Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
“Dave Lambert: Audition at RCA,” a 1964 documentary about the jazz singer by D.A. Pennebaker:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.”
H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major
From 2004:
Read the whole thing here.“This is absolutely the only place to live,” I told her. “Nowhere else.”
“Oh, I guess it’s all right to visit other places,” she replied. “And you could live somewhere else for six months, if you had to. Or maybe even a year.”
“But only if you don’t give up your lease,” I said firmly.
We giggled, knowing perfectly well that neither one of us had the slightest intention of going anywhere else for more than a week or two….
“The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
Charles Lamb (quoted in The Athenaeum, January 4, 1834)
Jascha Heifetz and Erick Friedman play the finale of Bach’s Two-Violin Concerto, accompanied by Brooks Smith, at an undated master class:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.”
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devll and the Good Lord
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the PBS Great Performances telecast of Bartlett Sher’s 2015 Lincoln Center Theater revival of The King and I, which airs tonight and will subsequently be streamed. Here’s an excerpt.
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I’ve had mixed feelings about more than a few of Mr. Sher’s Broadway revivals, but this one, which starred Kelli O’Hara, was a knockout and a wow, the finest staging of the show I’ve seen, and it’s a most agreeable surprise to see how fully it translates to the small screen…..
The book is by turns funny and deeply affecting, the score masterly, and Jerome Robbins’s choreography, all of which was preserved in the wonderful 1956 film version, has lost none of its charm in the ensuing years. But the enduring excellence of that film has proved to be a stumbling block whenever the show is produced, for it also preserves the performance of Yul Brynner, who created the role of the King of Siam in 1951 and reprised his now-legendary star turn in the show’s first two Broadway revivals, as well in countless roadshow productions. As a result, any theater company that revives “The King and I” today must either cast a Brynner impersonator (so to speak) as the proud, willfully impulsive king or try to find some kind of way to get out from under the shadow of his well-remembered example.
Mr. Sher solved the problem by casting the charismatic Asian actor Ken Watanabe, who gave a performance that was both commanding and in every way his own. ….
As for Ms. O’Hara, she is fabulously good—and then some….
Alas, the stage production’s spectacular show-opening coup de théâtre, in which the boat that brings Anna to Siam “sails” beyond the lip of the thrust stage, looming over the first five rows of the audience, makes no impression at all on TV—it caused gasps when I saw the show in 2015—but everything else about this staging, including Robbins’s second-act “Small House of Uncle Thomas” ballet, looks convincing….
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Read the whole thing here.Kelli O’Hara and the King and I ensemble perform “Getting to Know You” at the 2015 Tony Awards ceremony:
“Ernest Thesiger: Expert Embroiderer,” a 1944 British Pathé newsreel featurette. A noted English stage and screen actor, Thesiger is best remembered for his appearances in Bride of Frankenstein and The Man in the White Suit:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)