Friday, June 12, 2015
“The average man doesn’t want to be free. He wants to be safe.” H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, June 11, 2015
an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience. Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, June 10, 2015
Ray Charles performs “You Don’t Know Me” and “What’d I Say” on The Dinah Shore Show in 1963: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Delay is the deadliest form of denial.” C. Northcote Parkinson, The Law of Delay
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, June 9, 2015
• If you visit this blog with even modest regularity, you know that the next stop for Satchmo at the Waldorf is San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, where the John Douglas Thom…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2005: Perhaps my powers of concentration have been diminished by advancing age, or maybe I’ve simply become more sensitive to the emotion-evoking power of music. (I cry more easily no…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The only ‘ism’ that has justified itself is pessimism.” George Orwell, “The Limit to Pessimism”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, June 8, 2015
An old college friend of mine who visited Los Angeles with her husband last week made a special point of going to see a performance of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, which closed the…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMA scene from John Frankenheimer’s 1973 film version of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Robert Ryan plays Larry Slade and Jeff Bridges plays Don Parritt: (This is the latest in a se…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“My quarrel with propaganda in the theatre is that it’s such damned unconvincing propaganda—whereas, if you will restrain the propaganda purpose to the selection of the life to be port…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, June 5, 2015
My very good friend Ricky Riccardi, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Louis Armstrong and a colleague as amiable and forthcoming as Satchmo himself, has just written a lengthy and…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:00PMIn today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I write about a Chicago-area revival of Doubt and the Broadway premiere of An Act of God. Here’s an excerpt. * * * What does a thriving drama …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:30AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I pay tribute to the underappreciated Roy Webb. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Here’s a pop quiz for film fanatics: What do these 10 mov…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AMThis is just to remind you that the latest episode of Theater Talk, in which Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel discuss the Broadway season just past with Ben Brantley, Peter Marks, John Simon…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:05AM“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMThursday, June 4, 2015
“One of my heroes is the writer William Maxwell, also no longer around in his earthly shape. Late in his life, he began taking piano lessons and working his way through some simple classic…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMWednesday, June 3, 2015
I got an e-mail yesterday afternoon from Patti Wolff, interim artistic director of the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, informing me that the entire run of S…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AMI confessed the other day to being “the kind of guy who loves Stephen Sondheim and John Wayne.” (So, incidentally, is David Thomson.) Apropos of this daring admission, a reader writes: I…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:10AMPaul Paray leads L’Orchestre National de l’ORTF in an undated performance of the orchestral version of Emmanuel Chabrier’s Bourrée fantasque: (This is the latest in a series of arts-r…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:05AM“Listen, Delly, I know it doesn’t make much sense when you’re sixteen. Don’t worry. When you get to be forty, it isn’t any better.” Alan Sharp, screenplay for Night Moves
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMTuesday, June 2, 2015
Having recently acquired a very handsome lithograph by Romare Bearden, Mrs. T and I weren’t planning to buy any more art any time soon. Sometimes, though, you can’t say no, and when Milt…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2005: Very few people who don’t write for a living understand that writing is work, much less that a writer who is sitting in a chair, reading a book or staring absently into the dist…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Only in extinction is the collector comprehended.” Walter Benjamin, “Unpacking My Library”
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, June 1, 2015
When I was a youngster, I played in my high school’s band and orchestra, sang in two different choirs, took violin and piano lessons after school, acted in plays and musicals, went to clas…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:30AMPerry Como and Don Ameche in a live TV commercial for Polaroid Land cameras, originally seen on The Perry Como Show in 1959: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:15AM“Marketing is what you do if your product is no good.” Edwin Land (quoted in Christopher Bonanos, Instant: The Story of Polaroid)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:00AMFriday, May 29, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Boston revival of Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky and an off-Broadway remount of Annie Baker’s The Flick. Here’s an excerpt. * * *…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“What do I need with the theater—a cockamamie business where you get one roll of the dice from seven middle-aged men on the aisle who hated Mickey Mouse when they were kids.” Moss Hart…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, May 28, 2015
“The Frame,” KPCC’s “daily report from the world of art, entertainment, and culture,” had me on as a guest today to talk about Louis Armstrong and the West Coast premiere of Satchm…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 06:32PMWhenever you write a book or play in which a famous person of the relatively recent past is portrayed, it’s more than likely that you’ll sooner or later meet somebody who knew the person…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 10:33AMHere’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 07:30AM 
