Mel Tormé sings “Moonlight in Vermont” on TV in 1967. The pianist is Stan Kenton:

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

“This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have beieved it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.”

Rex Stout, Fer-de-Lance

In today’s Wall Street Journal I chronicle the best theater of 2020—all of it in the form of streaming webcasts. Here’s an excerpt.

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The last time I went to a theater was in early March, when I reviewed the off-Broadway premiere of Katori Hall’s “The Hot Wing King.” Like everybody else in the civilized world, I was well aware of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it had never occurred to me that a week later all the theaters in New York would be locked up tight and I would be confined to my Manhattan apartment until further notice. No sooner was the lockdown order issued, though, than I realized that I’d need either to discontinue my weekly drama column or approach it in a radically different way.

Within a week, the solution had become clear to me. San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater and Syracuse Stage, located in upstate New York, announced that they would be streaming broadcast-quality videos of stage productions that were already in previews at the time of the lockdown. Several other regional theater companies followed suit, and I thought—perhaps I should say hoped—that more such webcasts would soon fill the electronic pipeline. Sure enough, regional companies of all kinds started putting their shows online….

I believe that webcasting is destined to become a permanent part of the ecology of regional theater. Why? Because it will be a long time before playgoers, especially older ones, feel safe going to the theater again. If that’s right, then it’s nothing short of irresponsible for regional theaters of all sizes not to put their work on the web….

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Read the whole thing here.

“To assert dignity is to lose it.”

Rex Stout, The League of Frightened Men

“We’re Despicable,” written by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill for the soundtrack of Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, originally telecast by NBC in 1962:

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

“There is nothing like infantilism for keeping the eyes bright and the skin smooth.”

Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason

From 2007:

I’m writing these words at nine a.m. on Christmas Eve. Not a creature is stirring, not even Mrs. T, who isn’t a morning person, or my mother, who went to bed gratefully last night and with any luck will sleep a little while longer. The sun is shining in Smalltown, U.S.A., something it evidently felt no need to do last week. I showed up on Thursday after a more than usually tedious eleven-hour journey and plunged myself into the complicated routine of taking care of my seventy-eight-year-old mother, who broke her pelvis two months ago. Mrs. T flew out to Smalltown to look after her while I wrapped up my remaining deadlines for 2007, and now I’m here, too, making coffee, running errands, and exuding all the good cheer I have in me….

Read the whole thing here.

“Those who foresee the future and recognize it as tragic are often seized by a madness which forces them to commit the very acts which make it certain that what they dread shall happen.”

Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason