This is, or purports to be, the original laugh-track machine, invented by Charles Douglass in 1950:

I remember some of those canned laughs!

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:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Jan. 8, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, closes July 24, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• The Front Page (comedy, PG-13, extended through July 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSBURGH:

• House & Garden (two related serious comedies, PG-13, closes July 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:

• Guys and Dolls (musical, G, closes July 16, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• A Little Journey (drama, G, extended through July 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• The Motherf**ker with the Hat (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes July 17, reviewed here)

“A musical is an incredibly complicated piece of machinery. You can have all the elements, the right songs, the right book, the right cast, the right director, the right costume designer–and the lighting man can screw it up.”
Johnny Mercer, in conversation with Gene Lees (quoted in Lees’ Portrait of Johnny, courtesy of Michael Greenspan)

National Review Online recently asked me to choose a short stack of books for summer reading. To see my list, go here.

WEDNESDAY No, this isn’t a vacation. (What’s a vacation?) I have to hit my weekly deadlines regardless of where I am at any given moment, so I got up shortly after sunrise and spent the morning writing and polishing my Wall Street Journal review of House & Garden while Mrs. T slept.

After I finished Friday’s drama column and e-mailed it to my editors in New York, we ate omelets at a seaside spot a couple of blocks from our front door, then hit the beach. I’m one of those indoor types who gets sunburned roughly a minute and a half after stripping off my shirt. Instead of repining, I accepted the inevitable and plunged promptly and heedlessly into the sea, knowing that I’d pay the price a day or two later. It was, as always, worth it. Those who grow up landlocked don’t take waves for granted. Indeed, I like listening to the ocean as much as I like swimming in it. No big surprise, I guess, but I never get tired of hearing the surf.

For dinner we went to our favorite Cape May restaurant, Louisa’s Cafe, a hole-in-the-wallish seafood place whose cuisine is too eccentric for most tourists (every dish on the menu comes with brown rice and cabbage slaw on the side) but which suits us right down to the ground. The dining room is so tiny that you have to call at the start of the week to make a reservation, but we managed to wangle one. Mrs. T and I shared bluefish, crabcakes, and a generous helping of dark chocolate bread pudding, then strolled through town to the First Presbyterian Church of Cape May, in whose handsome polygonal sanctuary the East Lynne Theater Company performs. Along the way we stopped to call my brother in Smalltown, U.S.A., who told us that my mother, who nearly died three weeks ago, will go home from the rehab center on Friday. They don’t make ’em like they used to!

THURSDAY Because of the way my schedule works, Mrs. T and I have to grab our weekends whenever and wherever we can. Ours came today. No shows and no deadlines, so we slept late, then spent the rest of the day on the beach. (Oh, to be able to squeal like a small boy riding a big wave!) In the evening we took a sunset dinner cruise on a Cape May Whale Watch boat, which cruised up and down the coast as we nibbled on pizza and hot dogs and scanned the horizon in search of whales, dolphins, and pretty clouds.

FRIDAY I rose at seven, toasted a bagel, planted myself in a rocking chair on a porch across the street from the Atlantic Ocean, and spent the morning reading Simon Morrison’s The People’s Artist: Prokofiev’s Soviet Years, wishing with all my heart that we didn’t have to leave after lunch. The hardest part of living out of a suitcase is that you’re forever leaving places that you love.

I’ve been on a Prokofiev-Shostakovich kick for the past week, and Morrison’s book, which somehow escaped my attention when it was published in this country last fall, is a major contribution to the Prokofiev literature, a brutally honest study of a self-centered émigré composer who returned to the Soviet Union in order to advance his career, then discovered to his dismay that life there was infinitely harder and more hazardous than he’d been led to believe. It doesn’t make for pretty reading, though I don’t love Prokofiev’s music less for having learned that he was a ruthless opportunist–especially given the fact that he paid so high a price for his selfish folly.

At noon Mrs. T and I headed back to Connecticut. It took us nine hours to get there, three more than usual. In order to take our minds off the unmitigated hell of pre-Fourth-of-July traffic, we fired up the CD deck and listened to the Byrds, Neneh Cherry, Kiss Me, Kate and Lee Wiley all the way home, then fell with relief into bed and got a good night’s sleep.

(Last of three parts)

A rare, undated sound film of Sergei Prokofiev playing an excerpt from his operatic version of War and Peace, followed by a brief Russian-language interview:

For a translation, go here and scroll down.
To hear Prokofiev speak in English, go here.
(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

“It takes a great deal of Christianity to wipe out uncivilized Eastern instincts, such as falling in love at first sight.”
Rudyard Kipling, “Lisbeth”

SUNDAY I asked my Twitter followers to suggest places to eat in Pittsburgh. Several of them said that Pamela’s Diner was a must, so we went there on Sunday for a pre-matinée brunch. I ordered chorizo and eggs with Lyonnaise potatoes and a short stack of crepe-style pancakes on the side, and I wolfed down every last bite on my plate. Likewise Mrs. T, who opted for her standard combo (bacon and eggs over easy) and was, like me, staggered by the accompanying pancakes, whose crispy edges melt on the tongue. I like haute cuisine as much as the next flâneur, but high-quality all-American diner food rings my bell just as loudly, and Pamela’s made it clang.

After seeing the second installment of Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre’s production of Alan Ayckbourn’s House & Garden, about which I raved a few days later in The Wall Street Journal, we drove halfway across Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a good-news-bad-news affair, a monstrously busy thoroughfare surrounded by green fields and forests. Mrs. T looked at the scenery, I at the traffic, and by the time we got where we were going, I was worn out.

Fortunately, our not-too-fancy roadside hotel somewhere in the middle of the state had a hot tub, which helped dispel the horrors of the journey. What’s more, we put two bucks in the soda machine and it promptly disgorged three bottles of Coke and change, which we did not return to the front desk. Honesty has its limits, especially after a long day on the road.

MONDAY We breakfasted at a Cracker Barrel across the parking lot from the hotel. Sneer if you must, but long experience as a road warrior has taught me that you can count on getting decent food and friendly service whenever you patronize a Cracker Barrel. The grits are only fair, but the hashbrown casserole is terrific, and you can also buy Goo Goo Clusters in the Old(e) Country Stores that are attached to every Cracker Barrel restaurant. Mrs. T, being a New Englander, had never eaten a Goo Goo. Now she knows what she’s been missing.

After breakfast we returned to the road, and in mid-afternoon we arrived at Exit 0 on New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway, meaning that Cape May, the seaside resort town at the southern tip of New Jersey, was around the corner and over the bridge. Longtime readers of this blog know that I adore Cape May, a quaint little island village whose beach is lined with Victorian mansions that have been spruced up and turned into inns and guest houses. Mrs. T fell in love with Cape May the first time I took her there, and we’ve been going back ever since. So long as you don’t go at the height of the summer season, it’s cheery, companionable, surprisingly quiet, and nothing like the Jersey Shore of reality-TV renown.

TUESDAY One of the blessings of my busy life as a peripatetic drama critic is that Cape May is home to two serious theater companies. Cape May Stage is performing Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy, whose 2009 off-Broadway premiere impressed me so much that I’ve been wanting to see another production of the play to find out whether it has staying power. In addition, the East Lynne Theater Company has revived He and She, a rarely seen 1911 play by Rachel Crothers, a near-forgotten American playwright in whose work I’ve lately taken an interest. Having seen two of Crothers’ other plays mounted to memorable effect by New York’s Mint Theater, I was eager to find out whether this one was as good as Susan and God and A Little Journey, and East Lynne, like the Mint, specializes in giving a second chance to once-popular plays that have dropped off the scope.

Given all this, it made sense for me to pay a working visit to Cape May this summer. Alas, there’s no easy way to get there from Pittsburgh, so Mrs. T and I decided to make the trip by car, then drive the rest of the way home to Connecticut. That adds up to seven hundred miles on the road. Don’t let anybody tell you that I’m not serious about covering regional theater!

(Second of three parts)

* * *
Bette Davis and Walter Pidgeon perform a radio adaptation of Rachel Crothers’ Susan and God on Screen Guild Theater, originally broadcast by CBS in 1946: