Terry Teachout's Blog, page 167

TT: Almanac

"Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity."

T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral

TT: Minority report

In today's Wall Street Journal I have nothing very good to say about the Broadway transfer of Bruce Norris' Clybourne Park . Here's an excerpt.

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It happens that I was on the road throughout the Off-Broadway run of "Clybourne Park," and ever since then I've been wondering what I missed. Was it really possible that a playwright had finally gotten up the nerve to take an unsparingly honest look at race relations in America? Stranger things have happened--but not this time around. "Clybourne Park" turns out to be a runny egg, a play that pretends to be daring but takes the utmost care not to be too challenging to the assumptions of its viewers.

As you probably know by now, Mr. Norris' play is a variation on "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play about the Youngers, a black family that moves to a white neighborhood in Chicago. In the first act of "Clybourne Park," set in 1959, we meet Bev and Russ (Christina Kirk and Frank Wood), who are selling their house to the Youngers (who are talked about but never seen). Also present and very much accounted for are their black maid (Crystal A. Dickinson), her husband (Damon Gupton), and a group of outraged neighbors who all claim to be good liberals but draw the line at living next door to blacks: "Who shall we invite next, the Red Chinese?"

The second act flashes forward to the same house a half-century later. Sure enough, white flight turned Clybourne Park into a crime-ridden ghetto, but one that has since been transformed yet again, this time by the equally inexorable forces of gentrification. Enter Lindsey and Steve (Annie Parisse and Jeremy Shamos), a well-heeled young white couple who want to buy the Younger house and turn it into something bigger, fancier and tackier. This displeases Kevin and Lena (Mr. Gupton and Ms. Dickinson), a buppie couple who are worried about the effect that such a renovation would have on the "historical value" of the neighborhood. What follows is a "God of Carnage"-style free-for-all in which we discover that Lindsey and Steve are just as racially insensitive, albeit in a more genteel way, as their forebears.

What makes the success of "Clybourne Park" so interesting is that American theater is a monoculture, a thick-walled bubble in which you'll look long and hard to find anyone with an opinion about anything that is anywhere other than well to the left of center. The trouble with monocultures, of course, is that they tend not to encourage self-criticism. Hence it's always encouraging whenever a playwright dares to take shots at his own side. The bad news is that the comedy in "Clybourne Park" amounts to little more than lazy caricature. This is especially evident in the first act, which is peopled with vapid stick figures who appear to be drawn not from real life but from an Eisenhower-era TV sitcom. If that's Mr. Norris' idea of satire, he needs to sharpen his pencil....

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Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"Deep experience is never peaceful."

Henry James, "Madame de Mauves"

TT: So you want to see a show?

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 Sept. 9, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes July 1, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, unsuitable for children, all performances sold out last week, closes June 2, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren't actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 17, reviewed here)

• Venus in Fur (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 17, 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)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND OFF BROADWAY:

• Beyond the Horizon (drama, PG-13, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

• The Lady from Dubuque (drama, PG-13, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

• Lost in Yonkers (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Saturday, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"Why, sir, a man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him."

Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson)

TT: Snapshot

An extremely rare color kinescope of an excerpt from Ernie Kovacs' Silent Show , originally telecast on NBC in 1957:



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

TT: Almanac

"Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive."

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

FILM

Damsels in Distress . At long last, Whit Stillman is back, this time with a poignant little low-budget romcom about college life whose protagonists, a band of invincibly innocent young women led by Greta Gerwig, endeavor to socialize and redeem the young men they love by starting an international dance craze. (Well, sort of.) Fey, whimsical, talky, and quintessentially Stillmanesque, Damsels in Distress proves that the writer-director of Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco didn't lose his feather-light touch by taking a twelve-year-long vacation (TT)

BOOK

Charlie Louvin with Benjamin Whitner, Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers (Igniter/HarperCollins, $22.99). A hair-raisingly frank memoir by half of the greatest vocal duet in the history of country music. Ira Louvin was the hell-raiser with the sky-high tenor voice who got all the ink, but it was his brother Charlie who lived to tell the tale of how the Louvin Brothers went from picking cotton in Georgia to singing on the Opry--and how Ira cracked up along the way. Satan Is Real may be ghostwritten, but it sounds completely authentic, and every page will hold your attention (TT).

TT: Lookback

From 2004:

Reformers, like saints, can be awfully awkward people. Their singlemindedness is no small part of what makes them effective, as well as uncomfortable to be with. I've known a few, but I've never tried to get close to them. No matter how friendly they may seem, I always get the feeling that they'd be perfectly happy to have me guillotined if they thought it necessary....

Read the whole thing here .