Archives for June 3, 2015

I got an e-mail yesterday afternoon from Patti Wolff, interim artistic director of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, informing me that the entire run of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, is now sold out. It’s a hit.

Not to be obvious, but this couldn’t possibly have happened without the amazing work of John Douglas Thompson and Gordon Edelstein, the star and director, and the production team that designed Satchmo in 2012, moved it off Broadway last year, and now have brought it to California for its West Coast premiere. Plays don’t play themselves—especially not this well.. Heartfelt thanks, too, to Patti and her wonder-working colleagues for believing in our show and getting it up and running at the Wallis. They’re all made of gold.

What next for Satchmo? A new production, directed by Charles Newell, begins performances at Chicago’s Court Theatre on January 7. Meanwhile, the staging now playing at the Wallis will move to San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater on January 13. Two more runs of Satchmo, in Colorado Springs and West Palm Beach, will follow in due course, with further productions set for 2016-17.

After that? Well, we’ll see. But I’m more than happy just as is.

I confessed the other day to being “the kind of guy who loves Stephen Sondheim and John Wayne.” (So, incidentally, is David Thomson.)

Apropos of this daring admission, a reader writes:

I thought you might be interested in this little story. Years ago here in Boston, I knew the then-managers of the Lyric Stage (long since departed), who had many stories about the various guest stars who appeared in Lyric productions. Among them was Nehemiah Persoff, who had a John Wayne story. Though Persoff was very far from Wayne on the political spectrum, he still liked working with him since he was such a skilled professional, and Wayne returned the compliment, once inviting Persoff to dinner. Wayne was then carrying a big briefcase and at the table he started to rummage through it looking for something and out came, of all things, a volume of Noël Coward plays! Persoff was amazed. Wayne said he greatly admired Coward and had always wanted to be in a Coward film—but “the sons-o-bitches wouldn’t let me.”

This surprises me a little, but not much. Not only was Wayne very well read, but he had, as all of his fans know, a flair for comedy. Indeed, two of his middle-period films, A Lady Takes a Chance and Without Reservations, are out-and-out romcoms, while Rio Bravo (like North by Northwest) is best understood as a comedy sprinkled with intermittent bursts of gunplay.

Trying to figure out which Coward role would best have suited Wayne is…well, rather more of a stretch. I can’t exactly see the Duke as Charles Condomine or Garry Essendine! But it sure would have been fun to watch him try—and I bet he would have had just as much fun trying.

* * *

The trailer for the 1953 re-release of Without Reservations, directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Claudette Colbert and John Wayne:

Paul Paray leads L’Orchestre National de l’ORTF in an undated performance of the orchestral version of Emmanuel Chabrier’s Bourrée fantasque:

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

“Listen, Delly, I know it doesn’t make much sense when you’re sixteen. Don’t worry. When you get to be forty, it isn’t any better.”

Alan Sharp, screenplay for Night Moves