Terry Teachout's Blog, page 170

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)

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

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren't actively prudish, 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)

• Saint Joan (drama, G/PG-13, unsuitable for children, extended through May 13, reviewed here)

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

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• Beyond the Horizon (drama, PG-13, closes Apr. 15, reviewed here)

• The Lady from Dubuque (drama, PG-13, closes Apr. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Look Back in Anger (drama, PG-13, closes Apr. 8, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"For any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience."

Rebecca West, The Court and the Castle

TT: Earl Scruggs, R.I.P.

A master of American music died today.

In lieu of restating the obvious, here's a televised version of one of my favorite Flatt and Scruggs songs, "Don't Let Your Deal Go Down":

TT: Snapshot

Joe Orton's What the Butler Saw, directed by Barry Davis and originally telecast on the BBC in 1987. The cast includes Dinsdale Landen, Tessa Peake-Jones, and Prunella Scales:



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

TT: Almanac

"To write a successful scene, one must stringently apply and stringently answer the following three questions:

"1. Who wants what from whom?

"2. What happens if they don't get it?

"3. Why now?"

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

TT: Hilton Kramer, R.I.P.

Hilton Kramer, who died today after a long and debilitating illness, was a great art critic who also founded an important magazine, The New Criterion . He was, like so many other great critics, more than a little bit narrow in his enthusiasms, but whenever he wrote about the artists who engaged his sensibilities most powerfully, he never failed to be illuminating.

I last had occasion to write about Hilton in 2007, when he brought out his final book, The Triumph of Modernism: The Art World, 1985-2005 :

Kramer is best known for his unfavorable reviews, and in recent years he has spent an ever-increasing share of his time commenting on politics. As a result, too many younger readers are unaware that he is one of the best critical advocates we have. I saw several of the shows reviewed in The Triumph of Modernism when I was first starting to take a serious interest in art, and I vividly remember how reading what Kramer had to say about such critically undervalued modern painters as Fairfield Porter, Arthur Dove and Richard Diebenkorn helped give shape to my inchoate excitement. For all his gifts as a demolition man, it is this aspect of his work that continues to mean the most to me. Nothing is harder to write than a good review, and nobody writes better ones than Hilton Kramer.

John Podhoretz, who has written well about Hilton's political passions, portrays him as a difficult man who was hard to like. For my part, I found him so intimidating that it was impossible for me to get to know him more than superficially. I regret that, but I am proud both to have known Hilton at all and to have published in The New Criterion. He was a man of the highest possible seriousness, forthright and fearless, and I expect that he will not soon be forgotten.

UPDATE: The New York Times obituary is here .

Franklin Einspruch gets Kramer exactly right.

TT: Lookback

From 2005:

I found this note from an old friend, written apropos of a recent posting: "I felt, during my chemotherapy, that I lived in the Goldberg Variations, because it was the universe."

I've never undergone chemotherapy (though I've watched it being given many times), but I have had a not entirely dissimilar experience with Bach's Goldberg Variations. If you're going to have mystical experiences accompanied by a piece of music, I guess you can't do much better than the Goldbergs, and should the time ever come when I find myself in an extremity as dire as being on the business end of chemotherapy, I hope I'll have the presence of mind to recall that reassuring fact....

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"Yet when truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds."

Roger Scruton, "Should He Have Spoken?"

TT: Just because

Mitch Miller's "Horn Belt Boogie," composed by Alec Wilder as the last movement of his Jazz Suite for Horn Quartet and Rhythm Section and recorded for Columbia in 1951. The instrumentalists heard on this recording include Ray Alonge, John Barrows, Jim Buffington, and Gunther Schuller on horn and Stan Freeman on harpsichord. This was one of Dennis Brain 's favorite pop records:



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

TT: Almanac

"Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia