Archives for 2015

This is just to remind you that the latest episode of Theater Talk, in which Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel discuss the Broadway season just past with Ben Brantley, Peter Marks, John Simon, and yours truly, airs on CUNY-TV this Sunday at seven p.m. EDT. Yes, we had our usual fair share of disagreements (as well as a not-inconsiderable amount of consensus). Yes, John said several characteristically snarky things. No, we didn’t get into any fistfights.

I’ll be posting video of the episode as soon as it’s available on YouTube. Watch this space next week.

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

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:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hand to God (black comedy, X, absolutely not for children or prudish adults, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, all performances sold out last week, 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)
• On the Twentieth Century (musical, G/PG-13, virtually all performances sold out, closes July 19, contains very mild sexual content, reviewed here)
• The Visit (serious musical, PG-13, far too dark and disturbing for children, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, ideal for bright children, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Flick (serious comedy, PG-13, too long for young people with limited attention spans, closes Aug. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN BOSTON:
• Light Up the Sky (comedy, G, not suitable for small children, closes June 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:
• Sense and Sensibility (musical, G, closes June 14, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• The Blood Quilt (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Permission (comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• It’s Only a Play (comedy, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

“One of my heroes is the writer William Maxwell, also no longer around in his earthly shape. Late in his life, he began taking piano lessons and working his way through some simple classical pieces. I think this gave him great pleasure but was also frustrating—in the way making music is even more difficult for those who have spent their lives appreciating the superb performances of others. In his final year, a dear friend said to him, ‘Bill, in the life to come you will be able to play the piano with ease, won’t you?’ And he replied, ‘In the next life I will not be making music. I will be music.’”

Michael Steinman, “Marty Napoleon (1921-2015)” (Jazz Lives, April 29, 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.

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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