Archives for October 23, 2014

If you live in or near Waco, Texas, a city of which I am greatly fond, you might want to know that I’ll be giving a pair of lectures this coming weekend at Baylor University, an institution of which I’m no less fond.

On Saturday I’ll be talking about Whit Stillman’s movies at a conference called “Faith and Film,” and on Monday I’ll be delivering Baylor’s Laura Blanche Jackson Endowed Memorial Lectureship in World Issues. I don’t usually give speeches about foreign policy, but it happens that this particular lecture, “The Story of Ambassador Satch: Louis Armstrong, Jazz, and International Relations,” deals with a subject about which I think it would be fair to say that I do know a little something.

Alas, the Stillman lecture is part of a symposium that is now booked solid, but my Armstrong lecture is open to the public. It will begin at seven p.m. at Baylor’s Paul W. Powell Chapel. For more information, go here.

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:
• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)
• The Country House (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 9, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Love Letters (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 1, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• On the Town (musical, G, contains double entendres that will not be intelligible to children, reviewed here)
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)
• This Is Our Youth (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Indian Ink (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• American Buffalo (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fatal Weakness (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• When We Are Married (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Men give way before the power of genius, they hate it and try to blow upon it because it takes without sharing the plunder, but they give way if it persists; in short, they worship it on their knees when they have failed in their efforts to bury it under the mud.”

Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot