Monday, May 25, 2015
Orlando Shakespeare Theater makes a strong case for presenting in tandem "Pride and Prejudice" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal Subscription at 05:58PMDavid Lindsay-Abaire's "Good People" was a hit before it even opened. But then his audiences can always expect to be told just what they'd like to hear.
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal Subscription at 05:58PMIn "Ghost-Writer," a secretary continues to hear from her employer and transcribe his novels after he's dead. It's a tale pulled from the real life of author Henry James, at the Florida Stag…
SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal Subscription at 05:58PMThe invaluable Maria Popova has drawn my attention to a blog and book devoted to photographs and lists taken and drawn up by people in answer to the following question: If your house was bur…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFor those who missed the news, the West Coast premiere of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, takes place on Tuesday at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hill…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:25AMArturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony perform Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This concert, originally broadcast on April 3, 1948, also features Anne McKnight, Jane Hobson, Erwin Dillon, Norma…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy’s motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is n…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, May 22, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report enthusiastically on two new plays, Robert Askins’ Permission and Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Robert A…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMIn today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I hold forth on the rise, fall, and temporary return of the Broadway musical-comedy overture. Here’s an excerpt. * * * If you’re u…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“A man is never so on trial as in the moment of excessive good fortune.” Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, May 21, 2015
My monthly essay for the June issue of Commentary, whose occasion is the publication of Molly Guptill Manning’s When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II , can no…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 01:02PM“What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.” H.L. Mencken, Minority Report: H.L. Mencken’s Notebooks
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, May 20, 2015
Aaron Copland is interviewed by James Day on Day at Night, originally taped by CUNY-TV in 1973: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Self-parody is the first portent of age.” Larry McMurtry, Some Can Whistle
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, May 19, 2015
Mrs. T and I have been catching up in recent weeks with a string of once-new films that slipped past us when they came out. On Wednesday we finally got around to Nebraska, which we both foun…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2008: Time: near the end of a leisurely dinner. Place: Restaurant 15 Main, Narrowsburg, New York. Frank Sinatra’s recording of “Thanks for the Memory” is playing in the background…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour: what worked once must always work.” Lillian Hellman, Pentimento
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, May 18, 2015
Satchmo at the Waldorf is in rehearsal at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, where performances start next Tuesday—but I’m in New York, which is nowher…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:45AMThe best jazz vocal group I’ve ever heard just made its New York debut. Vertical Voices began life five years ago as a collaboration between Julia Dollison, a singer of phenomenal talent, …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:30AMThe Jimmy Smith Trio (with Barney Kessel on guitar) plays “Organ Grinder’s Swing” on The Hollywood Palace in 1965. The group is introduced by Fred Astaire, who then dances a solo to Sm…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:15AM“What other dungeon is so dark as one’s heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of Seven Gables
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 04:00AMFriday, May 15, 2015
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report from Chicago on a revival of Side Man and the premiere of a musical version of Sense and Sensibility. Here’s an excerpt. * * * If I w…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Critics give themselves away, not by what they don’t like, but by what they do.” Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, May 14, 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“It is a rule, almost without exception, that writers and painters, who are always talking about being artists, break down at just that level.” Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, May 13, 2015
Arthur Rubinstein plays an abridged version of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, accompanied by a studio orchestra conducted by Alfred Wallenstein. The performance was…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“It is madness to expect anything of anyone. The sooner you expect anything of anyone life becomes a wilderness of disappointment.” Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, May 12, 2015
From 2005: These postings put me in mind of H.L. Mencken’s saying that criticism is “prejudice made plausible.” He had a point, but some prejudices don’t lend themselves to such trea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The disagreeable aspect of so many people is not so much their doing unpleasant things, as wanting to justify them.” Anthony Powell, A Writer’s Notebook
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, May 11, 2015
• It hasn’t happened often, or recently, but from time to time I’ve been told things about good friends that I really, really didn’t want to know. None of them, fortunately, was bad …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:10AMLiza with a “Z”: A Concert for Television, an hour-long TV concert by Liza Minnelli, produced by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb, staged by Fosse, and conducted by Marvin Hamlisch. The concert, f…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:05AM 
