Friday, September 18, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I write about a Chicago revival of The Rainmaker and the New York transfer of a very important regional production of A Midsummer Night’s Drea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMI arrived at my New York apartment last night after a longish stretch of time on the road and found a pile of unopened mail on the dining-room table. Most of it was instantaneously disposabl…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:25AMSuzanne Farrell, Adam Lüders, and New York City Ballet dance the last section of George Balanchine’s Vienna Waltzes, set to the waltzes from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. This per…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Unless one is a moron, one always dies unsure of one’s own value and that of one’s works.” Gustave Flaubert, letter to Louise Colet, September 19, 1852 (trans. Francis Steegmuller)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, September 17, 2015
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 Wal…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“I care not to be his critic; but if he has learned his business he has still to learn that petulance is not sarcasm, and that insolence is not invective.” Benjamin Disraeli, speech, Hou…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, September 16, 2015
Joni Mitchell sings “Night in the City” on the CBC in 1967: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“You will have a little after you’ve sold everything, but in a country where every man is what he has, he who has very little is nobody very much. There is no such thing as genteel p…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, September 15, 2015
I’ve been reading Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties, which came out in July, with fascination and delight. Wald is one of t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2005: I expect a lot out of the books I read, and when they fail to deliver the goods, I toss them aside with a clear conscience and no second thoughts. Life is so very short—and so o…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“In all my life, I have never met a single person who could, or would, precisely tell me what he wanted. I am, however, constantly meeting people who tell me what other people want.” Art…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, September 14, 2015
I reviewed Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s and 1950s, edited by Sarah Weinman, in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt. * * * The Library of America,…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“The Passing of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” a 1930 British Movietone newsreel sequence in which the creator of Sherlock Holmes talks about his most famous literary creation: (This is the la…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“‘What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence,’ returned my companion, bitterly. ‘The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done.’” Arthur Conan…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, September 11, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal I report on two out-of-town shows, a Chicago revival of The Price and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival premiere of Head Over Heels. Here’s an excerpt. * * *…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:45AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I consider the question of why classic big-cast plays are vanishing from America’s stages—and offer some suggestions for what to d…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMBill Monroe plays “My Last Days on Earth,” which he wrote when he was being treated for colon cancer in 1981. He died in 1996: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” John Adams, letter to John Taylor, April 15, 1814
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, September 10, 2015
“Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.” Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, September 9, 2015
TUESDAY, AUGUST 18 (cont’d) As soon as I retrieved my wandering suitcase and returned from the Hartford airport, Mrs. T and I collected our nephew Ian and his friend Max and drove down to …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:30AMThe Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet plays Terry’s “Tete a Tete” on Jazz 625, originally telecast by the BBC on February 21, 1965: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related vid…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AM“Dangers by being despised grow great; so they do by absurd provision against them.” Edmund Burke, speech on the Petition of the Unitarians, 1792.
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMTuesday, September 8, 2015
From 2005: My own hand, alas, is not so easy or rewarding. I’m left-handed, with an ink-smudging overhand hook so exaggerated that my first-grade teacher, who in 1962 was already a thoroug…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“When you visualized a man or woman carefully, you could always begin to feel pity—that was a quality God’s image carried with it. When you saw the lines at the corners of the eyes, th…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, September 7, 2015
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 12 Sometimes my theater-related trips resemble paid vacations with a little work thrown in. Other times, irrespective of the quality of the shows that I see, they’re just…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:30AMElmore Leonard reads the first chapter of his novel Freaky Deaky at Butler University in 2010: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, W…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:15AM“I make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone’s been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice—somewhat contrived,…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:00AMFriday, September 4, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a Connecticut revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s Bedroom Farce and the New York premiere of A.J. Gurney’s Love & Money. Here’s an excerpt. * * *…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMJacques d’Amboise and Melissa Hayden dance George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux on an episode of Voice of Firestone telecast in 1962. The music, originally written by Tchaikovsky …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.” Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, September 3, 2015
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 Wal…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:05AM 
