Archives for May 2012

John Douglas Thompson is appearing alongside Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy in the Goodman Theatre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Needless to say, I couldn’t mention his performance in my Wall Street Journal review of the show because he will also be starring in Shakespeare & Company’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, later this summer.
For this reason, I thought I’d let you know what Charles Isherwood had to say about John in today’s New York Times:
“The great actor John Douglas Thompson, known in New York for his Othello and Macbeth as well as his stunning performance in O’Neill’s ‘Emperor Jones,’ creates yet another indelible portrait in Joe Mott, the former owner of a gambling house whose gentle good humor masks a volcanic rage at a life warped by racism. Pacing like a caged animal in response to Hickey’s needling presence, Joe erupts into near violence with a force that scalds….”

“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

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 Sept. 9, reviewed here)

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes July 1, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Columnist (drama, PG-13/R, closes June 24, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, unsuitable for children, all performances sold out last week, closes June 2, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, 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)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 17, 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)

• 4000 Miles (drama, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

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

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, closes June 3, reviewed here)

IN EVANSTON, ILL.:

• After the Revolution (drama, PG-13, closes May 19, reviewed here)

IN LOS ANGELES:

• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, transfer of Kennedy Center/Broadway revival, closes June 9, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• Saint Joan (drama, G/PG-13, unsuitable for children, closes May 13, reviewed here)

“The compensation of a very early success is a conviction that life is a romantic matter. In the best sense one stays young.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

I’m filing two Wall Street Journal drama columns from Chicago this week. In today’s paper, I report on the Court Theatre’s revival of Angels in America and Next Theatre Company’s production of Amy Herzog’s After the Revolution, in both cases with high enthusiasm. Here’s an excerpt.
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Like it or not, Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” is a landmark of postwar American theater. Opportunities to see it onstage are sufficiently rare that they should be seized with alacrity–especially in the case of the Court Theatre’s new production, which is a landmark in its own right. Charles Newell, the Court’s artistic director, has a knack for creating tightly focused small-scale productions of such sprawling works as “Porgy and Bess.” His galvanically staged version of “Angels in America” is very much in the same vein. Performed in the company’s 250-seat thrust-stage house, it puts Mr. Kushner’s desperate characters so close to the audience that their fear and trembling becomes as immediate as a whispered confession.
No small part of the credit for the potency of this production belongs to John Culbert, the scenic designer, who has shunned hospital-room naturalism in favor of an aggressively simple unit set (the centerpiece is a catafalque-like platform, the backdrop a grid of girders) that seems to float in the midst of infinite space. The sound design, by Joshua Horvath and Kevin O’Donnell, heightens to an alarming degree the atmosphere of encroaching disaster. Everything else is left to the imagination–and to Mr. Newell’s cast, led by Larry Yando as Roy Cohn. By turns horrifically gleeful and unexpectedly vulnerable, Mr. Yando’s Cohn steers clear of caricature, thus mitigating Mr. Kushner’s tendency to demonize his villains….
What would you do if you found out that your grandfather had been a Soviet agent–and that your family had lied to you about it? In “After the Revolution,” the 2010 “prequel” to “4000 Miles,” Amy Herzog asks this question, and the answer she gives, although fictionalized, is intensely personal. That stands to reason, since something closely similar happened to Ms. Herzog, whose grandfather was revealed in 2000 to have spied for the Russians during World War II.
Ms. Herzog has turned this harrowing experience into an incisive, impressively honest play about life in a red-diaper family. As in “4000 Miles,” which is playing at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater through June 17, she manages with near-miraculous skill to embed personal drama in a political framework, adding sparkle to the action with deft touches of satire….
This staging, finely directed by Kimberly Senior, features a letter-perfect performance by Christine Stulik as Emma Joseph, the starchily self-righteous young political activist who is jolted to the marrow when she learns the ugly truth about her grandfather….
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Read the whole thing here.

Charles and Ray Eames are interviewed by Arlene Francis on NBC’s Home in 1956:

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

“The secret of success is never believing you are successful.”
Jeffrey Archer (quoted in Martyn Lewis, Reflections on Success)