Archives for October 2010

“There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what untrained eyes consider abominable.”
Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, journal entry, Feb. 17, 1859

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:

• Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (musical, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

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

• Fela! (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• A Life in the Theatre (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

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

• The Pitmen Painters (serious comedy, G, too demanding for children, closes Dec. 12, 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)

IN CHICAGO:

• Night and Day (serious comedy, PG-13, extended through Nov. 14, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Little Foxes (drama, G, unsuitable for children, brilliantly acted but tritely staged, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 30, reviewed here)

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, violence and adult subject matter, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

• She Loves Me (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, closes Oct. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CLEVELAND:

• Othello (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

• An Ideal Husband (comedy, G, too complicated for children, closes Oct. 30, reviewed here)

“Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone’s finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?”
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

Dmitri Shostakovich plays an excerpt from the finale of his First Piano Concerto, filmed circa 1940:

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

“She can only believe I am serious in her own fashion of being serious: as an antic sort of seriousness, which is not seriousness at all but despair masquerading as seriousness.”
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli plays the slow movement of Ravel’s G Major Piano Concerto in 1982, accompanied by Sergiu Celibidache and the London Symphony:

“You can still get all A’s and flunk life.”
Walker Percy, The Second Coming