About Last Night

The first big-budget commodity musical to hit Broadway since the end of the Covid-19 lockdown has now opened—at a theater named after a man who despised such shows. It couldn’t be more ironic that the Stephen Sondheim Theatre is home to “Mrs. Doubtfire,” a new stage version of Chris Columbus’ 1993 screen comedy about a divorced father who dresses up as a woman and becomes nanny to his children so that he can see more of them. And while “Mrs. Doubtfire” is less slavishly faithful to the film than is the norm, it is nevertheless a fairly straightforward attempt to treat a popular movie of the recent past not as a springboard for fresh, creative endeavor but as an exploitable economic commodity that can be “repurposed” for further profit.

The catch is twofold: Not only was “Mrs. Doubtfire” a mediocre movie, but it existed mainly to provide Robin Williams with another of his hypermanic star turns. And while extremely serious money has gone into the show, no amount of money can make Rob McClure into another Robin Williams….

Adam Driver sings “Being Alive” (from Stephen Sondheim’s Company) in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story:

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

“It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.”

George Santayana, The Life of Reason

“Where there’s marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.”

Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard

An extended version of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” interview with Stephen Sondheim. This longer version aired on CBS after Sondheim’s recent death:

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

“A happy love-affair will make a drama simply because it is dramatic; it depends on an ultimate yes or no. But a happy marriage is not dramatic; perhaps it would be less happy if it were.”

G.K. Chesterton, George Bernard Shaw

From 2018:

Part of the durability of [Paul Taylor’s] dances arises from the subtlety with which they dramatize the opposing polarities of man’s divided self— male/female, dark/light, primitive/civilized, innocent/knowing—and set them in motion on stage, there to collide with one another, sometimes comically and sometimes fatally. Rarely does a Taylor dance express an emotion without also hinting at its inversion. This dualism is part of what makes his work at once ambiguous and accessible…