Archives for June 2018

“The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced.”

Willa Cather, “Katherine Mansfield”

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:
• Angels in America (two-part drama, R, alternating in repertory, closes July 15, reviewed here)
• The Band’s Visit (musical, PG-13, nearly all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Dear Evan Hansen (musical, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The Iceman Cometh (drama, PG-13, most shows sold out last week, closes July 1, reviewed here)
• My Fair Lady (musical, G, all shows sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Symphonie Fantastique (abstract underwater puppet show, G, closes July 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:
• Three Tall Women (drama, PG-13, all shows sold out last week, closes June 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:
• Macbeth (Shakespeare, PG-13, remounting of Two River Theater Company production, closes June 24, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:
• The Will Rogers Follies (musical, G, closes June 21, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• Travesties (serious comedy, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:
• Our Lady of 121st Street (serious comedy, PG-13, closes June 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN HARTFORD, CONN.:
• A Lesson from Aloes (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• Saint Joan (drama, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, original production reviewed here)

“No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.”

Willa Cather, Alexander’s Bridge

“So much of the research on musical expertise has looked for accomplishment in the wrong place, in the facility of fingers rather than the expressiveness of emotion.”

Daniel Levitin, This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway revival of Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band. Here’s a review.

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Fifty years ago, “The Boys in the Band,” Mart Crowley’s blacker-than-black comedy about a group of gay friends who spend an evening clawing at one another’s scabs, opened off Broadway and became the talk of Manhattan. After running for 1,001 performances, it was turned by William Friedkin into a movie that starred the entire original cast, one of the finest films ever made of a contemporary play. But many members of the rising generation of young gay people thought it impolitic for Mr. Crowley to have dramatized the self-hatred felt by those older gay men who had internalized the wounding disapproval of the straight world (“Show me a happy homosexual and I’ll show you a gay corpse”). As a result, “The Boys in the Band” failed to transfer to Broadway and vanished from American stages shortly thereafter….

So why is the golden anniversary of the premiere of “The Boys in the Band” being celebrated with a Broadway production, a budget-buster starring Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto and directed by Joe Mantello (“Three Tall Women”)? Because the Broadway productions of such gay-themed shows as “Angels in America,” “Falsettos,” “Mothers and Sons” and “The Normal Heart” have proved popular enough to suggest that this one would do at least as well. I wish I were more enthusiastic about the results, but there isn’t much to like about this emotionally evasive revival, which disserves Mr. Crowley’s beautifully, fearlessly wrought play in so many ways that I went home not merely disappointed but angry….

While the first half of “The Boys in the Band” is scabrously and for the most part unprintably funny, everyone at Michael’s party is skating on thin psychic ice, a fact that must be immediately evident to the audience if the play is to come off. This is especially true of the host, which is where Mr. Mantello’s production first goes wrong. Michael’s desperate self-loathing—he talks like a man who is squeezing a naked razor blade in his bare hand—is alien to Mr. Parsons, who has no trouble with the play’s comic moments but is at a loss when the emotional weather grows heavier in the second half. This throws everything else out of balance, as does the bland acting of most of the other cast members…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

A featurette about the Broadway revival of The Boys in the Band:

The theatrical trailer for the 1970 film version of The Boys in the Band:

From 2008:

The New York Drama Critics’ Circle, of which I am a member, was founded in 1935. Six years later Al Hirschfeld drew the then-current membership, portraying them in camera at the Algonquin Hotel….

Read the whole thing here.

“Drama critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they see the tricks done every night, they know how it’s done, but they can’t do it themselves.”

Brendan Behan, quoted in “Notes by Sage of Nonsense” (Toronto Globe and Mail, March 18, 1961)