Terry Teachout's Blog, page 139

TT: The way to the stars

Opening nights notwithstanding, life goes on, and so does my day job. In today's Wall Street Journal I review Goodspeed Musicals' outstanding revival of Carousel . Here's an excerpt.

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Fifty years ago, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II owned Broadway. Today their heartwarming musicals are viewed askance by younger theatergoers suckled on the sour irony of postmodern pop culture. To do a show like "The Sound of Music" without winking at the audience is to court catcalls. Yet it's impossible to perform a Rodgers-and-Hammerstein musical effectively without taking its uncynical romanticism seriously. If you don't believe in your secret heart that love conquers all, you'd better stick to Stephen Sondheim.

Is it possible to update Rodgers and Hammerstein by viewing their shows through the prism of contemporary attitudes? Nicholas Hytner tried to do something like that in his famously "dark" Royal National Theatre production of "Carousel," which transferred to Lincoln Center Theater with great success in 1994. More recently, Charles Newell of Chicago's Court Theatre directed a radically desentimentalized "Carousel" that revitalized the show by presenting it on a near-empty stage à la "Our Town." The result was the most effective Rodgers and Hammerstein revival that I've ever seen, a production that changed my view of a show about which I'd long had mixed feelings. Now Rob Ruggiero, one of America's most accomplished musical-comedy directors, has mounted "Carousel" on the tiny stage of Goodspeed Musicals' 398-seat riverside auditorium, and though his production is not so adventurous as Mr. Newell's stripped-down version, it is identically effective--and immaculately cast....

Mr. Ruggiero first got on my scope with his masterly 2007 Goodspeed revival of "1776." Since then he's directed comparably persuasive Goodspeed productions of "Annie Get Your Gun," "Camelot" and "Show Boat," the last of which succeeded in solving the nagging problem of how to present the grandest of all Broadway musicals on a small scale without making it look cheap and cramped. Mr. Ruggiero and Michael Schweikardt, who designed the sets for "Show Boat," have joined forces again for "Carousel," and once more they've brought off a miracle of creative compression. Is it possible to make an audience see a carousel without actually putting one on stage? It is at Goodspeed.

You can't make "Carousel" work without a knockout Billy Bigelow, and Mr. Ruggiero has turned the trick with Mr. Snyder, who starred on Broadway in the ill-fated "Cry-Baby." As good as he was in "Cry-Baby," Mr. Snyder is, if possible, even better in "Carousel." Not only does he have a powerfully charismatic stage presence--he'll put you in mind of Mark Ruffalo--but his voice is all but operatic in size....

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Read the whole thing here .

TT: A week of Satchmo (V)

Louis Armstrong's complete 1970 appearance on The Johnny Cash Show. He sings "Crystal Chandeliers" and "Ramblin' Rose," followed by a duet with Cash on "Blue Yodel #9":

TT: Almanac

"An actor can practice anywhere any time with anybody, and most of them do."

Rex Stout, Death of a Dude

TT: Boy, did this feel good!

TT: The moment's over

The first preview of Satchmo at the Waldorf was extremely successful. We'll soon see whether subsequent audiences are as enthusiastic. That said, the first-nighters showed every sign of loving it, and then some.

Standing ovations are nice--and yes, we got one--but Satchmo at the Waldorf still has a long way to go before crossing the finish line, and all of us know it. While John Douglas Thompson, Gordon Edelstein, and I permitted ourselves to revel briefly in the applause, we were already discussing possible nips and tucks in the script ten minutes after the auditorium had emptied out. (What a pleasure it is to work with people who don't know the meaning of the words "good enough"!) I even wrote a couple of new lines for tonight's performance before hitting the hay. By the time most of you read these words, we'll be back in rehearsal. We're determined to make this show as good as it can possibly be.

To all of you who sent good wishes yesterday, my heartfelt thanks. You buoyed me up.

Now, back to work!

TT: Almanac

"When you come into the theater, you have to be willing to say, 'We're all here to undergo a communion, to find out what the hell is going on in this world.' If you're not willing to say that, what you get is entertainment instead of art, and poor entertainment at that."

David Mamet, Three Uses of the Knife: On the Nature and Purpose of Drama

TT: A week of Satchmo (IV)

Louis Armstrong and the All Stars perform "The Bare Necessities" on the BBC in 1968:

TT: Second cast

I don't often have work-related anxiety dreams, but I had a doozy of one after staggering home last night from a twelve-hour-long tech rehearsal for Satchmo at the Waldorf .

I dreamed that a second production of the show was opening next week in Syracuse, and that everyone at Shakespeare & Company, myself included, had been so busy getting ready for our opening night in Massachusetts that we'd completely forgotten to send the latest version of the script to New York so that the other actor who was playing the double role of Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser could learn all his new lines. The funny part of the dream is that the "actor" in question was--wait for it-- Little Walter . (I also dreamed that a woman was playing Armstrong and Glaser in a third production of the show, but I can't remember any details of that part of the dream.)

The dream was so vivid that I woke up dead certain that I needed to get up at once, throw on my clothes, drive to the company office in Lenox, print out the revised script, and ship it off to Syracuse via Federal Express. Then I looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was three-thirty in the morning. I laughed, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

I'm still wondering who the woman in the other production was, though....

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Little Walter plays "Little Walter's Jump" live in 1967:

TT: Almanac

"I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll cry. And maybe, one day we'll do something so magnificent, the whole universe will get goosebumps."

Jane Wagner, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

TT: A week of Satchmo (III)

Louis Armstrong and Dean Martin perform a medley of "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody," "Sleepy Time Down South," "Mississippi Mud," "Down by the Riverside," "Swanee," "Bill Bailey," "Gotta Travel On," "A Hot Time in the Old Town," and "When the Saints Go Marching In" on The Dean Martin Show in 1966, accompanied by Les Brown and His Band of Renown: