Terry Teachout's Blog, page 216

TT: Almanac

"Her childhood, then her adolescence, had taught her patience, hope, silence and the easy manipulation of the weapons and virtues of all prisoners."

Colette, Chéri

TT: Snapshot

Francia Russell talks about George Balanchine's Concerto Barocco and rehearses it with the Dutch National Ballet:



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

TT: Family album

I'm relieved to report that Mrs. T and I finally made it to Oregon! Today we're driving from Portland to Ashland, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival . We'll spend a week there, after which we fly to Chicago and drive north to American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin, about which more in due course.

In the meantime, I thought you might enjoy seeing some pictures of the place where I've been spending the past few days. If, like me, you were born in a small town that never got any bigger, loved your parents in a more or less uncomplicated way, and had a mostly happy childhood, then there's a good chance that you'll spend a fair amount of your middle age remembering with fondness what it felt like to grow up. I did and I do, and I love seeing what my home town looked like when I was young.

Just the other day I joined a Facebook page started by some anonymous benefactor who posted dozens of old photographs of Smalltown. Here are a few of my favorites:

TT: Almanac

"Whether you are dealing with an animal or a child, to convince is to weaken."

Colette, The Pure and the Impure

TT: Just because

Anita O'Day and Roy Eldridge perform "Let Me Off Uptown" with the Gene Krupa Orchestra in 1942:

TT: Almanac

"To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one."

Colette, Paris from My Window

TT: Revisiting an old friend

It's been quite a while since I last read anything by Colette , one of my favorite writers, so I recently decided to spend some time getting reacquainted with her, and this week's almanac entries will reflect the fruits of my labor (if that's the word for so pleasurable a task).

In addition to being a remarkable writer, Colette was also one of the most photogenic artists of the twentieth century, not merely in her youth but long after arthritis had gnarled her features and condemned her to an indoor life of immobility and pain. The painting that you see above (the artist is Jacques Humbert) dates from 1896, and shows her as a beautiful young woman, teetering on the edge of knowingness. The second image is a reproduction of a photographic portrait of Colette shot by Irving Penn in 1951. Both images capture something of her intriguing, ever-elusive essence.

I also spent a few minutes trolling through YouTube in search of Colette-related video, and came up with two clips from Colette, a film documentary made in 1951 by Yannick Bellon. (Yes, it's in French, but it's subtitled.) Alas, I can't embed the clips, but you can view them by going here and here . Colette herself appears on camera and can be heard speaking in both sequences, the second of which is a survey of her fascinating career as a music-hall performer.

If you happen to be a Francophone, you can also listen to a 1950 radio program about Colette by going here . The piece of music heard at the beginning is Ravel's Jeux d'eau.

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The Glyndebourne Festival's 1987 production of Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges , designed by Maurice Sendak, directed by Frank Corsaro, and conducted by Simon Rattle. The libretto is by Colette:

TT: They call it stormy Sunday

I was supposed to fly from St. Louis to New York on Sunday, collect Mrs. T, then proceed on Monday to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival . Alas, the weather failed to cooperate, and my flight to New York was summarily canceled, forcing me to spend an unscheduled night at an airport hotel, dining on free hot dogs , enjoying Turner Classic Movies and the hot tub, and trying not to think about the next day's forecast any more than I could help.

Alas, I have no idea where I'll be by the time you read these words. Should my luck improve significantly, I'll fly into LaGuardia Airport on Monday morning, take a cab to Kennedy Airport, meet Mrs. T there, and head for Oregon. If not…well, I haven't a clue. And even if my luck does hold, it means that I'll be flying halfway across the country in one direction, then turning around and flying all the way across the country in the other direction. The only thing of which I'm sure is that a thoroughly lousy day awaits me.

More as it happens, unless I'm paralyzed by despair and/or exasperation.

TT: The good old bad old days

In today's Wall Street Journal I report on the new off-Broadway production of Rent . Here's an excerpt.

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Fifteen years ago, Jonathan Larson's "Rent" was the hippest musical on Broadway--which wasn't saying much. Virtually all of the musicals that opened there in the '90s were totally forgettable and are deservedly forgotten. "Rent," on the other hand, is well remembered, partly because it stayed open until 2008 and partly because it was the most influential show of the post-Sondheim era, a rock musical that contrived to put AIDS, drug addiction, drag queenery and homo- and bisexuality onstage without simultaneously putting off the tourist trade. Nor does its 5,123-performance Broadway run appear to have exhausted the marketability of "Rent." A new Off-Broadway production has just opened at New World Stages, the complex to which "Avenue Q" transferred two years ago after its own long run on Broadway.

Despite the fact that Michael Greif, the show's first director, has restaged it, this "Rent" is not a remounting but a true revival, featuring an all-new cast and freshly designed sets by Mark Wendland whose metal scaffolding echoes the fire-escape motif of Oliver Smith's now-legendary décor for "West Side Story." At the same time, no attempt has been made to update the show, and its overall effect is essentially the same. All that's changed is the people in the audience: They're still young, but precisely because they're so youthful, Mr. Larson's affectionate portrait of bohemian New York in the early '90s clearly comes across to them not as an exercise in nostalgia for the good old bad old days but as a theme-park recreation of a world they never knew. They might as well be watching "Woodstock"--or "West Side Story," for that matter.

And what of the show itself? If you were following the theater scene in 1996, you'll remember the wild hoopla that greeted the opening of "Rent," which snagged the best-musical Tony and even won a Pulitzer Prize. No doubt the fact that Mr. Larson died the day after the dress rehearsal for the original Off-Broadway production had something to do with the show's enthusiastic reception, but to revisit "Rent" a decade and a half after the fact is to suspect that its drag-queens-are-people-too subject matter was the real source of its popularity. Viewed in the harsh light of hindsight, "Rent" is by turns chirpy and sentimental...

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Read the whole thing here .

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 Jan. 8, all 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, all performances sold out last week, 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)

IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:

• Show Boat (musical, G, suitable for bright children, closes Sept. 17, reviewed here)

IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Oklahoma! (musical, G, remounting of 2010 production, suitable for children, closes Oct. 2, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Master Class (drama, G/PG-13, not suitable for children, closes Sept. 4, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN LENOX, MASS:

• As You Like It (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)

• The Memory of Water (serious comedy, PG-13, some adult subject matter, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)

• Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, violence and some adult subject matter, closes Sept. 3, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN OGUNQUIT, ME.:

• The Music Man (musical, G, suitable for children, closes Aug. 20, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• As You Like It (Shakespeare, G/PG-13, reviewed here)