Archives for June 2010

In case you’re wondering why there’s no Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser today, the reason is both simple and benign: I’m still on my much-needed vacation.
I’ll be doing business at the same old stand next week. See you then!

“A Dickens character to me is a theatrical projection of a character. Not that it isn’t real. It’s real, but in that removed sense. But Sherlock Holmes is simply there. I would be astonished if I went to 221B Baker Street and didn’t find him.”
Rex Stout (quoted in Mark Van Doren, The New Invitation to Learning: The Essence of the Great Books of All Times)

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:

• La Cage aux Folles * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

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

• Fences * (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes July 11, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

• South Pacific (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, closes Aug. 22, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, original Broadway production reviewed here)

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

• 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)

• That Face (drama, PG-13, not suitable for children, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• The Farnsworth Invention (drama, G, too complicated for children, closes July 24, reviewed here)

• Killer Joe (black comedy-drama, X, extreme violence and nudity, closes July 18, reviewed here)

IN GLENCOE, ILL.:

• A Streetcar Named Desire (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Glass Menagerie (drama, G, too dark for children, closes June 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO:

• The Taming of the Shrew (Shakespeare/Neil LaBute, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• A Behanding in Spokane (black comedy, PG-13, violence and adult subject matter, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Doctor Knock, or The Triumph of Medicine (satire, G, not easily accessible to children, reviewed here)

“You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do–and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time. A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself. ”
Ray Bradbury, interviewed by Sam Weller (The Paris Review, Spring 2010, courtesy of Parabasis)

The Count Basie Orchestra plays “Dance of the Gremlins” and “Swingin’ the Blues” in 1941, with Don Byas on tenor, Harry Edison on trumpet, and Jo Jones on drums:

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

“There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby