Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Excerpts from “The Lady from Philadelphia,” a See It Now episode about Marian Anderson hosted by Edward R. Murrow and originally telecast by CBS on December 30, 1957:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Meanwhile, if these hours be dark, as indeed in many ways they are, at least do not let us sit deedless, like fools and fine gentlemen, thinking the common toil not good enough for us, and beaten by the muddle; but rather let us work like good fellows trying by some dim candle-light to set our workshop ready against to-morrow’s day-light—that to-morrow, when the civilised world, no longer greedy, strifeful, and destructive, shall have a new art, a glorious art, made by the people and for the people, as a happiness to the maker and the user.”
William Morris, The Art of the People
From 2009:
Read the whole thing here.Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes….
“Most of the literary works with which we are acquainted fall into one of two classes, those we have no desire to read a second time—sometimes, we were never able to finish them—and those we are always happy to reread. There are a few, however, which belong to a third class; we do not feel like reading one of them very often but, when we are in the appropriate mood, it is the only work we feel like reading. Nothing else, however good or great, will do instead.”
W.H. Auden, “Don Juan” (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence)
• MUSICAL I HATE: Promises, Promises
• MUSICAL I THINK IS OVERRATED: Hello, Dolly!
• MUSICAL I THINK IS UNDERRATED: Giant
• MUSICAL I LOVE: On the Town, She Loves Me (tie)
• MUSICAL I CHERISH: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
• MUSICAL I COULD LISTEN TO ON REPEAT: Guys and Dolls
• MUSICAL I WANT TO DO: Floyd Collins, Follies (tie)
• MUSICAL THAT MADE ME FALL IN LOVE WITH MUSICALS: A Little Night Music
• MUSICAL THAT CHANGED MY LIFE: The Fantasticks
• GUILTY PLEASURE: I don’t do guilty pleasure—if I like something, it’s good
• MUSICAL I SHOULD HAVE SEEN BY NOW BUT HAVEN’T: You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
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Laura Benanti sings “Vanilla Ice Cream” in the PBS Great Performances telecast of the 2016 Broadway revival of She Loves Me, written by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joe Masteroff:
Maria Tallchief, André Eglevsky, and members of New York City Ballet dance the second movement from George Balanchine’s Scotch Symphony, set to excerpts from Mendelssohn’s Third Symphony. Both dancers created their roles in the ballet, choreographed by Balanchine in 1952. This performance was originally telecast by NBC on April 9, 1959, as part of an episode of The Bell Telephone Hour. The conductor is Donald Voorhees:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.”
Albert Einstein, “Self-Portrait”
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Is there a Great American Musical, a show that embodies the historic values of our country and our culture while simultaneously acknowledging their myriad contradictions? Indeed there is—and it’s not the one that you’re expecting, either. Instead of “Oklahoma!” or “West Side Story,” or even “Hamilton,” my pick for the prize is “The Music Man,” Meredith Willson’s 1957 fairy tale about a small town that is turned inside out by the coming of a charismatic traveling salesman who proposes to stem the rising tide of adolescent discontent in River City, Iowa, by putting together a boys’ band.
Unselfconsciously nostalgic to the point of corniness yet at the same time emotionally complex, “The Music Man” is a masterpiece not generally recognized as such, and Connecticut’s Goodspeed Musicals has given it a production that makes the most of its old-fashioned charms. Jenn Thompson’s unpretentiously imaginative staging, in which Edward Watts and Ellie Fishman play to perfection the lead roles that were created on Broadway by Robert Preston and Barbara Cook, vacuums the choking cobwebs of convention off a too-familiar warhorse….
What most revivals of “The Music Man” overlook are the hints of loneliness and despair that make it far more than just an affectionate exercise in small-town charm. For all its Edenic innocence, River City in 1912 is also a community full of censorious busybodies who can and do make life tough for those who refuse to toe the line of convention. As a result, the bookish, Balzac-loving Marian (Ms. Fishman) and Winthrop (Alexander O’Brien), her shy brother, are both constrictingly inhibited and agonizingly unhappy, while Harold Hill (Mr. Watts), the uninhibited con man who introduces them and the rest of River City to a more abundant life, comes within half a hair’s breadth of being tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail for his troubles….
Ms. Thompson is fully alive to these nuances. Here as in all of her work, she penetrates to the inner truth of “The Music Man,” but does so without resorting to the over-obvious point-making that blights Daniel Fish’s “woke” Broadway revival of “Oklahoma!” Rather than bang you over the head with the show’s deeper meanings, she pays you the compliment of letting you uncover them for yourself. Nothing is exaggerated, not even Winthrop’s blush-making lisp…
Mr. Watts wisely makes a point of not basing his performance on that of Preston, whose delectably fraudulent Harold Hill was preserved for all time in Morton DaCosta’s film version of “The Music Man.” Instead of running off a Xerox copy of Preston, as Craig Bierko did in Susan Stroman’s 2000 Broadway revival, Mr. Watts is engaging and affable, hiding his bad intentions as opposed to letting them ooze out of every pore….
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Read the whole thing here.A video montage of scenes from Goodspeed Musicals’ revival of The Music Man:
The opening scene from Morton DaCosta’s film version of The Music Man, starring Robert Preston. DaCosta also staged the show’s original Broadway production: