Alas, I found even less to like about Annie Hall this time around. Such innovations as the subtextual subtitles, the animated sequence, even the cameo by Marshall McLuhan now strike me as cutesy. Far more exasperating, though, is Allen’s both-sides-of-the-street portrayal of his neuroses, which he pretends to mock while actually reveling in them, proving as they do that he is not as other men…
In Friday’s Wall Street Journal I reviewed Westport Country Playhouse’s webcast of Michael Gotch’s Tiny House. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
One by one, America’s theaters are turning on the post-pandemic lights, among them several top-tier troupes that are only just getting around to putting shows online. The latest, Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse, has just brought us a newly filmed play, Michael Gotch’s “Tiny House,” that is acted and directed with sure-footed skill and is both charming and bitingly witty—a rare and noteworthy example of a comedy filmed without an audience that comes off without a trace of awkwardness….
“Tiny House” is a sharp-tongued yet unabashedly affectionate satire whose protagonists, Sam (Sara Bues ) and Nick (Denver Milord), are an ultra-progressive millennial couple who have wearied of “the ugly” of urban life and the high political anxieties of the moment. (Donald Trump’s shadow is visible at all times, even though his name, à la Voldemort, is never spoken aloud.) So they’ve decided to move to the woods, go off the grid and set up housekeeping in a 150-square-foot “downwardly mobile home” that is “solar, bio-friendly, 100% recycled materials, tiny carbon footprint, completely self-sustaining.”…
The original cast of West Side Story performs “Cool” on The Ed Sullivan Show. The song is by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and the choreography is by Jerome Robbins. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on September 14, 1958:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
