Terry Teachout's Blog, page 269

TT: Just because

American Ballet Theatre dances Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire in 1973. The score is Arnold Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht:

TT: The horror! The horror!

After a long and unbroken string of too-bad-to-be-true incidents, Mrs. T and I arrived last Friday at the alarming conclusion that we were both in a Philadelphia. For those unfamiliar with the one-act plays of David Ives, a Philadelphia is a metaphysical black hole "inside of what we know as reality." When you fall into a Philadelphia, everything—but everything—goes wrong.

No, I don't want to talk about it. I'm too tired. The two of us only just started to crawl out of our Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon, just in time to drive to New Jersey (which is, of course, dangerously close to Philadelphia) to dine with an aunt and uncle and see the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's production of I Capture the Castle . So in lieu of sharing the gory details, I'll post an excerpt from "The Philadelphia" that explains everything. Metaphysically speaking, that is.

* * *

AL: Because in a Philadelphia, no matter what you ask for, you can't get it. You ask for something, they're not gonna have it. You want to do something, it ain't gonna get done. You want to go somewhere, you can't get there from here.

MARK: Good God. So this is very serious.

AL: Just remember, Marcus. This is a condition named for the town that invented the cheese steak. Something that nobody in his right mind would willingly ask for.

MARK: And I thought I was just having a very bad day....

AL: Sure. Millions of people have spent entire lifetimes inside a Philadelphia and never even knew it. Look at the city of Philadelphia itself. Hopelessly trapped forever inside a Philadelphia. And do they know it?

MARK: Well what can I do? Should I just kill myself now and get it over with?

AL: You try to kill yourself in a Philadelphia, you're only gonna get hurt, babe.

MARK: So what do I do?

AL: Best thing to do is wait it out. Someday the great cosmic train will whisk you outta the City of Brotherly Love and off to someplace happier.

TT: Believe it or not

I'm taking a day off from my Wall Street Journal drama column. See you next Friday!

TT: Just because

Rudolf Serkin, Eugene Ormandy, and the Vienna Philharmonic play the first movement of Mozart's C Major Piano Concerto, K. 467:

TT: Almanac

"Life—how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere."

V.S. Pritchett, Midnight Oil

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.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Jan. 29, reviewed here)

• Fela! (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

• A Free Man of Color (epic comedy, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 9, reviewed here)

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

• The Merchant of Venice * (Shakespeare, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 9, reviewed here)

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

• The Pee-wee Herman Show (comic revue, G/PG-13, heavily larded with double entendres, closes Jan. 2, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, closes Jan. 16, original Broadway production reviewed here)

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, closes Feb. 20, 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)

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

IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Oklahoma! (musical, G, suitable for children, closes Dec. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• The Pitmen Painters (serious comedy, G, too demanding for children, closes Dec. 12, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"To be young is painful but exhilarating: to be certain and to pass into uncertainty and on to new certainties; to be conscious of the changes from one hour to the next; to be intolerant of others and blindly interested in oneself. It is so hard to remember youth, simply because one loses dramatic interest in oneself. One is harsh; one is all sentiment."

V.S. Pritchett, Midnight Oil (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence )

TV

Dave Brubeck: In His Own Sweet Way (Turner Classic Movies, Dec. 6, five p.m. ET). In honor of the pianist's ninetieth birthday, TCM is airing a new Bruce Ricker documentary for which Clint Eastwood, a well-known jazz fan, served as executive producer. I haven't screened it yet, but Ricker has a good track record, and my guess is that the show will contain a fair number of performance clips dating from the great days of the Brubeck Quartet, so tune in and see for yourself (TT).

TT: Snapshot

Patti LuPone sings the opening scene of Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock in a revival by the Acting Company that was telecast on PBS in 1986. The production was directed by John Houseman and Christopher J. Markle:



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

TT: Free for the asking

If you visit this blog more than occasionally, you've been encouraged numerous times to read A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell's twelve-volume roman fleuve about twentieth-century England, which was originally published between 1951 and 1975. In 2004 I wrote an essay about A Dance to the Music of Time for the New York Times Book Review in which I praised it in the strongest possible terms.

Should you need a stronger push, Levi Stahl, an accomplished litblogger who works for the University of Chicago Press, advises me that effective today, all twelve volumes of Dance will become available as e-books and will be marketed on all existing e-book platforms. What's more, A Question of Upbringing, the first volume in the cycle, can be downloaded for free. No catch: it's yours. The eleven other volumes will cost you eight bucks apiece.

This is, in my opinion, an absolutely brilliant piece of marketing, and I cannot commend it to you too enthusiastically. For more information, go here and here , then get cracking. You won't be sorry.

P.S. If the first-volume-for-free deal isn't showing up on your screen yet when you click on the second link, wait a couple of hours and try again. It'll be there.