental car, which looks like Tweety on steroids. Then I drove to the nearest Burger King–very slowly–to collect my e-mail. My MacBook doesn’t do dialup, my mother doesn’t have a computer, and there doesn’t seem to be anyone on her block with a wireless connection off which I can poach.
Our plan is to spend the rest of the day and evening off line, wrapping presents, eating whatever’s in the pantry, watching old movies, and being very, very glad to be together.
You do the same, O.K.?