Terry Teachout's Blog, page 199

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 Apr. 29, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Chinglish (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 29, reviewed here)

• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 22, 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)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (monologue, PG-13, closes Dec. 4, reviewed here)

• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, closes Dec. 11, reviewed here)

• 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)

IN GLENCOE, ILLINOIS:

• The Real Thing (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Dec. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Man and Boy (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Nov. 27, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN CHICAGO:

• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"It was in Rome during the autumn of 1877; a friend then living there but settled now in a South less weighted with appeals and memories happened to mention--which she might perfectly not have done--some simple and uninformed American lady of the previous winter, whose young daughter, a child of nature and of freedom, accompanying her from hotel to hotel, had 'picked up' by the wayside, with the best conscience in the world, a good-looking Roman, of vague identity, astonished at his luck, yet (so far as might be, by the pair) all innocently, all serenely exhibited and introduced: this at least till the occurrence of some small social check, some interrupting incident, of no great gravity or dignity, and which I forget I had never heard, save on this showing, of the amiable but not otherwise eminent ladies, who weren't in fact named, I think, and whose case had merely served to point a familiar moral; and it must have been just their want of salience that left a margin for the small pencil-mark inveterately signifying, in such connections, 'Dramatize, dramatize!' The result of my recognizing a few months later the sense of my pencil-mark was the short chronicle of Daisy Miller."

Henry James, preface to Daisy Miller

TT: Snapshot

Joanne Woodward and Laurence Olivier star in a 1977 TV version of William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba:



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

TT: Almanac

"Never underestimate the role of the will in the artistic life. Some writers are all will. Talent you can dispense with, but not will. Will is paramount. Not joy, not delight, but grim application."

Alan Bennett, The Habit of Art

TT: On the move

I'm making an unscheduled trip to Missouri to spend some time with my mother. I depart this morning and will be on the road all week. You can count on the usual almanac entries, videos, and theater-related postings, but everything else will be (like me) up in the air until I return to New York some time on Saturday.

To keep you additionally amused in my absence, I've completely updated the Top Five and "Out of the Past" modules of the right-hand column and added new entries to "TT in Commentary" and "TT Elsewhere." If you're in search of food for thought, take a look.

Till soon.

TT: Just because

Marian Anderson and Leopold Stokowski perform Schubert's "Ave Maria" in 1944:

TT: Almanac

"I desired the hitherto unattainable--to be left alone: what Henry James once described as 'uncontested possession of the long, sweet, stupid day': that peace to which no living creature has a natural right."

Francis Wyndham, "The Ground Hostess"

HARD SZELL

" In 1966 , NBC broadcast a Bell Telephone Hour program about George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra called 'One Man's Triumph.' Nowadays, most viewers would find it presumptuous for that phrase to be used as the title of a TV documentary about a hundred-man ensemble whose members included some of America's top instrumentalists. But no one would have thought to complain at the time--for Szell was universally believed to be solely responsible for the transformation of a merely regional group into a virtuoso ensemble..."

THE CHARMING CONSERVATIVE

" It's impossible to talk intelligibly about William F. Buckley Jr., without talking about his personality. Indeed, it's far more important to talk about his personality than about his philosophy, which was anything but original. He was a journalist, not a systematic thinker, and in addition to his personal charm, his other special gift was the ability to popularize the ideas of others. The Brits call such folk 'publicists,' and Buckley was, if such a thing exists, a publicist of genius..."

SCRIPT

Horton Foote, Horton Foote's Three Trips to Bountiful: Teleplay, Stageplay, and Screenplay . Originally written for live TV in 1953, The Trip to Bountiful, the poignant story of an old woman trapped in Houston who longs to visit her rural home one last time, was adapted by Foote for the stage and, in 1983, the screen . This invaluable 1993 volume, published by Southern Methodist University Press, contains all three scripts, accompanied by interviews with Foote and his various collaborators. I can't think of a better way to study the differences between the three media--or to deepen your familiarity with a once-obscure play that is now rightly regarded as an American classic (TT).