Archives for May 21, 2009

I know my limits, and I reached them on Monday and acted accordingly. Instead of driving around Dallas in search of cultural experiences and/or barbecue, I spent the day in my hotel room, emerging only to eat breakfast, visit the fitness center, and go to Theatre Three that evening to see the rare revival of Lost in the Stars, Kurt Weill’s musical version of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, that had brought me to town. The fact that it was Monday, meaning that the museums were closed, prevented me from zooming off to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, which I would doubtless have felt obliged to do on any other day of the week.
On Tuesday I behaved only slightly less prudently, flying to Kansas City in the morning and going straight from the airport to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which is in the same neighborhood as my hotel and the theater where the Kansas City Repertory Theatre is performing David Ives’ new version of Georges Feydeau’s A Flea in Her Ear. My plan was to visit the museum just long enough to get a look at the exhibition of American art on paper that went up last month. Alas, nobody told me that the Nelson-Atkins is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays! Fortuitously stymied, I drove to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon on my back, giving myself just enough time to dine at Winstead’s before reporting to the theater at six-forty-five.
Yesterday was…well, let’s just say it was long. Or maybe looong would be a better way to put it. I got up in the morning, wrote and filed my Friday drama column for The Wall Street Journal, then drove three hundred and seventy-nine miles to Smalltown, U.S.A., where my mother was standing in the doorway, beaming like a searchlight.
Yes, I have a couple of reviews to write while I’m here, but insofar as it’s possible for me to drop the reins, I plan to do so between now and next Tuesday, when I fly back to Washington, D.C., to see Design for Living. Pops is finished and The Letter out of my hands, both of which should make it easier for me to relax. I promised my mother that I’d take her on a picnic, and I promised Mrs. T that I’d sleep late every day. Never let it be said that I’m not a man of my word!
(To be continued)

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)

• Exit the King (disturbingly black comedy, PG-13, closes June 14, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage * (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 19, reviewed here)

• Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (drama, PG-13, some adult subject matter, accessible to adolescents with mature attention spans, closes June 14, reviewed here)

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

• Mary Stuart (drama, G, far too long and complicated for children, closes Aug. 16, reviewed here)

• The Norman Conquests * (three related comedies, PG-13, comprehensively unsuitable for children, playing in repertory through July 25, reviewed here)

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

• Waiting for Godot * (drama, PG-13, accessible to intelligent and open-minded adolescents, closes July 12, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

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

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

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes June 28, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• The History Boys (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, too intellectually complex for most adolescents, closes Aug. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO

• Old Times (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes May 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN ARLINGTON, VA.:

• Giant (musical, PG-13, far too long for children, closes May 31, reviewed here)

GUILDENSTERN: You!–What do you know about death?
PLAYER KING: It’s what the actors do best. They have to exploit whatever talent is given to them, and their talent is dying. They can die heroically, comically, ironically, slowly, suddenly, disgustingly, charmingly, or from a great height. My own talent is more general. I extract significance from melodrama, a significance which it does not in fact contain; but occasionally, from out of this matter, there escapes a thin beam of light that, seen at the right angle, can crack the shell of mortality.
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead