Archives for June 2012

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two out-of-town shows, a Massachusetts revival of Fiddler on the Roof and the Chicago production of Freud’s Last Session. Here’s an excerpt.
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If it’s true–and it is–that they don’t make musicals the way they used to, then “Fiddler on the Roof” is the last of the indisputably classic Broadway musicals to have been made the old-fashioned way. The songs are memorable, the book soundly constructed, and Jerome Robbins’ dances, which are seen so often in modern-day revivals that they’ve come to be regarded as an inseparable part of “Fiddler,” blend local color with fresh choreographic invention to perennially pleasing effect.
Barrington Stage Company, which puts on some of the best musical-comedy productions to be seen in New England, set the bar high for its new “Fiddler” last summer when it mounted a “Guys and Dolls” that was superior in every way to the inept 2009 Broadway revival. This “Fiddler” isn’t that good–that would have taken a miracle of miracles–but it’s lively and satisfying.
Gary John La Rosa, the director and choreographer, has opted for a conventional approach to “Fiddler,” faithfully reproducing Robbins’s dances, which are executed with energy and precision. Every scene pays off, especially the first-act dream sequence, and Jack Mehler’s semi-abstract backdrops, in which the thatched roofs of the shtetl of Anatevka are strewn across the Russian sky like the flocks of birds that are seen in the paintings of Robert Goodnough, add a delicate touch of poetry to the proceedings….
Barrington Stage rang the cherries three years ago with “Freud’s Last Session,” the two-man play in which Mark St. Germain imagines what might have happened if Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis had met in London on the first day of World War II to wrangle over the question of God’s existence. The Off-Broadway production of Mr. St. Germain’s witty play, which opened in 2010, is still going strong, and “Freud’s Last Session” is now being mounted by theaters across the country…
The long-running Chicago version of “Freud’s Last Session,” directed by Tyler Marchant, is an exact reproduction of Mr. Marchant’s excellent Off-Broadway staging, right down to Brian Prather’s meticulous rendering of Freud’s London consulting room. What’s new about it is Mike Nussbaum, the dean of Chicago actors, who is now playing the part of Freud. Mr. Nussbaum is 88 years old, though you wouldn’t guess it to look at him. I’ve seen him onstage many times–his ferociously smug Shylock in Barbara Gaines’ 2005 “Merchant of Venice” at Chicago Shakespeare is deeply etched in my memory–but Mr. St. Germain’s Freud could have been written for Mr. Nussbaum, and his performance would make him a shoo-in for a Tony were he giving it on Broadway. He starts out calm and centered, a gray-bearded stoic who has gazed unflinchingly into the abyss. Only gradually does the intense physical pain from which Freud suffered manifest itself, but when it does, you’ll shiver in your seat at the sight of a sick, weary old man who has nothing to look forward to but death….
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Read the whole thing here.
An excerpt from the Chicago production of Freud’s Last Session:

“Extremes meet, and there is no better example than the haughtiness of humility.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims

Just because I’m up at the MacDowell Colony to work on my Duke Ellington book doesn’t mean that I’m not thinking about Satchmo at the Waldorf. On Tuesday I e-mailed the final pre-rehearsal version of the script to John Douglas Thompson, Gordon Edelstein, and my other collaborators. This is the version that John will present as a one-night-only staged reading at the Vineyard Playhouse on July 9. Alas, I can’t be there, but I’m excited anyway.
I’m also extremely pleased to report that John is on the cover of the July/August issue of American Theatre. The accompanying article, by Rob Weinert-Kendt, is as good as it could possibly be. Would that Rob’s piece were available on line, but at least you can gaze at the cover photo, which shows John in costume as Louis Armstrong. Wow, huh?
In case it’s slipped your mind, we open at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, on August 22, and at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, on October 10 (with previews starting on October 3). See you there, I hope.

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 Aug. 5, reviewed here)

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

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

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, 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)

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

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• Floyd Collins (musical, G, very problematic for children, closes July 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PASADENA, CALIF.:

• Jitney (drama, PG-13, transfer of South Coast Repertory revival, closes July 15, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• The Columnist (drama, PG-13/R, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

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

• Man and Superman (serious comedy, G, far too long and complex for children of any age, reviewed here)

• Storefront Church (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“If it is abuse, why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned good-natured friend or another.”
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, The Critic

Mabel Mercer sings “Lazy Afternoon” on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood:

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

“What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.”
George Bernard Shaw, John Bull’s Other Island

From 2003:

I belong to the last generation to have grown up without VCRs. Born in 1956, I was raised in a small town that had one movie theater. The only “arty” films I saw in high school were 2001: A Space Odyssey and Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet. The nearest public TV station was in St. Louis, just beyond the range of our rooftop antenna–this was before the invention of cable TV–so it wasn’t until I left home to go to college that I saw any old movies other than an occasional Saturday-afternoon John Wayne….

Read the whole thing here.