Archives for October 2012

“The bottom line is heaven.”
Edwin H. Land (quoted in Christopher Bonanos, Instant: The Story of Polaroid)

It’s been an impossibly complicated year for Mrs. T and me, good and bad in near-equal measure, and it’s far from over. Not only will Satchmo at the Waldorf be transferring to Philadelphia in November, five days after it closes in New Haven, but I have to push my Duke Ellington biography all the way to the finish line. This would be tough enough even if I weren’t simultaneously holding down a day job, but regardless of whatever else may be happening in my life, The Wall Street Journal expects me to file six columns a month, just like clockwork. Granted that these are all nice problems to have, they’re still problems.

I finally figured out somewhere along the way that if we didn’t take two- and three-day holidays wherever we could fit them in, we wouldn’t get any time off at all. So, seeing as how Broadway is about to get unusually busy, we seized our last opportunity to fly the coop last Sunday, threw a couple of suitcases in the trunk, and headed west to a pair of much-loved haunts.

Back in the days when I was vacationing alone, I paid my first visit to a comfy inn on the Delaware River to which I’ve been faithfully returning ever since. A few years ago I brought Mrs. T to Bridgeton House, with which she immediately fell in love. Because Bridgeton House is as quiet and romantic a place as you could ask for, it didn’t take much persuading to get her to return with me a week ago. We spent two nights there, and though the weather during our stay was mostly gray and rainy, it didn’t matter in the least, for we were more than content to sit on the balcony and enjoy the view. We took our evening meals at a pair of equally familiar restaurants, Milford Oyster House and Marsha Brown, and were no less pleased to do so.

Come Wednesday we drove up the river to Ecce Bed and Breakfast, a retreat in the southern Catskills that I discovered a few months after my first trip to Bridgeton House. Ecce is, if anything, an even more important part of my life with Mrs. T, for we spent part of our honeymoon there, and since then we’ve made a special point of going back at least once a year. If you’re a longtime reader of this blog, you’ll already know about Ecce, a stylishly decorated five-bedroom inn that is perched on the edge of a high bluff overlooking the Delaware River. Even if it had nothing but a staggering view to offer, Ecce would be well suited to the purposes of relaxation, but the lovely rooms, the extravagant breakfasts, and–best of all–the infinite kindness and consideration of Alan Rosenblatt and Kurt Kreider, the owners and hosts, make it perfect for urban escapees who’ve had too much to do and urgently need to spend a couple of restorative days doing nothing at all.

Work, of course, is with me wherever I go, but Ecce, the only B&B I know in which a signed Al Hirschfeld lithograph of Carol Channing hangs in the upstairs hall, is a fine place for a drama critic to write whatever he may have to write. I filed last Friday’s Wall Street Journal review of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? from our bedroom, after which we went to Henning’s Local and ate the best trout dinner I’ve ever had. Otherwise we passed the time by gazing at the glorious autumn leaves and marveling at the good fortune that brought us together and makes it possible for us to stay–if never often enough–at Ecce and Bridgeton House.

Our little holiday ended too soon, as holidays always do. Come Thursday night we were back home in Connecticut. Two days later we drove down to Manhattan, where we saw a Brian Friel play with Our Girl in Chicago, who is in New York on business and accepted our invitation to spend the weekend at our place. After that I hurled myself back into the daily grind. I’ll be writing three pieces and seeing a show between now and Friday, and by then it’ll seem as though I’d never been away. All things must pass, pleasure very much included.

Even so, the words that I put in the mouth of Louis Armstrong in the last scene of Satchmo at the Waldorf may be worth recalling in this connection:

I had me a beautiful life. Even growing up poor. Didn’t like all of it–how could I? But I always look forward. Always say, “Let’s head for the next town, play the next show, something better gonna be right up ahead.” And it always was.

I feel the same way. Like Pops, I always look forward, hopeful that something better will be up around the bend–and it always has been, even after the darkest of passages through the pandemonium that is life. May it remain so.

Percy Grainger plays his own arrangement for solo piano of Charles Villiers Stanford’s setting of the Irish folk song “Maguire’s Kick”:

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

“I believe that any proper writer ought to be able to write anything, from an Easter Day sermon to a sheep-dip handout.”
Kingsley Amis, “Writing for a TV Series”

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted in its entirety to the fiftieth-anniversary Broadway revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Fifty years, Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” shocked theatergoers–but it also titillated them. Never before had Broadway seen a play that was so sexually frank, or one whose language was so coarse (even if it never got much rougher than “Screw you!”). Even more astonishing was the fact that these onstage shenanigans were enacted not by Stanley Kowalski and his beer-swilling New Orleans buddies but by a quartet of middle-class college-town types. Is it any wonder that thrill-seeking New Yorkers spent a year and a half lining up at the box office to see George, Martha, Nick and Honey joking about faculty bed-swapping while drinking themselves into a group stupor?
Nowadays, of course, it takes a lot more than that to raise an eyebrow, whether on Broadway or anywhere else. Even after Mr. Albee upped the ante by adding full-fledged four-letter words for the play’s 2005 Broadway revival, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” had long since been relegated to weak-tea status by David Mamet, Martin Scorsese and “The Sopranos.” If mere titillation is what you crave, it isn’t necessary to fork out three figures for an orchestra seat–just tune in “Jersey Shore.” But if you want to be shocked all the way down to the marrow, “Virginia Woolf” can still do the job, as Steppenwolf Theatre Company proves with its cruelly potent production, which has just moved to Broadway after successful runs in Chicago and Washington, D.C. It is, like Mike Nichols’ staging of “Death of a Salesman,” a revival that peels away the years and makes a well-worn play seem not just fresh, but as immediate as a police blotter.
When I saw “Virginia Woolf” in Chicago two years ago, I was struck most forcibly by the acting. It’s just as good now as it was then, so suffice it to say that Tracy Letts (of “August: Osage County” fame), Amy Morton, Madison Dirks and Carrie Coon are all giving utterly individual and memorable performances (especially Mr. Letts, who is at least as impressive as Arthur Hill, who created the role of George in 1962 and who subsequently documented his performance in an original-cast recording, which is how I know of it).
This time around, though, Pam MacKinnon, the director, deserves a solo turn in the spotlight. Ms. MacKinnon serves the texts of the plays that she stages so faithfully that it’s easy to underestimate the clean-lined certainty of her work. Her “Virginia Woolf” is so precisely gauged in both timing and tone that you’ll scarcely notice the moment at the end of the first act when comedy suddenly gives way to horror. It just happens, and all at once you realize that the frustrated, emasculated George, at whose bitchy quips the audience has hitherto been laughing merrily, is playing not for laughs but for blood….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
An excerpt from Steppenwolf’s revival of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?:

A scene from Mike Nichols’ 1966 film version, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal, and Sandy Dennis:

An excerpt from Columbia’s studio recording of the original 1962 production, starring Arthur Hill, Uta Hagen, George Grizzard, and Melinda Dillon:

“And the humourless man is in deadly danger, more than any other, of deluding himself.”
Richard Burton, diary entry, Dec. 2, 1968

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:

• Bring It On (musical, G, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, 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 Jan. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Marry Me a Little (musical, PG-13, closes Oct. 27, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:

• Misalliance (serious comedy, G/PG-13, far too talky for children, closes Oct. 27, reviewed here)

• Present Laughter (comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WISC.:

• Skylight (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Lovers (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)