Archives for 2009

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:

• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Finian’s Rainbow (musical, G, suitable for children, dramatically inert but musically sumptuous, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, 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:

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

• The Emperor Jones (drama, PG-13, contains racially sensitive language, closes Jan. 31, reviewed here)

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

• The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Parts 1 and 2 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, will be performed in rotating repertory with third part of cycle starting on Jan. 7, closes Mar. 28, reviewed here and here)

• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Understudy (farce, PG-13, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, closes Jan. 10, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• Superior Donuts (dark comedy, PG-13, violence, reviewed here)

“The imprimatur of the experts turns pleasure into obligation.”
Gary Giddins, “Running for a Train: The General”

Mickey Spillane talks to the CBC about Mike Hammer in 1962:

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

“Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it’s a letdown, they won’t buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.”
Mickey Spillane (quoted in Jon Winokur, W.O.W.: Writers on Writing)

Three additional Pops-related bulletins:
• Frank Wilson, who blogs at Books, Inq., wrote a review of Pops for the Philadelphia Inquirer that I found immensely gratifying:

There probably is no such thing as a definitive biography of anyone, but Terry Teachout’s Pops is likely to remain indispensable to any and all seeking to understand trumpeter extraordinaire Louis Armstrong.
Teachout looks at the jazzman through the lens of his art, which provides the clearest view of the man, for if anyone ever lived by his art it was Armstrong. He may have been “deserted by his father when he was born, raised by a part-time prostitute, and sentenced at the age of eleven to the Colored Waif’s Home, an orphanage-like reform school” in New Orleans, but he ended up lying in state at the Seventh Avenue Armory on New York’s Park Avenue, where 25,000 people filed past his coffin.
The thread running through this “epic journey from squalor to immortality” is the music–and the marvel of Teachout’s book is the way in which his descriptions of that music illuminate the life….

By the way, I agree wholeheartedly with the first half of the first sentence.
• Flavorwire calls Pops “a stunning new portrait of one of America’s most familiar yet enigmatic figures.” My young friends say it’s a very hip place to be, so hooray for middle-aged me!
• I’m departing shortly for WOR’s studios to appear on Joey Reynolds’ WOR talk show at eleven p.m. ET. If you’re in the New York area, tune us in at 710 on your AM dial. If not, you can listen in streaming audio by going here.

I spend a lot of time living out of a suitcase in my capacity as drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, for which I review theatrical performances all over America. Cross-country travel can be grueling–especially now–and sometimes I wonder whether my regional reviews have any impact. The Kansas City Star published a story the other day that inspired me to stick to my last:

Kansas City Repertory Theatre received an early Christmas gift when Terry Teachout, drama critic for the Wall Street Journal, named the Rep’s production of “The Glass Menagerie” as one of the two best shows in the country in 2009.
The production, which opened at Copaken Stage almost a year ago, was directed by David Cromer and received across-the-board praise from critics and theatergoers. Teachout became the first New York critic to review a show at the Rep when he flew in to catch “Menagerie.”…
Eric Rosen, the Rep’s artistic director, said Teachout’s pick came as a total surprise.
“I had no idea,” Rosen said by telephone last weekend. “I just got off an airplane in California and had 30 e-mails about it. … It’s been an amazing 12 months for the Rep, and it’s a nice way to end the year.”…
The Rep’s board of trustees specifically charged Rosen with elevating the theater company’s national profile when he was hired. Between the transfer to New York of “Clay,” which opened the Rep’s 2008-09 season, the buzz surrounding the world premiere of “A Christmas Story, the Musical!” and Teachout’s laudatory words, nobody can say Rosen hasn’t delivered.
“I thought if we were lucky we’d be at this point three or four years from now,” he said. “I think it speaks well of our institution and our audience and the potential of the city that we’ve put the Rep on the map in a way. And it’s not just because I showed up.”…
As he put together the 2008-09 season, his first at the Rep, he said he had to do a bit of arm-twisting to get certain directors and designers to work in Kansas City.
“Now we’re getting calls from directors and agents wanting to develop work with us,” he said. “That was not true last year.”

It goes without saying that I have to write my share of bad reviews, but I live to see good shows and spread the word about them. That piece made me very, very proud.
To read the full story, go here.
To read my original Wall Street Journal review of the Kansas City Rep’s production of The Glass Menagerie, go here.

“‘I think,’ said Dame Maura, lifting her hands, ‘that Thomas Aquinas and Johann Sebastian Bach must occupy thrones side by side in heaven.’
“‘Handel?’ Cecily advanced timidly.
“‘Much lower down, with St. Bernard perhaps,’ said Dame Maura decidedly.”
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

The holiday hubbub surrounding Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong is subsiding at last, but the book continues to sell nicely and–almost as important–people continue to write about it, almost always with the utmost enthusiasm. Here are some recent links that will interest you if you’re interested in Pops:
• USA Today calls Pops “superb, clear and definitive.”
• The Associated Press calls it “magnificent.”
• The Christian Science Monitor calls it “informative and insightful.”
• City Journal calls it “luminous.”
• “When Terry Teachout writes something, you read it. And you are richly rewarded.” So says Jay Nordlinger apropos of Pops in National Review.
• Milt Rosenberg recently spoke to me about Pops on WGN’s Extension 720, his Chicago radio show. To download a podcast of the interview, go here.
Finally, two reminders about upcoming in-person appearances: I’ll be talking about, reading from, and signing copies of Pops at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., at seven p.m. on Thursday, January 7. For more information, go here.
I’ll also be doing a star turn at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens on Saturday, January 9. Admission is free, but reservations are essential for this afternoon event, which also includes a guided tour of the house where Armstrong lived. For more information, go here.