Tuesday, March 19, 2019
From 2009: I see a good many pre-1970 musicals as part of my duties as drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, and it occurred to me the other day to draw up a list of the best ones. Here,…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.” George Saintsbury, The Book of the Queen’s Dolls’ House
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, March 18, 2019
Peter Pears, Benjamin Britten, and the London Symphony perform “When most I wink, then do my eyes best see,” the final movement of Britten’s Nocturne. The text is by Shakespeare. This …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Fanatical and, as it were, monomaniacal efforts to prove a thing true often bring indifference to telling falsehoods about it.” George Saintsbury, The Book of the Queen’s Dolls’ Ho…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, March 15, 2019
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two Broadway musicals, the transfer of Be More Chill and a new revival of Kiss Me, Kate. The first is terrific, the second lousy. Here’s an excerp…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:05AMWe’re back! The twenty-seventh episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:04AMThe Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson, adapted by Wilson from his 1987 play and directed by Lloyd Richards, originally telecast by CBS on February 5, 19…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, March 14, 2019
In today’s online-only Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I talk about Lincoln Kirstein, who is the subject of an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Here’s an exce…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:36PMTitus Techera, who hosts a podcast for the American Cinema Foundation on which he and his guests discuss important films of the past and present, invited me back earlier this week for the la…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 01:14PM“Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against ‘freedom of print,’ it is the closing down of the heart of …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, March 13, 2019
Harry Reasoner interviews Harold Lloyd on Calendar, the morning news program that he co-hosted with Mary Fickett. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on April 16, 1962: (This is the …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Zealotry is when the letter of religion is mistaken for its spirit.” Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics (trans. Peter Heath)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, March 12, 2019
From 2009: I didn’t have to drive anywhere to hear Paul Harvey News and Comment. I heard it every weekday morning on the kitchen radio as I wolfed down breakfast and prepared to go to sch…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was th…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, March 11, 2019
A scene from Targets, written and directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Bogdanovich and Boris Karloff. In this scene, Karloff delivers a monologue interpolated by Bogdanovich from Shep…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Only those who doubt really believe, and those who do not doubt are neither tempted against their faith nor do they truly believe.” Miguel de Unamuno, The Life of Don Quixote and Sanch…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, March 8, 2019
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review two off-Broadway shows, Marys Seacole and Merrily We Roll Along. Here’s an excerpt. * * * It shouldn’t be all that surprisin…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:02AMAt the Haunted End of the Day: The Life of Sir William Walton, a TV documentary by Tony Palmer, originally telecast on April 19, 1981, as an episode of ITV’s The South Bank Show. In addit…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:01AM“You were made for enjoyment, and the world was filled with things which you will enjoy, unless you are too proud to be pleased by them, or too grasping to care for what you cannot turn to…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMThursday, March 7, 2019
“For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, March 6, 2019
I flew from Houston to New York last March, having just directed the Alley Theater’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf to mutually satisfying effect. Once I got back home, I went for a …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMNat “King” Cole sings and plays “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” by Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, and Billy Rose. This performance, which has been colorized, was part of An Evening with Nat…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Nature has a great simplicity and, therefore, a great beauty.” Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, March 5, 2019
From 2009: Twelve hours later I was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the temperature was fifty degrees colder, the sidewalks were covered with sooty snow, and a bagful of mail awai…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Behind the jokes, I try to talk about life in a serious way. I don’t look at cartooning as just an entertainment. It’s a rare privilege to be able to talk to hundreds of millions of p…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, March 4, 2019
The obituaries for André Previn, who died last Thursday at the age of eighty-nine, were respectful, even admiring, in a way that they wouldn’t have been had he died a quarter-century ago.…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:49AMA Hallmark Hall of Fame telecast of The Lark, Lillian Hellman’s English-language adaptation of L’Alouette, Jean Anouilh’s 1952 play about Joan of Arc. This abridged version stars Jul…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM“Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.” Simone …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, March 1, 2019
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review an important off-Broadway revival of Lynn Nottage’s By the Way, Meet Vera Stark. Here’s an excerpt. * * * If you know Lynn N…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AMRay Bolger and Ann Miller perform Irving Berlin’s “Puttin’ on the Ritz” on “Music of the Movies,” a 1966 episode of The Bell Telephone Hour originally telecast by NBC on March 1…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:01AM 
