Archives for October 2013

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, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

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

• The Winslow Boy (drama, G, too complicated for children, closes Dec. 2, 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)

• Fun Home (musical, PG-13, unsuitable for children, extended through Dec. 1, reviewed here)

• Juno and the Paycock (drama, G/PG-13, far too dark for children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• My Fair Lady (musical, G, reviewed here)

“Biography makes sense of art.”
Wesley Stace, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

Duke Ellington performs “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be,” with Johnny Hodges on alto saxophone:

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

“It is exciting to be considered a promising young composer, and I will try to honour this honour by also being thought of, in the future, as an old composer, one whose work is out of date, one whose moment has passed. The sooner that happens, the more radical will my achievement have been.”
Wesley Stace, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

I continue my string of Duke-related public appearances on Tuesday with a visit to the Philadelphia Free Library, where I’ll be talking about and signing copies of my Duke Ellington biography. The address is 1901 Vine Street and the festivities start at 7:30 sharp.
For more information, go here.
I’ll also be talking about Duke this morning at eleven a.m. ET on “Radio Times,” broadcast over Philadelphia’s WHYY-FM.
For more information about this show, or to listen on line in streaming audio, go here.
UPDATE: My Radio Times interview has now been archived. You can listen to it by going here.

From 2003:

I wrote earlier today, apropos of The Turn of the Screw, that “all good adaptations” of pre-existing works of art are “fairly free.” Alas, John Huston’s film of The Maltese Falcon momentarily slipped my mind. It’s extremely faithful to Dashiell Hammett’s novel. In fact, it’s said that Huston’s secretary prepared the first draft of the script by simply going through the book and retyping it as dialogue. That can’t be right, but it’s not far wrong. I don’t know a more literally adapted film version of a well-known book, or a better one….

Read the whole thing here.

“I wondered whether life was actually worth recording in this detail. I preferred an artistic impression of the truth: this was how artists made the everyday beautiful.”
Wesley Stace, Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer

The veteran British jazz journalist Steve Voce, who goes back a long way with Duke Ellington, has reviewed Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington for the November issue of Jazz Journal. Here’s part of what he said:

There have been more books written about Duke Ellington than about almost any other jazz figure. As the author points out, Ellington was famous long before the Swing Era and long after the big bands had faded away. Duke could claim to have been, if not the major figure, one of the two major figures in the music (interestingly, Teachout has already written a similarly thorough biography of the other).
Although, as Juan Tizol points out in this one, the Duke was a poor reader, he was a minor genius and a most interesting man, so there is room for this latest in the series of accounts of his life. Mr Teachout’s is probably the most absorbing of them all. His research has been thorough and he has assiduously followed up every anecdote and incident with the result that his book is very satisfying to read and full of tested fact about the maestro. Yet, despite the welter of detail, the writing style is so good that this is a memorable experience, as well as being probably the definitive biography. You don’t need another one, because everything is here and delivered with style and accuracy…
The author doesn’t pull any punches on Duke’s behalf, and easily penetrates the facade that Ellington presented to the world. Although he would have been pleased with the thoroughness of the profile, I don’t think Duke would have appreciated its frankness…
It seems to me that there can be little more about Duke Ellington to uncover and that Teachout’s book, as in the case of his earlier one on Armstrong, is the masterwork.

Coming from an Ellington authority like Voce…well, that’s quite something.
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Duke Ellington plays “It Don’t Mean a Thing” in 1943. The singer-violinist is Ray Nance: