Archives for 2016

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a Boston revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

The best thing that ever happened to Stephen Sondheim (other than being born a genius) was the advent of the scaled-down revivals that have made it possible in recent years for ambitious regional theater companies to mount his complex musicals without busting their budgets beyond hope of repair. Not only are they introducing his shows to a generation of viewers too young to have seen the original Broadway productions, but the best of them have changed the way that older viewers see those shows. No sooner do you strip away the big-budget trappings than it becomes evident that Mr. Sondheim’s musicals have far more in common with the hard-edged life studies of Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams than with “My Fair Lady” or “South Pacific.” To see the Lyric Stage Company of Boston’s small-scale revival of “Company,” directed with comprehensive understanding by Spiro Veloudos, is to come away with a much clearer sense of just how serious Sondheim and his collaborators are—and how unnervingly close to the emotional knuckle “Company” continues to cut 46 years after it was first seen on Broadway.

Written with George Furth, “Company” is set at a surprise birthday party for Robert (John Ambrosino), a 35-year-old man-about-Manhattan who is dating three women (Adrianne Hick, Maria LaRossa and Carla Martinez) but won’t commit to any of them, even though he’s lonely and longs to settle down. Why not? Because he’s been keeping tabs on the lives of the five married couples who are his best friends, and is scared to death by what he sees…

For all its manifold brilliance, “Company” is hard to perform persuasively, for the songs and sketches are so widely varied in tone that the show can feel incoherent. That’s what makes this production so impressive: Working in the closest possible collaboration with Rachel Bertone, his choreographer, Mr. Veloudos has succeeded in locking together the disparate elements of “Company” into an indissolubly unified whole. Not only are the songs acted with total conviction, but they are made to flow into and out of the sketches with deceptive ease. In addition, Mr. Veloudos and Ms. Bertone have made ingenious use of Lyric Stage’s 234-seat thrust-stage auditorium, which wraps the audience so tightly around the tiny central playing area that you feel like a guest at the party….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the Lyric Stage revival of Company:

Rod Serling is interviewed by Mike Wallace on The Mike Wallace Interview. This program was originally telecast on September 22, 1959, shortly before The Twilight Zone made its debut on CBS:

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

“Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.”

G.K. Chesterton, “The Flying Stars”

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I take note of the release on home video of the first season of Reginald Rose’s The Defenders. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Television was born in 1999, or maybe last Tuesday. Such, it seems, is the assumption of those critics who take it for granted that serious TV drama didn’t exist until “The Sopranos” came along, and that the dramatic series of the 21st century are so uniquely excellent that they put their predecessors far back in the shade….

Um…maybe. But older viewers may feel inclined to cast their nets more widely. Even in the ’60s, which brought us such exercises in silliness as “Gilligan’s Island” and “Mr. Ed,” there was no shortage of gripping prime-time fare scattered among the dross. Take “The Defenders,” among the most acclaimed dramas of that dread decade. Yes, it’s in black and white, but the best episodes of “The Defenders” are still as fresh and vital as anything you’ll see on the tube today. To binge-watch “The Defenders: Season One,” a nine-DVD set just released by Shout! Factory, is to realize that series-TV drama for grownups wasn’t invented by David Chase.

“The Defenders,” which aired on CBS from 1961 to 1965, was one of TV’s first weekly courtroom dramas. Reginald Rose, the show’s creator, knew his way around the genre, having written “Twelve Angry Men,” which started life as a 1954 episode of “Studio One.” But it was nothing like the vastly more popular “Perry Mason,” in which Raymond Burr put the bad guy on the stand each week and grilled him on both sides until he broke down and confessed. Instead, E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed played a father-and-son team of defense lawyers who took rock-hard cases that pivoted on such still-controversial issues as capital punishment, euthanasia and—in 1962, no less—abortion. “The law,” said Rose, “is the subject of our programs: not crime, not mystery, not the courtroom for its own sake.”

Rose, like most screenwriters then as now, was an unabashed liberal, and “The Defenders,” like “Twelve Angry Men,” sometimes lapsed into one-sided issue-of-the-week sermonizing. (“The Benefactor,” the pro-choice abortion episode, is a particularly heavy-handed case in point.) As the series developed, though, it became wholly adult in its willingness to acknowledge that in the real world, the good guys—and their lawyers—aren’t always as good as they seem….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

A scene from “The Quality of Mercy,” the first episode of The Defenders, starring E.G. Marshall and Robert Reed and guest-starring Jack Klugman. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on September 16, 1961:

E.G. Marshall appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? This episode was originally telecast by CBS on July 12, 1964. The host is John Charles Daly and the panelists are Bennett Cerf Arlene Francis, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Robert Q. Lewis:

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, closes Jan. 1, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, many performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, closes Jan. 1, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• A Day by the Sea (drama, G, not suitable for children, newly extended through Oct. 23, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• Sense & Sensibility (serious romantic comedy, G, remounting of 2014 off-Broadway production, closes Nov. 20, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WESTPORT, CONN.:
• What the Butler Saw (black comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING TONIGHT IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• Bye Bye Birdie (musical, G, reviewed here)

“It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”

G.K. Chesterton, “Spiritualism”

Martha Argerich plays Ravel’s Jeux d’eau in 1977:

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

“The one stream of poetry which is continually flowing is slang.”

G.K. Chesterton, “A Defense of Slang”