Archives for December 2016

“A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature.”

Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations

Lee J. Cobb stars in a TV version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, directed by Alex Segal and originally telecast by CBS on May 8, 1966. Cobb created the role of Willy Loman in the original 1947 Broadway production of the play. The cast also includes Mildred Dunnock, who appeared opposite Cobb as Linda Loman in 1947:

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

“The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name.”

Enid Bagnold, Autobiography

In today’s online Wall Street Journal I review the New York Theatre Workshop’s new production of Othello. Here’s an excerpt.

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“Othello” doesn’t get done nearly often enough. It hasn’t been mounted on Broadway since James Earl Jones played the title role in 1982, and I’ve only reviewed five productions in the past decade and a half years, all of them performed in cities other than this one. So it’s big theatrical news that the New York Theatre Workshop has just opened a small-house version directed by Sam Gold (“Fun Home,” “The Flick”) and starring David Oyelowo as Othello and Daniel Craig as Iago. Not surprisingly, the whole run of the show is sold out, but it seems like a good prospect for Broadway, assuming that Mr. Craig is interested in playing Iago again in between movies. I wish he would, and that Mr. Oyelowo would join him there—but not in this production, which is more a good first try than a fully realized theatrical creation.

This is in every way a director’s “Othello,” and Mr. Gold, who made his professional debut just nine years ago, is an artist of exceptional gifts. On the other hand, he doesn’t have much experience with classical theater and none at all with Shakespeare, and it shows, not because there’s anything inept about his fast-moving production but because there’s nothing much that’s original about it. Instead, Mr. Gold has given us yet another version of the same kind of the-time-is-now “Othello” that I’ve seen in theaters all over the U.S., most recently and persuasively at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2014. The setting, designed by Andrew Lieberman, is a primitive barracks (eight dirty mattresses stacked on the floor) knocked together out of freshly sawn lumber. The soldiers have smartphones, read Tom Clancy paperbacks and sing “Hotline Bling” to pass the time between battles. The characterizations are off-the-rack buddy-flick stuff: Iago is an ambitious working-class bloke, Desdemona (Rachel Brosnahan) a perky millennial sitcom type who gets in too deep….

On top of all this, Mr. Gold seems to have overlooked the fact that “Othello” is not an action movie but a verse tragedy, one of the greatest ever written, whose characters are larger-than-life archetypes of the human soul in extremis. Even in the intimate setting of a 199-seat downtown theater, such roles cannot be easily plumbed by actors lacking in classical training and stage experience. Mr. Craig is, of course, a movie star of the highest possible wattage, but his two Broadway appearances, in Keith Huff’s “A Steady Rain” and Mike Nichols’ 2013 revival of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal,” proved that he also is at ease in the theater. The problem is that he is no more a classical actor than Mr. Gold is a classical director. Hence his Iago is a pencil sketch rather than an oil painting, strong and forceful but devoid of poetic depth…

Mr. Oyelowo’s acting is a different matter altogether. A British actor of Nigerian parentage, he is best known on this side of the Atlantic for having played Martin Luther King Jr. in “Selma.” In England, by contrast, he’s widely acclaimed for his Shakespearean stage performances—he is reportedly the first black actor ever to have played one of the Shakespearean kings, Henry VI—and his Othello is clearly the work of a performer who is at home in the classics. Presumably at Mr. Gold’s behest, he uses a heavy African accent that seems for a time to get between him and the text, but no sooner do we come back from intermission than Mr. Oyelowo breaks free of the limitations of the staging and delivers a fiery, ferocious performance…

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Read the whole thing here.

In the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I review In Transit, the last new Broadway musical of 2016. Here’s an excerpt.

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To transfer a modest little off-Broadway musical to Broadway in the hope of striking it rich is usually, if not quite always, a fatal mistake. The producers of “In Transit,” which ran at 59E59 in 2010, evidently thought that uptown audiences would flip over yet another show about yet another bunch of wide-eyed youngsters who come to New York to pursue their dreams, are battered by reality and emerge from the experience bruised but hopeful. And they might well have been right—had “In Transit” been anywhere near as good as “Avenue Q,” “A Chorus Line” or “Company,” the multi-plot ensemble musicals on which it is obviously based. Instead, the results remind me of Cyril Connolly’s remark that “imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.” In a tiny off-Broadway house, the slender charms of “In Transit” might possibly have filled their space. In Circle in the Square, the 776-seat thrust-stage Broadway theater that is notorious for eating shows, it looks like a college musical that got in over its head.

The gimmick that sets “In Transit” apart from other shows of its kind is that it is billed (correctly, so far as I can recall) as “Broadway’s first a cappella musical.” “A cappella” means “sung without instrumental accompaniment,” and a cappella vocal groups have long been popular at American colleges and universities. In recent years they’ve become positively trendy, which is how and why “In Transit” got written. Kristen Anderson-Lopez, James-Allen Ford, Russ Kaplan and Sara Wordsworth, who are collectively credited with the book and songs, sang together in such a group and got the idea from doing so to write a musical about people like themselves. Hence “In Transit,” which is performed by 11 singing actors and has no pit band: The actors make their own music.

This isn’t a bad idea on its face, but the pop-song score, arranged by Deke Sharon, is so watery and texturally unvaried that the initial charm of seeing an a cappella show wears off long before “In Transit” winds to a close (it runs for 100 intermission-free minutes)….

As for the book, it’s straight from the recycling center, a rickety assemblage of spare parts in which no one utters an unforeseeable word. Sincere “In Transit” most definitely is, but you’ve heard it all before….

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Read the whole thing here.

Today’s Wall Street Journal contains my annual best-of-the-year theater column:

Lots of excellent revivals, several impressive new plays, two terrific new musicals—most of them produced off Broadway or out of town: That’s the shorthand story of theater in America in 2016. Many big-buzz Broadway shows, in particular “The Front Page” and “The Humans,” missed fire, but I saw plenty of great stuff elsewhere….

Among those present:

• Company of the year. Writers Theatre of Glencoe, Ill., produced Arcadia and Company to superlative effect in its brand-new two-stage complex designed by Jeanne Gang and Studio Gang Architects, the finest piece of theatrical construction to open in the U.S. in the past decade.

• Best performance in a play. Annie Purcell was fiercely intense as Isabella in Davis McCallum’s Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production of “Measure for Measure.”

• Best new play. Mike Bartlett’s “Love, Love, Love,” produced off Broadway by the Roundabout, is the strongest stage comedy since The Real Thing.

To read about my other picks, 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:
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Encounter (one-man immersive drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Finian’s Rainbow (small-scale musical revival, G, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• The Encounter (one-man immersive drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, closes Jan. 1, many shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, extended through Jan. 8, reviewed here)
• Sweet Charity (small-scale musical revival, PG-13, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• Love, Love, Love (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery!”

Enid Bagnold, Diary without Dates