Archives for August 2009

“The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one’s office for a job.”
Tennessee Williams (quoted in Kenneth Tynan, Profiles)

Les Paul and Mary Ford appear on CBS’ Omnibus on October 23, 1953, to explain multitrack recording. The host is Alistair Cooke:

Paul’s New York Times obit is here.

Massachusetts in a nutshell: two towns, two shows, two days. Today I write and file Friday’s Wall Street Journal drama column, eat breakfast, check out of my home away from home in Lenox, then drive back to Connecticut and Mrs. T.
I’m still too tired from my opera-related adventures to do much more than stick to the schedule, but on Wednesday I managed to work in a side trip to the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, where I saw Dove/O’Keeffe: Circles of Influence. I like Georgia O’Keeffe well enough and love Arthur Dove passionately, and nothing I saw at the Clark caused me to modify either of those opinions. (O’Keeffe’s paintings are too pretty for my taste.) Most of the Doves on display at the Clark are a bit less than his best, but “Fog Horns” is a masterpiece of synesthesia, and I fiercely coveted a triptych of tiny gouaches dating from the early Forties.
I also took a brisk stroll through the Clark’s permanent collection, which I find pleasing but not especially exciting, though it contains one show-stopper, Turner’s “Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water.” This is a painting worth seeing as often as possible, and since I generally make it up to Williamstown once a year, that’s about how often I see it. The older I get, the more intensely Turner delights me, which undoubtedly says more about me than it does about him.
I also got my first look at “Sleigh Ride,” a well-known painting by Winslow Homer that for some reason had previously escaped my attention. I can’t think why–it has an arrestingly modern quality of the kind that rarely fails to catch my eye. All I can tell you is that it leaped off the wall at me yesterday morning, and that I’m still thinking about it as I write these words.
Would that I had more to report about my two-day stay in Massachusetts, but you’ll have to look at tomorrow’s drama column to see what I thought of Twelfth Night and A Streetcar Named Desire, and beyond that I didn’t contrive to cram in any additional art-related experiences. Man cannot live by beauty alone. Sometimes he needs to sleep late.

“Lord Acton stopped on a half truth; and that, the less important half. Power corrupts all right. If you have enough of it, it may, in the end, absolutely corrupt you; but you only need the least little bit, a modicum of power, the power of a staff officer, to do a good job corrupting other people.”
James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor

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)

• Avenue Q * (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, closes Sept. 13, 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)

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

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes Sept. 6, reviewed here)

IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• The Music Man (musical, G, very child-friendly, closes Nov. 1, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• The History Boys (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, too intellectually complex for most adolescents, closes Sept. 27, reviewed here)

IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:

• Camelot (musical, G, closes Sept. 19, reviewed here)

IN GARRISON, N.Y.:

• Pericles and Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare, PG-13, playing in repertory through Sept. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, closes Aug. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN WESTPORT, CONN.:

• How the Other Half Loves (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

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

The opening scene of Tom Stoppard’s 1990 film version of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Stoppard and starring Gary Oldman and Tim Roth:

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

“There never could be a man so brave that he would not sometime, or in the end, turn part or all coward; or so wise that he was not, from beginning to end, part ass if you knew where to look; or so good that nothing at all about him was despicable.”
James Gould Cozzens, Guard of Honor