Southern Bookman

Aaron Sorkin brings Atticus Finch to Broadway

Will Atticus Finch be as big a Broadway sensation as Alexander Hamilton?

Aaron Sorkin's play based on Harper Lee's classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" opens Tuesday night on Broadway, propelled by a big media fanfare and major advertising campaign. Tickets won't come open until March, according to breathless ads in The New York Times.

Along with Sorkin's reputation for dramatic narrative and crisp dialogue, the play is directed by Broadway titan Bartlett Sher, a consistent hit-maker with musicals, comedies and serious drama. 

The play stars Jeff Daniels, a deft character actor who has achieved enduring stardom in movies, TV and the theater. Although Gregory Peck defined the role in his Academy Award-winning movie performance, Daniels possesses the acting range and vocal dexterity to make the role his own.

Sorkin says he's conceived a fresh conception of Lee's character. He brings the play to New York after withstanding a suit by Lee's estate concerned about changes he made. Apparently not bound by a settlement with the Lee estate, Sorkin promises that the play will be different from the book, and Horton Foote's movie screenplay.

Will New York critics agree that it's a sin to kill a mockingbird, or Sorkin's version of it? 

I expect New York Times lead critic Ben Brantley to review the play, and I'll be surprised if he doesn't go along with the pre-opening excitement. Brantley tends to follow the prevailing popular mood.

The reaction of The Wall Street Journal's Terry Teachout will also be telling. Teachout is known for deflating the bubble of productions lauded elsewhere.

No matter what the critics say, the theatrical version of "To Kill a Mockingbird" is all but guaranteed to be a hit rivaling "Hamilton."

Lee's Atticus Finch and her story of a small Alabama town's reckoning with justice touch deep chords in the American conscience. 

 

A charming afternoon with Maggie Smith, Joan Plowright, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins

That old Rodgers and Hammerstein tune was right after all: There's nothing like a dame.

Four is even better, especially when the dames are Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Eileen Atkins.

Director Roger Michell's delightfully low-tech film, "Tea With the Dames," captures the four great ladies of the English theater as themselves, seated at a table enjoying conversation, laughter, tea, and a bit of champagne.

Old chums Plowright, Smith, Dench and Atkins, arrayed before a stationary camera, share gossip, jokes, laments of aging and career triumphs and regrets.

As they laugh and banter with each other, small jewels of theater lore glitter. Atkins vividly describes how she suffers from stage fright. The closest they come to performance is displaying some of their vocal exercises. Their conversation is interspersed with video from some of their celebrated performances as young actresses.

Oliver, the domineering Shakespearian actor and director of the British national theater, looms over the conversation. Each of them gives anecdotes about the difficulty of working with the demanding theater titan. Video shows some of his noted performances, including starring in "The Entertainer" with Plowright and playing Othello in blackface.

Along with Oliver's lauded portrayal of the aging comedian Archie Rice in "The Entertainer, " he's shown playing Hamlet and Henry V.  Plowright remembers writing a fan letter to him as an adolescent girl, and how she thought his signature on the return letter was authentic until she learned when married to him that his secretary stamped his responses to fans.

Smith is the most forthcoming, with memories of visiting Oliver and Plowright's home when their children were small. She also remembers filling in for Plowrightt to comfort Olivier during one of his breakdowns. Plowright recalls the excitement of her marriage to Olivier, before characterizing it as "hell."

Looking back at their younger days, Plowright mentions that none of them were considered great beauties. Yet they glow with glamour in the excerpts from their early performances. As Plowright says, they excelled at creating the "illusion" of theater.

Now blind, Plowright most poignantly shows the ravages of old age. Also in their 80s, Smith, Dench and Atkins laugh about the roles they still receive, and how the acting techniques they considered revolutionary in their youth are now disparaged by a new generation. In their youth, they also mocked older stars.

Reluctantly discussing her starring role in the TV hit "Downton Abbey," Smith disparages the series and discloses that she's never watched it. Dench draws gibes for her recent starring turns in James Bond films and other projects.

Their stories are charming and bittersweet. With their beautiful accents and perfect English, they would be captivating reading the phone book.

 

Searching for the Charleston roots of "Porgy and Bess"

The "Porgy and Bess" movie soundtrack was one of my favorite albums during my childhood, frequently played on my father's 1960s-vintage cabinet hi-fi.

George Gershwin's "Summertime," "It Ain't Necessarily So," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" and "There's a Train That's Leavin' Soon for New York" have remained bright in my mind along with songs from another classic musical that brought joy to those long summer afternoons: "My Fair Lady."

While criticized through the years for racial condescension and stereotypes, Gershwin's opera remains a landmark musical achievement, mainly because of its classic songs. After an initial 124 performances on Broadway, the opera has risen in popularity, although a Broadway revival several years ago sputtered. 

The 1959 film version, starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge and directed by Otto Preminger, of all people, was a critical disappointment and quickly pulled from theaters because of the racial controversy and refusal of Southern theaters to book it.

"Porgy and Bess" takes place in Charleston's black community of "Catfish Row" during the 1920s, and I wanted to delve more into the opera's background during a recent trip to the old South Carolina port city.

My wishes were fulfilled by an excellent walking tour of downtown Charleston led by professor, historian and author Damon L. Fordham. With his encyclopedic knowledge of Charleston, Fordham detailed the rich history of virtually every inch of sidewalk covered. Titled a tour of black Charleston,  the experience uncovered the intimate intertwining of black and white culture.

After beginning the tour with a soul-stirring harmonica rendition of "Summertime," Fordham eventually led us to the site of "Catfish Row," where a crippled street vendor named Samuel Smalls peddled his wares from a goat-pulled cart. The white novelist Dubose Heyward used Smalls as a model for the main character in his 1925 novel "Porgy," the basis for the opera. Along with others who've read the book, Fordham praised the novel as a literary work.

Heyward is given co-credit for the opera's libretto with Gershwin. Although he is often credited with writing the lyrics for "Summertime"  and other songs, Gershwin's brother and regular partner Ira Gershwin also receives credit from ASCAP. Stephen Sondheim believes Heyward wrote "Summertime," and praises him for its haunting quality.

Close to Heyward's home, Catfish Row is now an upscale gated residence. Porgy's cries of "devil crab, devil crab" would cause today's wealthy residents to shudder. Fordham pointed out that the area, including nearby East Bay Street, was once the site of rough bars and prostitution until massive gentrification following Hurricane Hugo. Now, the area's tapestry of voices and personalities remains only in the opera and book.

While Gershwin and Heyward now would be accused of cultural appropriation, the opera's songs stand apart as testaments to the human spirit.

Neil Simon and the decline of Broadway

Sports yakkers Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon praised Neil Simon Monday on their ESPN show "Pardon the Interruption."

Kornheiser and Wilbon's appreciation of Simon, who died Sunday at age 91, showed a cultural fissure over the playwright's work.

Commentators in The New York Times and elsewhere said that the author of hit plays and movies like "The Odd Couple," "Barefoot in the Park," "Plaza Suite" and "The Sunshine Boys" saw his popularity wane late in his career because of a shift in American culture.

Once the author of four Broadway smashes running at the same time, Simon lost his touch at the end of his career. Even revivals of "The Odd Couple" and other earlier favorites failed on Broadway.

But Kornheiser and Wilbon's praise of Simon showed that the playwright's work remains popular among the well-off American middle class who live in suburbs and used to love going to the theater to see Simon's comedies and more serious work like "Brighton Beach Memories," "Biloxi Blues," "Broadway Bound" and "Lost in Yonkers."

Korenheiser and Wilbon cited "The Odd Couple," especially rumpled sportswriter Oscar Madison, as models for their shtick. 

The former Washington Post columnists were talking about "The Odd Couple's" movie and TV versions, the latter of which didn't involve Simon. Their neglect of the play, originally starring Walter Matthau as Oscar and Art Carney as the fastidious Felix Unger, reflects the decline of Broadway as a popular medium for original plays.

TV and the movies captured the middle-class audience that once loved Broadway plays like Simon's. The cultural shift didn't occur among the public, but in the theater and on Broadway.

More experimental and counterculture "serious" plays turned off  mainstream audiences, and Broadway turned to lavish musicals like "The Lion King" and, now, jukebox vehicles, revivals of warhorse musicals and plays based on movies.

While "Odd Couple" revivals have bombed on Broadway, the movie version starring Matthau and Jack Lemmon remains one of the many overworked staples of Turner Classic Movies. Oscar and Felix are enduring American archetypes.

New York magazine's Frank Rich, who held life-and-death power over Broadway in his days as The New York Times' drama critic, was among those who claimed Simon was hurt by a "cultural shift." How insular for a critic who slammed Simon's later work to point to a change in attitudes that he himself engendered.

Rich pointed out that Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" premiered on Broadway two years after Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," implying that Albee's play heralded the presumed cultural shift. Yet Albee's later work also lost critical and popular favor. 

Audiences can appreciate Simon's view of marriage as well as Albee's. Audiences perceive that Albee's George and Martha started off as happy as Simon's young lovers Paul and Corie.

The late Mike Nichols directed Simon's play on Broadway, starring Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley, and the movie version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Nichols saw the two works as equally valid depictions of marriage. 

Simon's loss of critical appreciation and popular success mirrored the fate of American playwrights considered as more "serious." Along with Albee, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller suffered critical disapproval and failed productions. The tarnishing of these careers reflect the failures of American criticism more than any "cultural shift."

The same fissure between mainstream tastes and elite artistic values is shown in American film. Now, the Academy Awards have a dubious plan to begin a separate category for "popular" movies after years of Oscar winners not connecting with audiences.

Wall Street Journal theater critic Terry Teachout gave the most balanced interpretation of Simon's legacy. Unlike Times critics, Teachout frequently reviews regional theater, and understands that Simon's plays still touch mainstream audiences. In contrast to the Times, Teachout expressed optimism that Simon's plays will again find success in Broadway revivals.

 

Jeremy Irons, Eileen Atkins do all the voices in T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land"

British actor Jeremy Irons' readings bring new dimensions to T.S. Eliot's poems.

I recently ordered the four-CD set of Irons' performance of Eliot's poems. Knowing the poems, I felt a strong sense of recognition from Irons' reading, like encountering a dear friend after a long absence.

Irons also made the poems seem new and strange.

The recordings were originally made for BBC's Channel 4, which indicates the cultural gap between public broadcasting in Britain and here. 

Irons' interpretation of my favorite poem, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock," was disappointing. The poem on the page has a distinctive voice, but Irons makes the poem abstract and impersonal.

It's a difficult poem to render orally; the character seems quite passive. Irons' flat voice finds little drama, or the mordant humor, in the lines.

Still, Irons' reading invites spiritual scrutiny. I anticipated the arrival of the well-known phrases, and felt a deep emotional connection.

It's hard to determine how one would interpret the narrator. I always assumed Prufock was middle-aged or older, his emotional despair is strangely world-weary for a poet as young as Eliot when he wrote it. 

But Irons makes me consider that the narrator is really a young man, perhaps 30. The poem's reference to "Prince Hamlet" indicates that the narrator is at a similar age as Shakespeare's character. Prufock's moral choices are smaller and less heroic than the Danish prince's. Not only does the narrator judge himself. He sees himself as living in a mediocre age.

The high point of the recording is "The Waste Land." I always found the poem as much of an artistic failure as Eliot found "Hamlet." Its juxtapositions seemed contrived; its images overwrought. Irons' reading, along with Dame Eileen Atkins doing the female voices, reveals the imaginative cohesiveness of the poem's vision. 

The "Waste Land" recording has a cinematic excitement, and the language soars and surprises. Eliot would probably shudder, but Irons and Atkins give it a hip-hop urgency. I wish Irons had found a similar dramatic power in "Prufock."

"Geronition," "The Preludes," "Rhapsody on Windy Night" and "The Journey of the Magi" come off well. Several of Eliot's poems haven't held up well over the years, defeating Irons' virtuosity.

I want to listen again to "Ash Wednesday" and "Four Quartets." My first impression is that Irons delves deeply into their complexity and beauty.

So far, I've avoided "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats." Andrew Lloyd Webber ruined them for me.

 

 

 

Tonys stand for artistic seriousness with "A Band's Visit" honors

The Tonys honored the quiet and emotionally complex "A Band's Visit" Sunday night over the tourist-bait glitz of "Mean Girls"and "Sponge Bob Square Pants."

The numbers from "Mean Girls" and "Square Bob" were among the worst ever broadcast on the show. Watching the horrible Broadway schmaltz, I wished for the stage to open up and swallow the performers.

Katrina Lenk's beautiful singing to the inscrutable Tony Shalhoub in the "Omar Sharif" number from "A Band's Visit" showed theatrical subtlety, imagination, and lyrical complexity. Lenk's words and Shalhoub's emotions playing upon his face illustrated the shared humanity of Arabs and Israelis seeking to bridge cultural differences.

I wished I'd seen the show the last time I was in New York, and hope that it's brought to Atlanta one day. It's too bad that our diminished public broadcasting doesn't offer serious American theater. Instead, we're bombarded with interminable pledge drives pushing the sodden nostalgia of golden oldie performers.

Along with the heart-rending performance from the Parkland, Fla., students, Bruce Springstein's "My Hometown"  was a high point of the Tonys broadcast. The song and Springsteen's presentation playing a piano showed the narrative power of a fine short story. I later read that the recollections come from Springsteen's critically acclaimed memoirs. Springstein's performance made me wish I could see the show, and I've never liked Springsteen, although I bought his first record.

Earlier in the show, I chafed at Broadway giving Springsteen a special Tony, which seemed ingratiating. The award appeared a bribe to get him to perform and boost the show's ratings, which tanked last year.  The theater group citied Springsteen for attracting a new audience to Broadway.

Really, Broadway needs Springsteen? Well, he was quite gracious in accepting the award, introduced by the horribly deformed looking Billy Joel. Springsteen appeared genuinely honored to be part of Broadway.

While much more accomplished than "Mean Girls" and "Sponge," the numbers from the "My Fair Lady" revival seemed musty, like old linen found in a closet. I would have expected director Bartlett Sher to bring a fresher outlook. I wanted to see the revival, but I'll stick with the 1950s cast recording starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. Why try a vapid copy?

I enjoyed Robert DeNiro's taunt of Trump, which I had to read about online because CBS bleeped it, but it seemed an empty pleasure that I fear will be counterproductive. DeNiro looked like the aging liberal white male mirror image of the Donald, not a good image.

Without even mentioning Trump, Glenda Jackson, with her rich British voice, was much more effective in defending  the best of American values against Trump's bombast.

Poignant to note that I saw Jackson on Broadway in 1972, appearing in "The Doll House," or perhaps some other Ibsen show. Yes, Ibsen was once performed on Broadway.

Sara Bareilles and Tony Groban grew tiresome with their earnest humble-brag bit that veered toward passive-aggression. Who cares that they didn't win Tonys for their mediocre shows? As the show went on, they gave amble proof of why they weren't winners.

The Tonys have come and gone for another year, a sugar high of Broadway's creative demise. A few weeks ago, in response to the success of the "Angels in America" revival, The New York Times published an informative and provocative list of the 25 best plays of the last 25 years. Sadly, not one of the playwrights cited was once mentioned during the Tonys. The American theater's creative pulse beats elsewhere.

Looking back at Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller

I watched the HBO documentary about Arthur Miller soon after seeing the Tennessee Williams exhibit at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City.

Miller and Williams, two titans of American theater whose Broadway success as playwrights seems unimaginable today, had much in common. Both men's most famous plays were directed by Elia Kazan, notorious for disclosing names of communist sympathizers to the House Committee on Unamerican Activities. 

After early critical acclaim, Miller and Williams later in their careers were disparaged by critics, although both kept writing plays. Their most famous works retain their box-office power when revived. 

The esteemed playwrights can also be seen as polar opposites. The gay Williams, a drug and alcohol addict, is a prominent example of the tragic artist who wasted his talent, despite all of his success. Miller stands as a model of of the macho male artist, famous for marrying Marilyn Monroe. (Photo above)

Although Miller sought Hollywood success, writing and producing the flawed film "Misfits" for the troubled Monroe, his plays never translated well to the screen, unlike Williams'. Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "The Night of the Iguana" are considered film classics.

Williams' plays glow with magical poetic dialogue. With all of his theatrical power, Miller can produce turgid, stilted lines. Both men created characters that will endure in the world's culture. 

Created by Miller's daughter, the filmmaker and artist Rebecca Miller, "Arthur Miller: Writer" delivers an engaging portrait of the author of "Death of a Salesman," "The View From the Bridge," "All My Sons" and "The Crucible."

Filmed over 20 years at Miller's home in Roxbury, Conn., the documentary shows Miller as a likable, conscientious man who, unlike Williams, achieved tranquillity. After his tumultuous marriage to Monroe, Miller enjoyed a long and happy marriage to the Austrian photographer Inge Morath, Rebecca's mother.

In an early segment, Miller acknowledges Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" as laying the groundwork for "Death of a Salesman." Miller says that Williams' unsparing dealing with sexual themes freed him to honestly handle social issues in his play.

"Death of a Salesman" is closer in spirit to another Williams Broadway smash, "The Glass Menagerie." Both are "memory plays" that blend impressionistic and realistic elements. Williams' domineering mother Amanda Wingfield is a female version of Miller's Willie Loman. Amanda and Willie hold the same grandiose delusions about their families and doomed aspirations for their children.

The film briefly looks at the McCarthyism of the 1950s, which led to blacklists of movie and theater artists who held communist sympathies. Unlike his onetime friend Kazan, Miller refused to reveal names to the congressional committee, receiving a fine and a suspended jail sentence. Miller says in the film that the committee called him to testify after his marriage to Monroe because it needed a shot of publicity after its investigation had waned. 

The Miller documentary examines the decline of the theater as a centerpiece of American culture. Williams' "Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Miller's "Death of a Salesman" continued for an astounding number of Broadway performances. In postwar America, a serious play, like a serious novel, could enjoy immense popularity. 

While he never came close to the success of "Death of a Salesman," Miller kept writing, although he admits he felt he was now "shouting into a barrel." His later  theatrical work likely will remain obscure, but his late memoir "Time Bends" is a classic. 

Miller's daughter shows her father as a complex, conflicted man. His courage, kindness, empathy, humor, equanimity and relentless creative drive overcame his setbacks. He was an American artist-wise man whose example still shines brightly.

Ash Wednesday and Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday.

Roses and palms.

Love and Death.

In Swoozie's, old men like me searching through cards.

Packs of Valentines schoolchildren buy to give to each kid in the class.

Heart-shaped hard candies like those of my childhood, and their written messages. 

At the market, roses already in vases filled with water.

The lady behind the counter, putting together the bouquets, cutting pink ribbons.

Goodbye, Vic Damone.

In the drugstore, "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do." Neil Sedaka.

The Everly Brothers.

T.S. Eliot

Memories of Sacred Heart, cold walks through downtown Atlanta.

Ashes on the forehead. The blurred cross.

Goodbye, Jan Maxwell.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Metropolitan Opera soprano Audrey Luna takes the A Train

Human accomplishment covers a wide range - writing plays, the 4-minute mile, climbing mountains, discovering the polio vaccine. 

Soprano Audrey Luna has added another achievement: hitting the A note above high C on the musical scale.

Luna carries out the apparently unprecedented feat in the Metropolitan Opera's production of Thomas Ades' "The Exterminating Angel," based on Spanish director Luis Bunuel's surrealistic film.

No other soprano in the New York City opera company's 137-year-history has sung that high, according to New York Times writer Zachary Woolfe. Several of the company's sopranos have come close over the years, but reaching the A has never been done, Met archives show.  

Luna reaches the high note at the start of the opera, without warmup, Woolfe reported, and hits it again during the performance. Ades, known for challenging singers, wrote the A in the score as a possibility.

A recording of Luna reaching the high A should be sent through the universe. She has taken the human voice where it's never been before. 

 

Poets Wilbur, Ashbery and Howard excel with French translations

Richard Wilbur, who died Saturday at age 96, forged a brilliant career translating French literature, a calling he shared with fellow poets John Ashbery and Richard Howard. 

The three have not only achieved long and distinguished careers as American poets and critics. They've also given American audiences a varied collection of French literature, expanding the understanding of French culture.

Beginning in the 1950s, Wilbur gained renown as the leading translator of classical French theater, including plays by Moliere, Jean Racine and Pierre Corneille.

As poet/critic Dana Gioia noted in an essay on Wilbur's career, the Pulitizer Prize-winning poet began translating Moliere in an effort to improve his craft after an unsuccessful effort to write English verse plays for the Poets' Theater in Cambridge, Mass. Instead of an original Wilbur work, the theater produced Wilbur's translation of Moliere's "The Misanthrope," which gained popularity in theaters across the country, leading to a Moliere revival.

Wilbur also finished the lyrics for Lillian Hellman and Leonard Bernstein's "Candide," a long-troubled Broadway production that Wilbur is credited with saving. While not initially popular, the work's music has gained increasing critical recognition.

Gioia also notes that Wilbur's poetry collections include a significant selection of poetry translations from Italian, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Latin, Hungarian and Anglo-Saxon. 

Ashbery, who died about a month before Wilbur at age 90, translated a variety of French poetry and prose, collected in two volumes late in his career. Ashbery received critical acclaim several years ago for a new translation of Rimbaud's "Illuminations," the first in decades. His rendering of Rimbaud's key work revealed new undercurrents of meaning.

Howard, still active at age 88, has also received praise for his translations of French works, his most famous a new edition of Baudelaire's "Fleurs du Mal." His extensive French translations range from the work of 1960s theorists to classic novels. Howard's translation of Stendhal's "The Charterhouse of Parma" stands out as one of my favorite books.

Wilbur's work has given American theater lovers an appreciation of Moliere and other French playwrights as masters comparable with Shakespeare and Marlowe. Ashbery and Howard have shown the depth and power of French writers.

A  Wilbur, Ashbery and Howard have shown new American audiences why French literature is essential to our culture.