Archives for November 13, 2014

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)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Love Letters (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 1, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, 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)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Indian Ink (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 30, reviewed here)

In case you missed the announcement in October, Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, my most recent book, has won the Timothy White Award for Outstanding Musical Biography, one of the ASCAP Foundation’s annual Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Awards for “outstanding print, broadcast and new media coverage of music.”

Alas, I wasn’t able to come to last night’s award ceremony in New York, so I asked my friend Paul Moravec, a member of ASCAP and my longtime operatic collaborator, to read the following statement on my behalf:

I thank ASCAP for this great honor, and I’m especially touched that it should be named after Deems Taylor and Virgil Thomson, two critics who were also composers of note and who, though they wrote mainly about classical music, were interested in and responsive to music of all kinds, including jazz. That has been my own path as well. I started out as a professional musician before becoming a full-time critic, and I both played and wrote about music of all kinds, jazz very much included. Today I not only write about theater but also write for the stage, including a play and the libretti for three operas.

If my work has any larger meaning, it is as a living symbol of the fact that at bottom, all art is one. In seeking to create and foster beauty, the artist speaks to all humans in all conditions, and endeavors to bring them closer together. That is what Duke Ellington, the subject of my book, did his whole life long: he sought to bring human beings together through the universal language of music, which knows no borders or boundaries. In honoring me, you honor him.

By the way, that really is Donald Fagen (who, I gather, both read and liked Duke) standing next to Paul, holding my award. He won one, too, for Eminent Hipsters.

“I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best—it’s all they’ll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country.”

Peter De Vries, The Vale of Laughter