Archives for February 2014

“His manner of asking personal questions was of that kind not uncommonly to be found which is completely divorced from any interest in the answer. He was always prepared to embark on a length cross-examination of almost anyone he might meet, at the termination of which–apart from such details as might chance to concern himself–he had absorbed no more about the person interrogated than he knew at the outset of the conversation. At the same time this process seemed somehow to gratify his own egotism.”
Anthony Powell, At Lady Molly’s

If you live in the vicinity of Winter Park, Florida, I’m taking part tonight in a performance of excerpts from Duke Ellington’s sacred concerts that will be presented by John Sinclair, Chuck Archard, and a chorus and big band put together by Rollins College’s Department of Music. In addition to supplying the narration, I’ll be speaking about Ellington’s religious beliefs and the history of his three full-evening sacred concerts, which were premiered in 1965, 1968, and 1973.
The performance kicks off at 7:30 at Winter Park’s First Congregational Church, 225 S. Interlachen Ave. For more information, go here.

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a regional revival, Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Old Times, and the Broadway transfer of a new play, Bronx Bombers. Here’s an excerpt.
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One of the funniest characters in “Tootsie” is a scraggly-looking avant-garde playwright who sums up his goal in life as follows: “I like it when a guy comes up to me a week later and says, ‘Hey, man, I saw your play…what happened?” Many people have been known to come away from the plays of Harold Pinter asking the same thing. It’s not that Mr. Pinter’s characters utter nonsense–their conversations typically sound like commonplace small talk–but they habitually talk past one another, and you soon realize that what they’re saying and what they mean are irreconcilably at odds.
And just what do they mean? In “Old Times,” a 1971 Pinter three-hander that has been revived to outstanding effect by Palm Beach Dramaworks, it’s unsettlingly hard to know. The situation seems clear enough at first: Deeley (Craig Wroe) and Kate (Shannon Koob), a fortyish married couple, are entertaining a houseguest named Anna (Pilar Witherspoon) who knew Kate 20 years ago. Were they lovers? Possibly. Are Anna and Deeley now competing for the strangely passive Kate’s attention? Definitely. Beyond that, though, all is ambiguity, and critics have put forth varying interpretations of the situation portrayed in “Old Times,” some of which are peculiar in the extreme. (Maybe Kate and Anna are really the same person! Maybe they’re all dead!)
Mr. Pinter never tips his hand, and you need not entertain wild-eyed theories about the “meaning” of “Old Times” to relish the fast-mounting intricacies of the human chess match that is being played out before your eyes. Indeed, one of the best things about this production, stealthily directed by J. Barry Lewis, is that it keeps you guessing all the way to the end–and beyond….
Tony Ponturo and Fran Kirmser, the producers of “Bronx Bombers,” have cooked up between them what appears to be a brand-new theatrical genre: the organized-sports docudrama. Working in tandem with playwright-director Eric Simonson, they’ve now brought three such plays to Broadway. The first one, “Lombardi,” which opened there in 2010 and had a 271-performance run, was a smartly crafted piece of commercial entertainment that was more than well-made enough to appeal to playgoers who, like me, knew next to nothing about Vince Lombardi or the Green Bay Packers. Not so “Magic/Bird,” an evasive exercise in basketball-themed hagiography that paid tedious homage to Magic Johnson and Larry Bird and closed up shop after a month.
“Bronx Bombers” falls somewhere between those goalposts. An evening-long paean to Yogi Berra (played by Peter Scolari, lately of A.R. Gurney’s “Family Furniture”) and the New York Yankees, it has a pretty good first act, but stalls out after intermission with a dramatically static dream sequence in which Berra and his wife Carmen (Tracy Shayne) entertain a tableful of great Yankees of the past. If you don’t know who Elston Howard and Thurman Munson were, you’ll find the plot (such as it is) hard to follow, at times to the point of opaqueness….
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Read the whole thing here.

“When I watch, say, Maggie Smith, I have no awareness of any ‘technical’ accomplishment, no perception of any wheels which may be going round; what she does just seems to me mesmeric and true. If the ‘technique’ or mechanics show, then there must be something wrong. In any case I don’t want to know; I just want to believe, enjoy and be taken into another world.”
Alec Guinness, A Commonplace Book

“When I watch, say, Maggie Smith, I have no awareness of any ‘technical’ accomplishment, no perception of any wheels which may be going round; what she does just seems to me mesmeric and true. If the ‘technique’ or mechanics show, then there must be something wrong. In any case I don’t want to know; I just want to believe, enjoy and be taken into another world.”
Alec Guinness, A Commonplace Book

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

• No Man’s Land/Waiting for Godot (drama, PG-13, playing in rotating repertory, closes Mar. 30, reviewed here)

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

• Outside Mullingar (comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 16, 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)

• Hamlet/Saint Joan (drama, G/PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, playing in rotating repertory, closes Mar. 9, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN GLENCOE, ILL.:

• Port Authority (drama, PG-13, closes Mar. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Twelfth Night (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, closes Feb. 16, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• King Lear (Shakespeare, PG-13, reviewed here)

• The Commons of Pensacola (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“As is well known, literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.”
Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked

“As is well known, literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.”
Anthony Burgess, The Kingdom of the Wicked