“They must hunger in frost that will not work in heat.”
John Heywood, Proverbs
Archives for January 2014
TT: So you want to see a show?
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:
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• No Man’s Land/Waiting for Godot (drama, PG-13, playing in rotating repertory through Mar. 2, reviewed here)
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)
• Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, closes Feb. 16, 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 Commons of Pensacola (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 26, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Hamlet/Saint Joan (drama, G/PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, performed in rotating repertory, closes Feb. 2, original production reviewed here)
• Juno and the Paycock (drama, G/PG-13, far too dark for children, closes Jan. 26, reviewed here)
• The Night Alive (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 2, reviewed here)
IN GLENCOE, ILL.:
• Port Authority (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 16, reviewed here)
CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO, ILL.:
• An Inspector Calls (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 12, reviewed here)
CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Fun Home (musical, PG-13, closes Jan. 12, reviewed here)
CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Macbeth (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Jan. 12, reviewed here)
CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Annie (musical, G, reviewed here)
TT: Almanac
“The nakedness and asperity of the wintry world always fill the beholder with pensive and profound astonishment.”
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler (Dec. 22, 1750)
NORMAN MAILER, LITERARY HUSTLER
“Fifty years ago, Norman Mailer was, after J.D. Salinger, postwar America’s most famous writer of literary fiction. Today Mailer’s name no longer figures other than sporadically on lists of important postwar writers. It is instructive to recall that in 1959, he counted himself among ‘the strong talents of my generation, those few of us who have wide minds in a narrow overdeveloped time.’ This brash claim was typical of Mailer, and he would have expected nothing less six years after his death than the publication of two or three thousand-page biographies…”
TT: Snapshot
Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd play “Desafinado” on The Perry Como Show in 1962:
(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)
TT: Almanac
“Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.”
Henry David Thoreau, Walden