Archives for 2010

“That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.”
Matthew Arnold, “A Word About America”

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)

• 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)

• The Grand Manner (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Aug. 1, reviewed here)

• The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Aug. 1, reviewed here)

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

IN ASHLAND, ORE.:

• 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)

IN GLENCOE, ILL.:

• A Streetcar Named Desire (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, extended through Aug. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

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

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

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

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

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

“Don’t forget the Western is not only the history of this country, it is what the Saga of the Nibelungen is for the European.”
Fritz Lang (quoted in Peter Bogdanovich, Fritz Lang in America)

A 1931 newsreel of George Gershwin playing “I Got Rhythm” at the old Manhattan Theater (now the Ed Sullivan Theater) in New York. This is the only surviving sound film of Gershwin at the piano:

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

“Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof.”
Mary McCarthy, “America the Beautiful”

Reading list for those attending the filmmaker’s Rogue Film School:

Required reading: Virgil’s “Georgics” and Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”. Suggested reading: The Warren Commission Report, Rabelais’ “Gargantua and Pantagruel”, “The Poetic Edda”, translated by Lee M. Hollander (in particular The Prophecy of the Seeress), Bernal Diaz del Castillo “True History of the Conquest of New Spain”.

Re-watching a couple of his documentaries over the weekend began thinking how it was too bad Herzog wasn’t tapped to create the Voyager’s message to aliens. One imagines a future army of extraterrestrials arriving on Earth speaking in Herzog: “What is this planet we find ourselves upon? Everything is pointing to a new world but we need to articulate what that might be…”

“America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.”
John Updike, Problems

Mrs. T and I are traveling today, but there’s lots of new stuff in the right-hand column, so take a gander. (Or a goose.)