Thursday, September 1, 2016
“He had enjoyed his time at Cambridge; he had even liked the English. Their hypocrisy hadn’t troubled him, only their ignorance that they were hypocrites.” William Haggard, The Antagon…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, August 31, 2016
Benny Goodman appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? This episode was telecast by CBS on July 22, 1962. The host is John Charles Daly and the panelists are Bennett Cerf, Arlene Fr…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.” George Meredith, The Egoist
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, August 30, 2016
From 2006: Do I wish I lived in a simpler time? Occasionally–but I grew up in a much simpler time, and though I recall with nostalgia my days of slow-moving innocence, I can’t begin to i…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:02AM“The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where ever…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, August 29, 2016
Forgive my recent semi-absence from this space, but I’ve been inordinately busy of late, quite a bit more than I expected to be. Among other things, the Mosaic Theater Company’s producti…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMLouis Armstrong and the All Stars perform “Mack the Knife” in concert in 1956: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, an…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMMusic resembles poetry: in each Are nameless graces which no methods teach And which a master-hand alone can reach. Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMFriday, August 26, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Mint Theater Company’s off-Broadway revival of N.C. Hunter’s A Day by the Sea. Here’s an excerpt. * * * No drama troupe in America has car…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“Previews of Past Attractions: Ry Cooder,” a 1970 Warner Bros. Records promotional mini-documentary about the singer-guitarist, produced by Van Dyke Parks: (This is the latest in a serie…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the firs…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, August 25, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I pay tribute to the underappreciated artistry of Perry Como. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Sixty years ago, Perry Como cut a hit record…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMWednesday, August 24, 2016
“Human beings are difficult. We’re difficult to ourselves, we’re difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordin…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:30PMArturo Toscanini leads the NBC Symphony in a performance of the first movement of Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor, K. 555. This performance was originally telecast from NBC’s Studio …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Every moment is a new moment, failure our eternal friend. You think you are learning things but those could also be staleness traps, formula, hitting the same lever again and again.” Wh…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, August 23, 2016
From 2006: As for me, I’m the gray-headed drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and a resident of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, none of which I anticipated when I was sixteen. Back t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Happiness in life is often constructed from tiny wonderful things—hot toast with butter—not big things.” Whit Stillman, interviewed by Chris White (Curator, May 23, 2016)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, August 22, 2016
Lotte Lenya sings “Pirate Jenny,” from Marc Blitzstein’s English-language adaptation of the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera. This performance was telecast on the BBC in 1962. Lenya creat…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“An extraordinary people and he wasn’t yet at home with them. One half seemed caught in a caste system which defeated him, the other in a dislike of it which at times came close to malic…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, August 19, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a New Jersey revival of Exit the King. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Whatever happened to Eugène Ionesco? Nothing, really—he’s still one of the mo…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:10AMAn undated CBC interview with Eugène Ionesco, conducted in French and subtitled in English: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wed…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:05AM“Nobody loves them, and rightly, for they are creatures of the night. Has anybody ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? I doubt it. They come out after dark, and we know how we feel …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMThursday, August 18, 2016
“Delusions of grandeur are stupid and delusions of past grandeur fatal.” William Haggard, The Arena
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, August 17, 2016
Bobbie Gentry sings her “Ode to Billie Joe” on the BBC in 1968. The string arrangement, also heard on the original recording, is by Jimmie Haskell: (This is the latest in a series of art…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“‘You’re asking for advice?’ “‘I am.’ “‘It’s a dangerous commodity: people sometimes take it.’” William Haggard, Venetian Blind
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, August 16, 2016
From 2006: Few things in life are more disagreeable than coming down with a bad cold when you have three deadlines staring you in the face. The human brain is a miraculous organism, but it d…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“They were children, political adolescents. Take a clever boy at sixteen, he reflected, and put him into a laboratory for the next seven or eight years. What emerged inevitably was a mater…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, August 15, 2016
You haven’t seen much of me in this space in recent weeks because I’ve been traveling, both with and without Mrs. T, for personal and professional reasons alike. The two of us, for insta…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMBlossom Dearie sings Stephen Sondheim’s “The Ladies Who Lunch” (from Company) at Danny’s Skylight Room in New York in 1999. Ray Kilday is the bassist, Luis Peralta the drummer: (This…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Hatred was the word which had presented itself, and it had shaken him, for he knew that hatred was a horrible emotion, a compound of envy and fear.” William Haggard, Slow Burner
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, August 12, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a revival of Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West in Washington, D.C. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Now that Brian Friel has left us, who…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM 
