Tuesday, May 3, 2016
“The enjoyment of a work of art, the acceptance of an irresistible illusion, constituting, to my sense, our highest experience of ‘luxury,’ the luxury is not greatest, by my consequent…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, May 2, 2016
As of today, Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production of Satchmo at the Waldorf has seven rehearsals to go before our first public preview on May 11. I don’t want to tempt the dark gods of the …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:16AMNicanor Zabaleta plays his own arrangement for solo harp of Albéniz’s “Malagueña” on a 1964 telecast: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The truth is that any retraced story of bourgeois lives (lives other than great lives of ‘action’—et encore!) throws a chill upon the scene, the time, the subject, the small mapped-…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, April 29, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal, I review the last two Broadway openings of the 2015-16 season, Shuffle Along and Tuck Everlasting. Here’s an excerpt. * * * The first half of George C. Wo…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:45AMCarol Lawrence and Larry Kert sing “Tonight” on The Ed Sullivan Show. The song, by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, is from the score of West Side Story. This performance, which d…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“We’re all insecure. We’re all neurotic. We’re all trying so hard to figure our process out. And kindness behooves you, because you’ve got to come back the next day and do it again…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, April 28, 2016
“Don’t you read anything but novels, I hear you say. I wish I could say that I really read novels. There are libraries full of novelists who are thought great whose work I have n…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, April 27, 2016
I flew down to Florida last Friday morning and started rehearsing my Palm Beach Dramaworks production of Satchmo at the Waldorf that same afternoon. We put in two more full days of work on S…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrank Zappa plays music on a pair of bicycles on The Steve Allen Show. This episode was originally telecast on March 4, 1963: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appe…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“As it is necessary not to invite robbery by supineness, so it is our duty not to suppress tenderness by suspicion; it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, April 26, 2016
From 2006: I took a look yesterday at a list of the twelve top-grossing movies in North America. I’d heard of four of them: I read the novel on which Thank You for Smoking is based whe…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AM“‘You don’t like buttermilk, or nothing else. You’re like a starving person whose stomach is shrunk up from not having any food. You’re shrunk up from not wanting nothing.’ “�…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMMonday, April 25, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two Broadway openings, Waitress and Fully Committed. Here’s an excerpt. * * * It’s long past time that Jessie Mueller got to appear…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMJascha Heifetz and Brooks Smith perform Fritz Kreisler’s arrangement of the G Major Rondo from Mozart’s “Haffner” Serenade, K. 250. This performance was originally telecast on NBC’…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AMNothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rins…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, April 22, 2016
I’m en route from New York to West Palm Beach, Florida, where I’ll start rehearsing Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production of Satchmo at the Waldorf at noon today. Not only is Satchmo my fi…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 12:04AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway transfer of American Psycho: The Musical. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Twenty-five years ago, Bret Easton Ellis published a novel about a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 12:03AMVladimir Nabokov talks about the covers of different editions of Lolita on USA: The Novel. This episode was originally telecast on WNET on February 3, 1965: (This is the latest in a series o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 12:02AM“Taking the chance of making a complete fool of himself—and, sometimes, doing so—is the first demand that is made upon any real critic: he must stick his neck out just as the artist do…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 12:01AMThursday, April 21, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I discuss the growing progressive backlash against Hamilton. Here’s an excerpt. * * * The New York Times recently published a piece …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.” Mary McCarthy, “The Vita Activa”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, April 20, 2016
Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, and the Foggy Mountain Boys perform “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” originally telecast on The Flatt & Scruggs Grand Ole Opry Show in December of 1962: …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend ete…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, April 19, 2016
Like everyone else who pays the slightest attention to theater in America, I was neither surprised nor displeased that this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama went to Hamilton, about whose ov…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:12AMFrom 2006: “I didn’t realize how long it has been since I set out to acquire a brand new skill—hell, in graduate school I think I unlearned a fair number of them—and at this point, a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“When the major talents are directors, actors, and scene designers—that’s dead-end theater. Fine to see, but it ain’t going nowhere. You have to turn out good new writers.”…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, April 18, 2016
This morning I fly back to New York from Winter Park, Florida, where I attended the premiere of Music, Awake! on Saturday night. Mrs. T is under the weather—I inadvertently passed my nasty…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:30AMA 1961 IBM sales film, directed by Saul Bass: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:15AM“When I first went out to Hollywood one heard talk from writers about whoring. But you are not tempted to whore unless you want to be a whore.” Lillian Hellman, “The Art of Theater No.…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:00AMFriday, April 15, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I report from Chicago on the premiere of Tracy Letts’ new play, Mary Page Marlowe. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Tracy Letts is a poet of the ordinary, a play…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM 
