Archives for September 2013

Walker Percy talks about alienation in a 1986 interview:

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

“Be scared. You can’t help that. But don’t be afraid. Ain’t nothing in the woods going to hurt you unless you corner it, or it smells that you are afraid. A bear or a deer, too, has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave man has got to be.”
William Faulkner, “The Bear”

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on two New York productions, the new Broadway staging of Romeo and Juliet and an off-off-Broadway version of Don Juan in Hell. One is much better than the other. Here’s an excerpt.
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Shakespeare on Broadway is always a risky proposition, both financially and artistically. Even “Romeo and Juliet,” which is as safe as it gets, hasn’t been seen there for a quarter-century. Nor is David Leveaux a particularly safe proposition: Of the 11 shows he’s previously directed on Broadway, only one, the 2004 revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” was a hit. So it makes sense that he should have taken out an expensive piece of flop insurance for his new production of “R & J.” Orlando Bloom, the Romeo, is a movie star best known to American audiences for his appearances in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, and Mr. Leveaux has given him a cheer-for-the-star entrance: He rides a motorcycle onstage and pulls off his helmet, resulting in squeals from all the susceptible girls in the audience.
Would that Mr. Bloom’s big entrance led to something interesting, but this “R & J” is a slick, weightless assemblage of modern-dress trickery (Romeo wears a hoodie and jeans) whose conception is as stale as its been-there-seen-that décor and TV-movie music….
To put the emphasis on youth is a perfectly honorable way to stage “Romeo and Juliet.” I’ve seen many regional productions of the play that went out of their way to do so, often to exciting effect. Part of the problem here is that Mr. Bloom is a decade older than Condola Rashad, his 26-year-old Juliet, and looks every day of it. Most of the rest of the problem arises from the regrettable fact that neither Mr. Bloom nor Ms. Rashad has ever acted in a Shakespeare play. Broadway is not the place to make your debut as a classical actor, and Mr. Bloom turns in an energetic but emotionally unvaried performance in which he gives the impression of squeezing expression out of a tube instead of finding it in his lines….
In 1949 Charles Laughton made a tidy bundle by presenting “Don Juan in Hell,” the 90-minute-long central sequence of George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman,” as a dramatic reading performed on a bare stage by four big-name actors in evening dress (Mr. Laughton’s colleagues on that celebrated occasion were Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead). Since then it’s become fairly common to see “Don Juan in Hell” performed in this frugal manner, but I’ve never seen it done separate from “Man and Superman” in a fully staged production. Hence the inherent interest of the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble’s modern-dress version, directed by Karen Case Cook, in which Shaw’s wordy but magnetically involving discussion of the meaning of life unfolds in a tiny theater on an abstract set designed by Tsubasa and Jennifer Stimple Kamei that looks like a piece of Asian installation art.
Accompanied by the eerie, perfectly timed electronic music of Ellen Mandel, Ms. Cook’s “Don Juan in Hell” comes across as a full-blooded drama, not a debate. The staging, in which Shaw’s characters are aware of and play directly to the audience, adds focus and emphasis to the proceedings…
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Read the whole thing here.
The opening scene of Charles Laughton’s production of Don Juan in Hell, recorded by Columbia in 1952:

“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.”
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

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:

• Annie (musical, G, closing Jan. 5, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, nearly 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)

IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:

• Major Barbara (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 19, reviewed here)

• Our Betters (comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 27, reviewed here)

IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• My Fair Lady (musical, G, closes Nov. 3, reviewed here)

IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 20, reviewed here)

• Dickens in America (one-man play, G, too demanding for small children, closes Oct. 19, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 4, reviewed here)

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 5, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:

• Faith Healer (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, closes Oct. 9, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Old Friends (drama, PG-13, extended through Oct. 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN OGUNQUIT, MAINE:

• West Side Story (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• All My Sons (drama, G, too grim for most children, reviewed here)

‘Tis pleasant, sure, to see one’s name in print;


A book’s a book, although there’s nothing in’t.

Lord Byron, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers

I woke up this morning, logged on, and discovered that Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington made the National Book Awards longlist for nonfiction. This is the first time that any book of mine has received anything like that kind of recognition–and of the ten books on the list, Duke is the only one about the arts.
The finalists will be announced on October 16. To find out more about the nonfiction award, including the names of the other books on the list, go here.

Igor Stravinsky records his L’histoire du soldat suite in 1954. The players are Alexander Schneider, Julius Levine, David Oppenheim, Loren Glickman, Robert Nagel, Erwin Price, and Alfred Howard:

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