Terry Teachout's Blog, page 237

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, reviewed here)

• Born Yesterday (comedy, G/PG-13, closes July 31, reviewed here)

• The House of Blue Leaves (serious comedy, PG-13, closes July 23, 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)

• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, closes July 3, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

• The Motherf**ker with the Hat (serious comedy, R, adult subject matter, closes June 26, 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)

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON ON BROADWAY:

• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, closes May 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN LOS ANGELES:

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, Los Angeles remounting of Broadway production with original cast, adult subject matter, closes May 15, Broadway run reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"The reward of renunciation is some good greater than the thing renounced. To renounce with no vision of such a good, from fear or in automatic obedience to a formula, is to weaken the springs of life, and to diminish the soul's resistance to this world."

Hugh Kingsmill, Matthew Arnold

TT: Snapshot

A rare kinescope of the séance scene from Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, originally telecast live on CBS in 1956. The cast includes Coward, Lauren Bacall, and Claudette Colbert:



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

TT: Almanac

"A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends."

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

TT: Just because

Josh White sings "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out":

TT: Almanac

"It is only those who hope to transform human beings who end up by burning them, like the waste product of a failed experiment."

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

TT: Last words

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

W.H. Auden, "Epitaph on a Tyrant" (courtesy of A Commonplace Blog)

TT: Almanac

"It is essential for people who practice no regular profession to take long holidays from their own lives. A man who goes regularly to work is in a strong position. From the moment he leaves his home in the morning until he returns there at night he is completely free from his domestic and social life. He is living among other men and business associates and absorbed in a pursuit quite alien to his family and personal interests. But men of leisure and writers are alike in this, that they never have a separation of interests. Their relationship with friends and relations and the routine of their day are invariable and interconnected. The more irritable have to get away or go off their heads."

Evelyn Waugh, "Travel—and Escape from Your Friends"

TT: Just because

Louis Armstrong and the All Stars play "Muskrat Ramble" on TV in 1958. The band includes Edmond Hall on clarinet, Trummy Young on trombone, Billy Kyle on piano, Mort Herbert on bass, and Danny Barcelona on drums:

TT: All done (for now)

Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater gave its final performance of Danse Russe on Saturday night. The next day I was in New York and on the aisle again, attending a matinée preview of David Ives' new play, The School for Lies. Later this week I'll be seeing Derek Jacobi's King Lear, the world premiere of Tony Kushner's The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures, and the New York premiere of A Minister's Wife, a musical version of George Bernard Shaw's Candida that I saw and loved when it opened in Chicago two years ago. On Friday I fly down to Florida to give a commencement address--my first--and on Saturday I fly back to New York to see Lynn Nottage's new play.

Do I need a rest? Very much so. Am I going to get one? Not for a while. Do I care? Only a little bit. Not only do I love to go to the theater, but the premiere of Danse Russe was pleasing in every possible way. For openers, Paul Moravec and I were exceedingly fortunate in our collaborators, starting with Paul Corujo, Christopher Lorge, Corinn Kopczynski, Matt Maness, Lincoln Miller, and Jason Switzer, the members of our cast, who brought our characters to life with absolute skill and professionalism. The production, directed and designed by Leland Kimball, was completely successful--I learned a vast amount from watching Lee at work--and I was delighted by Amy Chmielewski's clever costumes and Dominic Chacon's atmospheric lighting. As for Andrew Kurtz, who runs Center City Opera Theater and who conducted the premiere of Danse Russe, Paul and I couldn't be more grateful to him for making it possible for us to write our second opera, and for bringing it to the stage with such flair.

The only thing that went wrong was that I took a spectacular pratfall backstage on opening night just before Paul and I got the cue for our curtain call: I put a foot wrong, got an arm tangled in the rigging, bruised my right hand, and tore the heel off one of my shoes. None of this stopped me from appearing on stage moments later to take a bow, but it did amuse my colleagues, who had yet to discover how preternaturally clumsy I am. Otherwise, all was bliss, and judging by the enthusiastic applause at the end of each performance, our audiences felt the same way.

It's disorienting to sit in a theater and watch your own words being sung and spoken from the stage. Throughout the opening night of Danse Russe, I was completely preoccupied with the audience's response, so much so that I seemed to feel nothing in my own right, and I was astonished to notice when I went out into the lobby after the show that my shirt was was wet with sweat. On Saturday I was able to pay closer attention to the work itself, but my feelings remained oddly impersonal, almost like an out-of-body experience. It never really seemed as though I'd written the piece that was being performed. (The same thing happened to me during the opening night of The Letter.) I was so detached from any sense of personal authorship that I actually got chills at the end of the opera when Diaghilev's ghost doffed his hat and bowed to Stravinsky. That was when I knew that Paul and I had done what we set out to do.

Would that Danse Russe could run forever, but even if it could, I'd still have had to return to New York on Sunday and resume my day job. Such, alas, is theatrical life. You hurl yourself into the magical backstage world of a new show and make wonderful new friends...and then the set is struck, the sun comes up, and it's all over. Perhaps that very transience is an essential part of the fun, but I already miss the world of Danse Russe more than I can say, and experience has taught me that there's no cure for the resulting emptiness other than to write a new show. May it happen soon!