Archives for December 2017

The Wall Street Journal asked me to write a special “Sightings” column about the James Levine scandal and its possible short- and long-term effects on the Metropolitan Opera. Here’s an excerpt.

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“Everybody knew.” That’s what they said about Harvey Weinstein, and that’s what they’re saying now about James Levine—but can it be true? Not in the narrowly legal sense. As of today, nobody “knows” anything about the alleged transgressions of the Metropolitan Opera’s music director emeritus beyond the indisputable fact that, as the New York Times has reported, four men have publicly accused him of abusing them sexually many years ago when they were teenagers….

Yet it is no less indisputable that rumors that Mr. Levine is a pedophile have circulated for the whole of my adult life. I first heard them in Kansas City in the ’70s. I have yet to meet anyone in the world of opera who was unaware of these rumors….

The Times reported over the weekend that a spokesman for Mr. Levine had no comment on the specific allegations that have now emerged, and that he has twice denied to Met executives, in 1979 and a year ago, any sexual misconduct. But the company is taking the charges seriously enough to have suspended its relationship with the conductor, who served as its music director from 1976 to 2016. Over the weekend, Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, canceled all of Mr. Levine’s scheduled performances and commissioned Proskauer Rose, an outside law firm, to conduct an investigation.

It is impossible to overstate the significance of these developments. In a very real sense, James Levine is the Met. He is the public figure most closely associated with the company, the one who has been central to its fortunes for more than four decades, and the first truly great artist to be swept up in the current maelstrom of sexual-harassment accusations. If it is proved that he did what his accusers claim, there can be no doubt that his extraordinary career will come at once to a shameful end.

Beyond that, much will hang on whether Proskauer Rose’s investigation proves that “everybody”—that is, those inside the Met—did in fact know about Mr. Levine. For this is no ordinary scandal: It is an existential crisis, one that threatens the survival of a financially beleaguered organization that had already spent years struggling with the problem of Mr. Levine’s declining health….

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Read the whole thing here.

James Levine leads the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in a performance of the overture to Mozart’s Magic Flute:

Bill Boggs interviews Tennessee Williams on an undated episode of Midday Live, originally telecast by New York’s WNEW:

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

“But dramatic structure consists of the creation and deferment of hope. That’s basically all it is.”

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

From 2007:

Los Angelenos, I gather, are sensitive to stereotypes, especially the ones they come up with themselves. Now I understand why. I saw enough of their home town to know that it would take me a lifetime to see the rest of it, and though one cliché turned out to be painfully self-evident—the traffic is really, truly awful—I can’t say I found any of the others useful. I’ve never seen a city that was more resistant to generalization, not even the one in which I live….

Read the whole thing here.

“The dramatic experience is essentially the enjoyment of the postponement of enjoyement.”

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

“Actors, take your official five, so that we can start at the top and work without stopping,” Debi Marcucci, the omnipotent stage manager and assistant director of Billy and Me, my second play, announced on Saturday morning. The stage emptied at once, and five minutes later, our first tech rehearsal got underway. I smiled, remembering a conversation I’d had five summers ago with Gordon Edelstein, who directed Shakespeare & Company’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play. “You’re not going to watch this, are you?” he asked in apparent amazement when I showed up for the first tech rehearsal. “Watching tech is like watching paint dry.” Maybe so, but I was in the house for every minute of both rehearsals, and found them…well, not exactly thrilling, but completely involving. I’ve been watching tech—all of it—ever since.

“Tech” is theater shorthand for the technical rehearsals—two consecutive twelve-hour-long days, in the case of the premiere of Billy and Me—during which the director, designers, and stage crew of a new show work together to develop, perfect, and rehearse the lighting, sound, and prop cues and scenic shifts that transform what happened in the rehearsal hall into what happens in front of a paying audience. The cast is present, too, rehearsing with deadly seriousness, but it is the collective will of the director and designers that prevails. If the sound designer needs to stop and repeat a scene because the phone didn’t ring at the right moment, you do so as often as is necessary to fix the problem. This is how a show starts to come into increasingly sharp focus for the very first time.

As I wrote in this space a year and a half ago, immediately after the second and last tech rehearsal for the production of Satchmo at the Waldorf that I directed at Palm Beach Dramaworks:

Tech is a grueling, painstaking, time-consuming process that requires infinite patience. If you’re a naturally impatient person—as I am, I regret to say—it can be tedious in the extreme. But if—as I also am—you’re the kind of person who has a taste for taking infinite pains, then it can be one of the most engrossing and pleasurable experiences that theater has to offer. It’s the Orson Welles part of stage directing: you get to pull out the toy box and spend hours and hours playing with it. You fuss endlessly and productively over every single lighting cue, making one part of the stage dark and another bright, with the lighting designer saying “Do you like it better this way, or this way?” over and over again like a demented ophthalmologist.

It was through watching Gordon’s tech rehearsals that I took the first step on the unexpectedly short road that led to my becoming a stage director in my own right. Not only did I learn what to do and how to do it from Gordon, but I learned the spirit in which it should be done. Spend a half-hour watching a tech rehearsal and you’ll come away knowing in your bones that theater is a collaborative art form. It is also, when done right, a civil art form, one in which everybody on and off stage says “please” and “thank you” and means it. “Quiet, please.” “Hold, please.” “Thank you very much.” These are the ceaselessly repeated refrains of tech, the tokens of mutual professional respect that are exchanged at some point in every transaction.

In Billy and Me this respect is made manifest, for the audience can actually see the stage hands rolling the set pieces into position as Nicholas Richberg, who plays Tennessee Williams, speaks the prologue to each act. “And now…I shall turn time forward,” he says after intermission, and three stage hands in period costumes come out of the wings and go to work. (You’d be surprised to know how much time and energy went into choreographng their straightforward-looking moves.) A minute or two later, we are in the living room of William Inge’s handsomely decorated Manhattan apartment, early in the morning of November 29, 1959, a few hours after the Broadway premiere of A Loss of Roses, Inge’s first flop. The result is, in the fullest possible sense of the phrase, a backstage play, one whose audience is privy to the creation of stage illusion.

By now I am little more than a privileged bystander, a member of the audience with the best seat in the house, directly behind Bill Hayes, the director, and Paul Black, the lighting designer. I made my final revisions to the script on Saturday night, nipping out on the spot a half-page of superfluous dialogue, after which I put Billy and Me in the hands of my collaborators. From time to time I whisper suggestions to Bill, but mostly I’m content to sit and watch my script being transformed into Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production, learning lessons that I’ll put to use the next time I direct a play, whether by myself or somebody else. If there’s a better place to be, I’m damned if I know what it is.

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So how do I feel now, five days before opening night? Quite surprisingly calm. I like my play, and I love Bill’s staging of it. No doubt there are plenty of things that I will do differently should I ever get the chance to direct Billy and Me in the future, but right now I can neither see nor hear them. What is taking shape on stage is the play I meant to write, the story of two talented but troubled men who are trying to come to terms with what they are and what they’re meant to do with their lives. The results are more ambitious than Satchmo—one more act, two more actors—but not extravagantly so. I feel like I’ve taken a step of appropriate size toward…what? More playwriting, I certainly hope, for there are other stories I want to tell on stage.

For the moment, though, I’m proud to have told this one, and proud above all to have had the all-consuming experience of working with Bill, Nick Richberg, Tom Wahl, Cliff Burgess, and our wonderful collaborators. They have taken my words and given them wings. May they soar come Friday night.

The third episode of Three on the Aisle, the new podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

In this month’s episode, Peter, Elisabeth, and I interview Lila Neugebauer, who recently staged Zoe Kazan’s After the Blast at Lincoln Center Theater and Annie Baker’s The Antipodes at New York’s Signature Theatre, about her burgeoning career as a director of challenging new plays. Talking to Neugebauer, whose career I’ve followed closely ever since I saw and reviewed her off-Broadway revival of A.R. Gurney’s The Wayside Motor Inn in 2014, was an exciting experience for all of us—she’s one of the smartest and most formidably articulate directors on the scene today—and I think that excitment comes through clearly in the podcast.

We also talk about how the continuing sexual-harassment scandals have started to affect American theater, followed by a segment in which I discuss my experiences writing Billy and Me, my second play, which opens on Friday at Palm Beach Dramaworks, and reflect on the unique challenges facing a drama critic who doubles as a playwright and stage director. (My contribution to the proceedings was transmitted to New York via Skype.) As usual, we wrap up the episode by chatting about some shows we’ve seen and liked in recent weeks.

To listen, download the third episode, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed the first and second episodes, you’ll find them here.

Harry James’ big band performs “Green Onions” (by Booker T. and the MGs) on an undated 1965 telecast. The drummer is Buddy Rich:

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