Archives for December 2008

In April Lincoln Center Theater will be presenting a Broadway revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, the first in more than two decades. The director will be Bartlett Sher–who is white. That fact is, not surprisingly, causing a stink, since the play has an all-black cast. One black stage director, Marion McClinton, has gone so far as to accuse Lincoln Center of “institutional racism.”
Naturally I took an interest in this story, being an admirer (albeit qualified) of Wilson’s plays and a generally enthusiastic but sometimes skeptical supporter of color-blind “non-traditional” casting. Hence my latest “Sightings” column, in which I take a closer look at the decision to hire Sher, along with the wider question of how best to present plays originally written for performance by an ethnically specific ensemble.
Will we be seeing Al Pacino in Fences any time soon? For the answer, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Wall Street Journal and give me a read.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.

“All works of art bear the artist’s signature. If there is no signature, there is no work of art. And by ‘art,’ I don’t mean only paintings, sculpture, films, plays: I mean anything in life that is done well and carefully. In my opinion, our age commits its greatest crime when it kills the author or makes him disappear. Before what we call progress, a man who made dishes was expressing his personality just as much as Picasso does in his paintings. Today this is no longer true.”
Jean Renoir (interviewed in Charles Thomas Samuels, Encountering Directors)

Seen on a bumper sticker: FREE THE BOUND PERIODICALS.

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)

• Gypsy (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 11, 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:

• Back Back Back (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 25, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

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

CLOSING SOON 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 IN MADISON, N.J.:

• The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, not suitable for small children, closes Dec. 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY OFF BROADWAY

• A Touch of the Poet (drama, PG-13, not suitable for children, reviewed here)

“Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells very much about him. Not very good things. He is completely infantile, and I would like to know more–no, I don’t want to know–about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women. But this picture is very interesting.”
Ingmar Bergman on Alfred Hitchcock (quoted in John Simon, Ingmar Bergman Directs)

Check out the top-five and “Out of the Past” modules of the right-hand column, where you’ll find lots of interesting new stuff–just in time for Christmas!

Ida Lupino sings “One for My Baby” and “Again” in Jean Negulesco’s Road House (1948):