Archives for January 4, 2013

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on the Florida Repertory Theatre’s revival of The Little Foxes. Here’s an excerpt.
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How good is “The Little Foxes”? It depends on what you’re comparing it to–and how well it’s done. Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play about a greedy small-town merchant family is neither subtle nor poetic, and if it’s performed in the manner of a hiss-the-villain melodrama, you’ll go home feeling as though you’d just spent two and a half hours in a dentist’s chair. But Ms. Hellman knew how to nail a plot together so tightly that the seams don’t show, as well as how to ring down a curtain so hard that the audience gasps. Of such talents are sure-fire plays made. Do “The Little Foxes” right and it can’t miss. The Florida Repertory Theatre is doing it very, very right, and the results are superlative.
You’ve probably seen “Foxes” at least once, either onstage or in William Wyler’s 1941 film version, so I’ll limit myself to saying that Regina Giddens (played here by Sara Morsey) is one of the nastiest pieces of work in the history of American theater, a woman so determined to best her brothers (Mark Chambers and Peter Thomasson) in a shady business deal that she’s more than happy to do it over her husband’s dead body. Regina is so despicable, in fact, that the key to making “The Little Foxes” work is to keep her awfulness under wraps for as long as possible. An exaggerated performance will sink the show, but Ms. Morsey is careful to carry herself in the genteel manner of a southern lady right up to the moment when she unsheathes her razor and starts slashing. You’ll definitely believe her when she tells Horace (Craig Bockhorn), her sickly husband, that “I hope you die soon. I’ll be waiting for you to die.”
Maureen Heffernan, the director, has previously worked wonders with Florida Rep’s productions of Brian Friel’s “Dancing at Lughnasa” and A.R. Gurney’s “Sylvia.” Hence it seems safe to say that she deserves much of the credit for steering Ms. Morsey away from the low road of premature overacting to which so many Reginas before her have succumbed. Here as before, Ms. Heffernan makes a point of not getting in between the play and the audience….
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Read the whole thing here.
A scene from the 1941 film version of The Little Foxes, with Bette Davis and Herbert Marshall as Regina and Horace Giddens:

Today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column is a paean to Donald Fagen and his new album, Sunken Condos. Here’s an excerpt.
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Consider, if it doesn’t embarrass you too much to do so, the rock music of the ’60s and ’70s. How much of it holds up today? I was raised on rock and took it with supreme seriousness, but most of the albums with which my high-school playlist was clotted now strike me as jejune at best, horrendous at worst. I don’t know about anybody else, but I haven’t been able to listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash or Jefferson Airplane for decades.
One of the reasons why so much first- and second-generation rock and roll has aged so badly is that most of it was created by young people for consumption by even younger people. And what’s wrong with that? Nothing–if you’re a teenager. But if you’re not, why would you want to listen to it now? And what has happened to its makers now that they’re over the demographic hill? Have they anything new to say to us, or are they simply going through the motions?
The Rolling Stones, who recently concluded their recent 50th-anniversary tour, can still play up a storm–but so what? When not recycling the hits of their long-lost youth, Sir Mick Jagger and his venerable colleagues trot out “new” songs that sound as though they’d been written in 1962.
Compare these two lyrics:
• “Everybody’s talking/Showing off their wit/The moon is yellow but I’m not Jello/Staring down your tits.”
• “We went to a party/Everybody stood around/Thinkin’: Hey what’s she doin’/With a burned-out hippie clown.”
The first quatrain is from “Oh No, Not You Again,” written by Mr. Jagger and Keith Richards and recorded by the Stones on “A Bigger Bang,” their most recent album, released in 2005. The second is from “Slinky Thing,” the first track on “Sunken Condos,” Donald Fagen’s new solo album, which came out in October. It’s a sly, ironic portrait of a Goethe-quoting sixtysomething gent who is dating a considerably younger woman, much to the sardonic amusement of her friends. And which song sounds fresher? “Slinky Thing,” by the longest of long shots….
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Read the whole thing here.
Donald Fagen plays “Weather in My Head,” a track from Sunken Condos, on Late Show with David Letterman:

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Thomas Mann, Essays of Three Decades