Archives for December 2011

“Biographies grasp the exteriors of lives and give what account they can of their interiors. These can be wholly different realities.”
Guy Davenport, “Ruskin”

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.

BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Apr. 29, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Chinglish (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 29, reviewed here)

• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 22, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Seminar (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 4, reviewed here)

• Stick Fly (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• 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)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cherry Orchard (drama, G, too serious for children, extended through Jan. 8, reviewed here)

• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, closes Jan. 15, reviewed here)

• Neighbourhood Watch (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 1, reviewed here)

GOING ON HIATUS ON BROADWAY:

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes Sunday and reopens Feb. 17, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Krapp’s Last Tape (drama, PG-13, absolutely not suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

“Just how difficult it is to write a biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the truth about his or her love affairs.”
Rebecca West (quoted in Vogue, Nov. 1, 1952)

This is a lovely place to be on a Wednesday morning–especially after having eaten a perfect breakfast in front of a roaring fire:

Next stop, Gypsy!

Sean Prpick, a producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, came to my apartment earlier this year to interview me at length for a CBC radio documentary about Louis Armstrong. The program, Sean told me, would be based on the private tape recordings that Armstrong made in the last quarter-century of his life, hundreds of which are now on deposit at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens and served as unique and indispensable primary sources for Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, my 2009 Armstrong biography, and Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man play about Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his manager.
Few of these tapes–some of which are astonishingly, even shockingly candid–have been heard by the general public, and I was curious to see what the CBC would do with them. The answer came on Sunday when “Louis Armstrong: Real to Reel” aired throughout Canada. Not only was it a first-rate piece of work, but the excerpts from Armstrong’s tapes that were heard during the program were, to put it very mildly, uncensored.
You can now listen to “Real to Reel” on your computer by going here, and I strongly recommend that you do so. If you read Pops or saw Satchmo at the Waldorf and found yourself wondering what Louis Armstrong really sounded like in private, click on the link and you’ll find out.

Peter Pears and Benjamin Britten perform Britten’s arrangements of Purcell’s “I attempt from Love’s sickness to fly” and “Man is for the woman made” in Tokyo in 1956:

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

“Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”
Benjamin Disraeli, Contarini Fleming

Some things you don’t get over. My old friend Nancy LaMott died sixteen years ago today. That’s a long time, yet I still feel a pang of unappeasable sorrow whenever I think of her, and in particular of her painful last days, which she faced with uncommon courage.
Not surprisingly, I prefer to remember the happy days of our brief acquaintance, for it was full of warmth and laughter. Though we only knew one another for the year and a half before she died, I’ve never felt closer to a friend. She was a great artist and a dear person whom I loved with all my heart.
This is something that I wrote about Nancy for The Wall Street Journal in 2005. I still feel the same way, and always will.
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Nancy LaMott sings “Moon River” in 1995, nine days before her death, with Christopher Marlowe at the piano: