Terry Teachout's Blog, page 279

TT: Almanac

"I've often felt that life is a hard deal and it's unrelentingly tragic and an uphill fight. But you can on a day walk into a movie house and for an hour-and-a-half see Fred Astaire dancing and escape in it. Then you walk back out of the darkness into the hot sun and into real life. You were at least refreshed. Like stopping in a bar on a hot day and getting a cold beer and you rest for 10 minutes and then go on with your journey. Instead of the Bergmans and filmmakers like that, is it the escapist filmmakers that are making a more practical contribution to life by giving you this respite?"

Woody Allen, interviewed in The Wall Street Journal (Sept. 15, 2010)

TT: Unforgettable—in more than one way

Hep Records has just released a hitherto-unknown 1949 concert recording by the King Cole Trio. Seeing as how Nat Cole is not only one of the great vocal balladeers but my all-time favorite jazz pianist, it seemed logical to write a "Sightings" column for today's Wall Street Journal taking note of the occasion--but I widened my field of fire to talk about other artists who, like Cole, are exceptionally good at more than one thing:

Sometimes it makes sense, or appears to at first glance, when talented artists choose to take up a second line of creative endeavor. Only on closer inspection does the extent and originality of their achievement become clearer. It may have seemed logical enough in 1971 that Clint Eastwood should have wanted to try his hand at directing "Play Misty for Me"--but who could have predicted that the hottest action star of the '60s and '70s would evolve into the auteur of such emotionally complex films as "A Perfect World" and "Letters from Iwo Jima"? Or that Edgar Degas, who in his lifetime exhibited only one sculpture, "The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer," should have completed several dozen other three-dimensional works discovered after his death in 1917 that are now generally thought to be identical in quality and importance to his paintings?

I find it at once inspiring and frustrating to watch a genius pull a second rabbit out of his hat....

Read the whole thing here .

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Nat King Cole performs "Little Girl" in 1950 with Irving Ashby on guitar, Joe Comfort on bass, and Jack Costanzo on conga drum:

TT: Emo-cracy comes to Broadway

In today's Wall Street Journal drama column I review two Broadway openings, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and La Bête . The first impressed me, the second bored me. Here's an excerpt.

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"Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" is a not-exactly-history play in which the life of America's seventh president is given what might be called the Jon Stewart treatment (i.e., lots and lots of Irony Lite) and set to the style of rock known as "emo" (i.e., unabashed emotion accompanied by a just-kidding wink that draws the deadly sting of sincerity). And what are the results? Mixed--but also, if a middle-aged critic may dare to say so, hugely encouraging.

In "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson," whose book is by Alex Timbers, Old Hickory (played with swaggering panache by Benjamin Walker) becomes a rock-star politician who speaks in the language of today, as do all his fellow characters. He's an Indian-hating populist from rural Tennessee who trades on his sex appeal to get the plain people to vote for him--think Bill Clinton with a guitar--then discovers, much to his surprise and dismay, that he hasn't any idea of how to actually run the damn country.

Comically speaking, "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" is a one-joke show that gets three-quarters of its laughs from the incongruity of hearing 19th-century characters use 21st-century slang: "The Era of Good Feelings? Huh! More like the Era of Bad Feelings! You guys are so dead!" Politically speaking, it's little more than an ultra-predictable mashup of Howard Zinn and "Dances With Wolves" (white people bad, red people good). We are, in short, in the land of cable-TV sketch comedy...

Michael Friedman's hard-edged, guitar-driven score is, however, another story. The music is tuneful, the lyrics are honest-to-God smart, and one of the songs, "Ten Little Indians" (which is wonderfully sung by Emily Young), is catchy enough to hum on the way home. Nor is there the slightest trace of slickness: This is real rock, not the synthetic kind...

I confess to being impressed by the sheer gall, if nothing else, of the producers who decided that it was time to bring back "La Bête." Though it went over well in England, winning an Olivier Award, David Hirson's verse comedy was a disastrous failure on Broadway, where it opened in 1991, was greeted by universal critical catcalls, and closed 25 performances later, draped in ignominy from head to toe. So why in the name of the bottom line is this awful play--for it is truly, excruciatingly awful--back for a second go-round?

The answer is Mark Rylance, who starred in "Boeing-Boeing" and is now giving another over-the-top performance as Valere, a fathomlessly vulgar, monstrously vain street player who has been thrust upon Elomire (David Hyde Pierce), the celebrated 17th-century playwright, and his resident drama troupe by the princess (Joanna Lumley) who is the company's all-powerful patroness. Mr. Rylance comes out belching and gets grosser from there, embellishing virtually every line he speaks with a fresh bit of business from his bottomless bag of comic trickery. Mr. Rylance is one of the finest stage comedians we have, but he has nothing to work with this time around. "La Bête" is a wan pastiche of Molière whose pancake-flat couplets rattle on endlessly, pointlessly and--above all--pretentiously....

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Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains."

Marcel Proust, À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs (Within a Budding Grove)

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:

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

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

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

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

OFF BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, original Broadway production 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)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Little Foxes (drama, G, unsuitable for children, brilliantly acted but tritely staged, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• Hamlet (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 30, reviewed here)

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, violence and adult subject matter, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

• She Loves Me (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, closes Oct. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

• Night and Day (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CLEVELAND:

• Othello (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Oct. 31, reviewed here)

• An Ideal Husband (comedy, G, too complicated for children, closes Oct. 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN LOS ANGELES:

• The Glass Menagerie (drama, G, West Coast remounting of original New Haven/off-Broadway production, too dark for children, off-Broadway run reviewed here)

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, West Coast remounting of original Chicago/off-Broadway production, violence and adult subject matter, off-Broadway run reviewed here)

NIGHTCLUB

Gary Burton Quartet (Blue Note, Sixth Ave. at West Third St. Oct. 19-24, 8:00 and 10:30 each night). A rare New York club appearance by the great vibraharpist, featuring the North American debut of his latest small-group lineup. At center stage is Julian Lage, the guitar prodigy whom Burton discovered in 2004 and featured on two of his finest Concord Jazz albums, Generations and Next Generation . Scott Colley is the bassist, Antonio Sanchez the drummer. A must-hear event (TT).

TT: Almanac

"Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations and on the strength of various qualities and advantages."

Marcel Proust, Sodome et Gomorrhe (Cities of the Plain)

TT: Snapshot

Carl Sandburg appears as the mystery guest on a 1960 episode of What's My Line?:



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

TT: Mamet, with an accent

I review the Broadway premiere of David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre in the Greater New York section of today's Wall Street Journal, and the verdict is mostly very positive. Here's an excerpt.

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David Mamet is the most American of playwrights. Not only do his snarlingly competitive characters take a zero-sum view of human relationships, but they express it with words that fly through the air like bullets in search of a body. So what could have possessed Patrick Stewart--make that Sir Patrick Stewart--to wrestle with "A Life in the Theatre," Mr. Mamet's 1977 play about a pair of actors, one old and one young, who are battling for dominance over one another? Beats me, but I'm glad it did, for Mr. Stewart's performance, strange though it may sound from time to time, is in the end both deeply comprehending and painfully touching, just like the play itself.

I can't think why it took so long for "A Life in the Theatre" to get to Broadway. It's a natural, a two-character comedy with a wrenchingly serious coda and a plum part for a first-class actor who is capable of convincingly portraying a tired old ham. As usual, Mr. Mamet tells us nothing about his characters beyond the words that they speak, but we are, I think, invited to suppose that Robert (Mr. Stewart) and John (T.R. Knight) are working together in the kind of second-rate repertory company that shoves a new production onto the boards every week or two, ready or not. In many of the 26 scenes, we see Robert and John doing their best to stagger through a series of underrehearsed scripts (one of which is a cruelly clever Eugene O'Neill parody). Elsewhere we look on as Robert tries to make John his protégé, hosing him down with gaseous lectures about the craft of theater...

Mr. Stewart plays Robert very much in the English manner, and at first I feared that his pacing would be unidiomatically deliberate (I smiled to hear him wring five finicky syllables out of the word "specifically"). Then I let go of my preconceptions and started watching the performance he was giving instead of the one I wanted to see, and before long I'd stopped keeping score and was enthralled....

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The print version of the Journal's Greater New York section only appears in copies of the paper published in the New York area, but the complete contents of the section are available on line, and you can read my review of A Life in the Theatre by going here .

TT: Almanac

"We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full."

Marcel Proust, Albertine disparue (The Sweet Cheat Gone)