MOVIES

I viewed two movies which addressed the notion of advanced senior couples having at it sexually. In Julie and Julia, 60 year-old Meryl Streep plays opposite 48-year-old Stanley Tucci. In Cloud 9 the three key players are Horst Westphal, 78, Horst Rehberg. 72, and Ursula Werner, 66.

Julia Child was photographed by Sing-Si Schwartz at age in 1989 at her Cambridge Massachusetts home during an interview with Sid Lerner, my co-writer of our coffee table book “From the Desk Of: Work Styles of the Famous.” At the time, Child worked tentatively on one of the early computers, but had an IBM Selectric as a back-up. She died in 2004. Her devoted husband Paul was in a nursing home at the time. “Cooking is such a jolly profession,” she told Sid. “I’ve been cooking for more than 40 years, and there’s still so much to learn.” © From the Desk Of: By Hal Drucker and Sid Lerner. Photograph: © Sing-Si Ltd.

Julie and Julia
This movie has the imprimatur of Nora Ephron, as writer, director and co-producer. It is her most refreshing work since When Harry Met Sally - a clever juxtaposing of Julia Child (Streep) and her supportive husband Paul (Stanley Tucci), and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) and her equally encouraging husband Eric (Chris Messina) when Powell determines to prepare all 524 of Child’s recipes from her famed cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and to do a daily blog about her progress. The middle-aged Julia and Paul are depicted, as sexually active with an impromptu removal of the latter’s suspenders or a more calculated dual-in-the-bathtub sequence which they photograph and employ as a Valentine’s card. Amy Adams, the young nun in Doubt, is – well – delicious as Powell. Streep has Julia down pat in voice and Childian mannerisms. And she does so without falling prey to gross caricature. Ephron underscores that distinction by running Dan Ackroyd’s imitation of Child on SNL. My only quibbles (or shall I say, nibbles?) about the movies are a) It’s length (the introduction of Julia’s taller and older sister, marrying and having a child by a much smaller guy could readily have been cut). B) Tucci’s age. In many ways he is as versatile as Streep. However, I kept thinking that this middle-aged guy was played by someone a month older than my son. On the other hand Laird Cregar and Orson Welles famously played much older men when they were in their twenties. C) I found it disquieting that in the initial scene Tucci appears slightly taller than Streep, while in later scenes in the kitchen she towers over him, owing to nose-bleed-inducing four-inch heeled platforms . Note from Sing-Si Schwartz’s photo, that the authentic Child wore only déclassé, albeit functional, athletic shoes.

Ursula Werner and Horst Westphal in “Cloud 9.”

Cloud 9
Like film noir, this movie may introduce a new cinematic classification: The Coming of Aged. It is set in East Berlin and has but a single spoken sentence in the first half hour. And that line, like the remaining dialogue is improvisational. German director Andreas Dresen acknowledges his debt to Brit director Mike Leigh, who used his ad hoc device to near-perfection for the movie Vera Drake and less successfully in his Happy-Go-Lucky. The plot is simple; a seamstress after 30 years of tender, respectful marriage, gives her body to a septuagenarian after hand-delivering his altered pants to his home. She admits her derelictions to her cuckolded husband, who seems grudgingly resigned to the arrangement. There is more frontal and backal nudity than I care to see from among three codgers, particularly after viewing my own tired body in the looking-glass, after my regular Saturday night shower. English subtitles.

Nina Hoss shines in the title role of Max Färberböck’sengrossing “A Woman in Berlin.”

A Woman in Berlin
Less known than the systematic rapes of the Sabines by the Roman, the Nankingese by the Japanese and the endemic abuses of girls and women in the Congo and Rwanda, were the rapes that took place in 1945 in the German capital by Red Army occupiers. This thoughtfully prepared film, written and directed by Max Färberböck is based on a 1959 diary, that was suppressed by the East German government and resurfaced in 2003. There is little notion of quid pro quo vindictiveness on the part of the rank and file occupiers. Nor, are they depicted as ogres. Färberböck has a facility for projecting unruffled objectivity with the excesses of hormonally driven young men. The title character, portrayed brilliantly by a beautiful Garboesque actress named Nina Hoss, pragmatically vows that she will be in full command of whom she sleeps with, and in fact seeks out a protector in a soulful major named Andrej (Evgeny Sidikhin). Their tactful relationship sets the tone for their constituents to exercise a de facto diplomacy. English subtitles.

Jeremy Renner and Anthony Mackie (background) in “Hurt Locker.”

The Hurt Locker
Not having read anything about The Hurt Locker, I admit that for the first 15 minutes, I believed the movie to be a documentary. I was astounded beyond words to finally grasp that this was a scripted movie, and as such, far and away the finest full length feature on the Iraq war. Spectacularly directed by Kathryn Bigelow , it homes in on three soldiers of Delta Company, whose raw-nerved, adrenaline-rush responsibility it is to detonate I.E.D.’s. They are Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) fear-racked and vulnerable. Sgt. J. T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) who adheres to the book and army protocol, and the irrepressible Staff Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner), who skillfully defuses a bomb with the insouciance of a virtuoso timpanist. Renner and Mackie play off each other with grudging admiration and tough love. It ranks with Paths of Glory and Platoon as searingly great war movies.

Public Enemies
This passionless, anachronistic representation of John Dillinger by Johnny Depp is devoid of the soul and sensitivity of e Road to Perdition and the calculated absurdity of Bonnie and Clyde.

THEATER  

(L-R) Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis, Jeff Daniels and James Gandolfini are the formidable foursome in God of Carnage. Photo: Joan Marcus

After a summer hiatus, this sparkling comedy returns with its stellar cast intact, to Broadway on September 8.

God of Carnage
Bernard Jacobs Theater
242 W. 45th St.
212-239-6200

(Here is my May review).
Hands down, this is the best new play to reach Broadway this season. Your laugh motor will be running throughout its 90 quicksilver, intermission-less minutes. It will rev up from the sober, straight lines at its inception, to its penultimate Punch (& Judy) lines, with a capital “P” and I don’t mean pool. The primrose path of God of Carnage leading to the Jacobs Theater has been unorthodox to say the least, given that it was written in French by Yasmina Reza and opened in Zurich and was also mounted in Bratislava. As for London, it was enthusiastically received, winning the coveted Olivier Award for Best Comedy, with Ralph Fiennes in the pivotal role of Alan. In this production which should run for eons, Reza’s beautifully realized characters are two sets of parents in a gentrified area of Brooklyn. This shore’s Alan (Jeff Daniels), is a smooth-talking corporate lawyer with an omnipresent cell phone, for which he makes no apologies, to stay au courant on the potential FDA banning of a wonder drug of a pharmaceutical client. His wife Annette, played by Hope Davis, [who is receiving deserved accolades for her appearance on HBO’s In Treatment series] is a “wealth manager.” They visit the apartment of Michael (James Gandolfini), a merchandiser, and his wife Veronica (Marcia Gay Harden), an author who is writing a book on Darfur. The quartet have gathered in a civilized fashion to discuss antiseptically how best to deal with Alan and Annette’s son who has hit Michael and Veronica’s son with a stick. Whether unprovoked or provoked - the breaking of two of the young man’s incisors is the end result. Reza once again is well-served by Christopher Hampton’s adroit translation. Its clever staging by Matthew Warchus runs from civilized drawing room repartee to physical, baggy pants comedy abetted by rum, segueing to combative couch-wrestling, to unrelenting vomiting by Annette all over Veronica’s prized coffee-table art books. Two earlier plays by Reza, earned accolades: Art with Alan Alda and “Life x 3” with John Turturro and Helen Hunt. In this comedic caper, Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis, James Gandolfini and Marcia Gay Harden have at it, oh so subtly, building from visceral in-fighting to primordial ass-kicking. The question for the jury is how Gandolfini fares in his post-Tony Soprano persona. And the answer is very well indeed. Gandolfini points out, Alan Alda was able to seamlessly make the transition from Hawkeye Pierce to a slew of other non-typecast roles.

Here once more is my profile of Jeff Daniels.
Click here: My Kind of New York - A Purple Rose By Any Other Name - Jeff Daniels

Gavin Long as Simon Cato exults over his victory astride his mount Pure Confidence. Photo: Carol Rosegg.

Pure Confidence
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St .
212-279-4200
Final Performance July 3
Aside from its uninspired title, there is little to find fault with Carlyle Brown’s fascinating play, dealing as it does with the prominence of black jockeys in horse racing before the Civil War. Perhaps that is why black lawn jockeys used to be prominently displayed at the entrance to many a mansion. The diminutive Simon Cato, portrayed superbly by Gavin Lawrence, is the slave of a benevolent master Colonel Johnson (Chris Mulkey) from whom Cato wishes to purchase his freedom and obtain a more concomitant share of the earnings of his racing skills. Under the keen direction of Marion McClinton, Cato, in two persuasively remarkable sequences, you are caught up in the electricity of a bona fide horse race. In the first instance Cato bobs and weaves astride a barrel with stirrups while spiritedly discoursing on the glories of his mount (Pure Confidence) and his own riding techniques, much as Clem McCarthy would do generations later. The second sequence, perhaps even more difficult to execute, is exquisitely balletic in a simulation of slow motion, I have not witnessed since Marcel Marceau.

Tin Pan Alley Rag
Roundabout‘s Laura Pels Theater
111 W. 46th St.
Through Sept. 6
212-719-1300
Hello Oiving, Hello Scotty. The conceit of this unsustainable cartoon strip of a musical is to have ragtime’s Scott Joplin meet in Irving Berlin’s 28 th Street music pluggers’ office where the backs of two upright piano’s remain immobile through interminable scenery changes that include snippets of Joplin’s incipient opera Treemonisha. Michael Therriault as Berlin is more nebbishy than Arnold Stang, However Michael Boatman has authoritative style and is eminently likeable. The one number of consequence is Berlin’s contrapuntal rag duet (popularized by Bing and Gary Crosby) Play a Simple Melody done show-stoppingly by the two principals.

Twelfth Night
Shakespeare in the Park
Delacorte Theater
Central Park
Final Performance July 12
Performances every evening at 8 p.m. except Monday
For information (212) 967-7555
To get to the Delacorte from the west side, enter the Park at 81st at CPW.
From the east side, enter the Park at 79th at Fifth Ave.
Let the record show that this was one of finest evenings I’ve spent at the Delacorte in almost a half-century of attendance. A remarkable cast caught the conscience of the king, (aka Director Daniel Sullivan) in the Bard’s time-honored romantic comedy of cross-dressing and mistaken identity. Among the players were the marvelous American classical actor, Michael Cumpsty as Malvolio; the versatile Raúl Esparza, late of Speed-the-Plow,as Orsino; Hamish Linklater as Sir Andrew Aguecheek; the delectable four-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald as Olivia; David Pittu as Feste; Jay O. Sanders as the Falstaffian Sir Toby Belch and surprisingly, Academy Award Nominee Anne Hathaway as a Viola for the ages.

The Toxic Avenger
New World Stages.
340 West 50th St.,
(212) 239-6200
This ear-numbing, musical was authored by Joe Pietro, the same guy who gave us the artfully conceived I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. However, do not equate that tastefully sophisticated comedy with the excruciatingly toxic waste of talent on the New World Stage, which has more crotch-grabbing than a Breughel painting. Of the earnest and energetic five-person cast, two women shine, Nancy Opel and Celina Carajal. A tip of the hat to the New World Stages, which has marvelous sight lines and generous seat and aisle space.

'Andrzej Hudziak as Konrad, at the beginning of the dream sequence.' Photos: Stephanie Berger

Hajewska-Krzystofik as Konrad's suffering wife.

Kalkwerk
(In Polish)
Lincoln Center Festival
Gerald W. Lynch Theater
John Jay College
Final performance July 18
212-721-6500
Guest Reviewer Michael Steger.
Call it Viennese Neo-Gothic; call it Austro-Polish Theatre of Madness. Try and label it what you will, Kalkwerk, Krystian Lupa's 1992 play based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Thomas Bernhard, eludes all attempts at classification. Veering from excruciatingly still silences to thunderous bursts of violence, from breathless monologues to unhinged slapstick, Kalkwerk is an unyielding study of irrationality, delusion and creative genius gone horrifically awry. The story, adapted more-or-less faithfully from what Robert Craft called "Bernhard's most relentlessly lugubrious creation," concerns Konrad, a late-middle-aged man who has devoted his adult life to writing the definitive "musico-medico-philisophico-scientifc" treatise on the sense of hearing, and who, at the start of the play has just been apprehended in the shooting murder of his wife. The sinister black comedy that pervades the entire play is exemplified in the first half-hour, during which brutish police officers abuse each other and gulp down vodka; the supervising detective sulks at the back of the stage, staring at a wall; Konrad stands filthy and shivering (he has just been found hiding in a nearby cesspit), begging for a change of clothes; and his wife's dead body lies nearby in an overturned wheelchair, with elegantly shod feet suspended in the air. From this unpromising beginning, the rest of the play looks back to the days, weeks—even years—leading inexorably to the murderous end. We gradually learn that Konrad's unnamed wife (and, apparently, half-sister), now gravely ill, gaunt and wheelchair-bound, was once an elegant frequenter of ballrooms. What has made Konrad's wife an invalid, we are told matter-of-factly, is "decades of taking the wrong medications." We come quickly to see, however, that she has also long suffered as the victim of her husband's psychological abuse, and as the subject of his experiments, in which he forces her to listen to certain sounds that he vocalizes over and over again, for hours on end. (In the play, as in the novel, these experiments are called the Urbantschitsch Method, and indeed they are modeled on a method developed by Victor Urbantschitsch in fin-de-siècle Vienna.) For her part, the wife from time to time barks orders at Konrad, insisting that he change her dress, find a new one and change it again, and then change back to the original dress. She sends Konrad repeatedly to the cellar to fetch glasses of must-wine for her (she insists that he not bring up a pitcher of must, but always just one glass at a time). She mocks Konrad ruthlessly for his obsession with his treatise, and derides his purported brilliance. "I would rather not see what is inside your head," she says repeatedly, in futile fits of rebellion against her husband-captor. Meanwhile, Konrad, despite his many years of labor, has not been able to write even one line of his great work, either because he is doing research and conducting experiments, or because of interruptions whenever he sits down to write by his wife, by a neighbor, or by the sounds of the woodcutter chopping wood outside his window. At one point, at the request of his wife, Konrad puts on a recording of Mozart's Haffner Symphony, played at ear-shattering volume, and for a moment the two seem to share a joyful moment, with Konrad dancing about, frantically conducting the air, and his wife bobbing in her chair. Then we realize that this couple has been listening to nothing but the Haffner Symphony for years, and that this, too, is a symptom of some deeply-rooted mutual derangement. Such is the picture we assemble, over the course of four hours, of Konrad and his wife. At the barely-perceptible core of Kalkwerk is a domestic drawing-room play in shattered form, descanted from Strindberg, Ibsen and Chekhov, and strained through the taut filters of Kafka, Beckett and Witold Gombrowicz, the great Polish writer of obsession and excess. We may feel at times as if we are watching a ghoulish version of Casaubon and Dorothea, or Professor Higgins and Eliza, or even, strange as it may seem, Lucy and Desi. For, unlikely though it may sound, there is a great deal of humor in the play, though almost none of it translates easily to a written re-telling. Much of the dialogue is laced with vicious wit, and there are, in particular, two long scenes of screwball comedy—albeit of a rather grotesque variety—that Lupa and his cast play to maximal effect, while dispelling none of the overall grimness. As Konrad says, during one of his extended, repetitive rants, writers have been trying to write tragedies since the beginning of time; but, despite the their greatest efforts, everything turns into bitter comedy in the end. This may be the closest thing to a "message" one might extract from a play that strenuously avoids being edifying. In translating the novel into a theatrical work, Lupa has hewn closely to Bernhard's text. The most significant change is that whereas in the novel events are related to the reader by an acquaintance of Konrad, in the play Lupa takes a more expansive approach to point of view. The play is largely in the third person that naturally suits theater, though there are occasional voice-overs from the point of view of Konrad himself, and the play opens with two characters addressing the audience directly. Absent the mediation of the novel's narrator, we identify with Konrad, whether we like it or not. We realize how strong the identification has become toward the end of the play, when Konrad has an intensely frightening dream, and we, too, experience his fascination and horror. In the play's final hour, as Konrad approaches closer and closer to outright madness, Lupa introduces such surrealistic touches, as two orangutan-like creatures that appear in a corner of the stage for a few seconds only to vanish behind a bed, which not only signal Konrad's delusional state but also cause us to question our own states of mind. Both the novel play take their name from the abandoned limeworks next to which Konrad and his wife live, in a vast space resembling a defunct factory. The sets, designed by Lupa, are spare but not without warm touches in the weathered furniture, and in costumes that hint subtly at turn-of-the-century Mitteleuropa. The stage lighting is used expertly to render even more acute the sense of tension and psychological dissolution. Before becoming a theatre director, Lupa studied at the film school at Łodz, and in Kalkwerk he exhibits a fondness for the abrupt fade-to-black. Sometimes, Lupa cuts scenes sharply, as if amputating them, in the midst of an actor’s line or just before the completion of some accompanying musical phrase, in a way that recalls techniques used by some of the film directors of the Frence New Wave. In this play about a man's fixation on the sense of hearing, composer Jacek Ostaszewski has collaborated with Lupa to give sound an appropriately prominent role. Ostaszewski's 'soundtrack' ranges from stretches of complete silence to Chopin-inflected minimalist piano melodies; from dripping water and mosquito-like hums to throbbing base pulses that emerge from speakers at the back of the stage to throttle the audience.

As in a play of Chekhov or Beckett, Kalkwerk's success depends on an extremely high level of performance, and a good part of what made this bleak production such a pleasure to watch was witnessing such a fine cast at work. Andrzej Hudziak as Konrad was utterly captivating, with his slightly off-kilter posture, the almost demonic movements of his arms and hands, and his numerous diatribes and monologues delivered as if for the first time, straight from Konrad's overtaxed mind. Malgorzata Hajewska-Krzysztofik, as Konrad's wife, was no less astounding, able to shift from being a victim to seeming tyrant in a matter of breaths. Repeating certain words over and over—such as "powder" or "ball"—in a desperate yet imperious voice, Hajewska-Krzysztofik made those ostensibly innocent words fearful, and wedged them into one's mind. The chilling, unforgettable last scene of the play belongs wholly to her. Kalkwerk , here receiving its United States premiere, is the first play to be performed in Polish under the aegis of Lincoln Center. The Stary Teatr Naradowy of Krakow, established in 1781, one of the oldest and most highly regarded companies in Europe, is prized for its adventurous approach to a largely classical repertoire. Krystian Lupa, who has worked often with the Stary Teatr, has won nearly every major theatre award in Europe, but has had only one other production presented in the United States (Chekhov's The Three Sisters at Boston's American Repertory Theatre, 2006). Lupa clearly views theatre as medium through which to challenge an audience, and, judging from the impassioned standing ovation Lupa received when he stepped up on the stage at the end of Kalkwerk, there are many who are enthusiastically willing to accept. Let us hope that Lupa will be back soon to challenge us again.

JAZZ AND POP STANDARDS

Jazz in July Festival
Bill Charlap, Artistic Director
July 22. A Helluva Town …
The 92nd St. Y Lexington Avenue & 92nd Street
212-415-5500
And it was one helluva evening, highlighted by glorious Bernstein music from On the Town, Wonderful Town, Candide and West Side Story. With each succeeding year, Charlap grows in inventiveness (and emcee-ability) as perhaps our finest young jazz pianist. In saying that, I am echoing Marian McPartland’s take on him to me. He was backed formidably, by the great Jay Leonhart on bass, Ken Peplowski on sax and clarinet, Bryan Stripling on trumpet, Lewis Nash on drums and the redoubtable Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar. Bonus of Bonuses: without fanfare and unannounced, Anthony Benedetto (aka Tony Bennett) graced the stage with two Porter numbers that brought the house down.

I Remember You at the Y.
LYRICS & LYRICISTS
Includes a 100th Birthday Tribute to JOHNNY MERCER
November 18 (One Night Only)
This tribute takes place on what would have been Johnny Mercer's actual centennial. Mercer wrote the lyrics to more than a thousand songs, received 19Academy Award nominations and was a co-founder of Capitol Records. , He appeared in L&L's inaugural season (I have a CD of that memorable event and once had lunch with his widow Ginger). Some of his best-known songs include Blues in the Night, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive and One for My Baby, all with Harold Arlen; Satin Doll, with Duke Ellington;  Moon River, and The Days of Wine and Roses, with Henry Mancini; and my favorite of all standards, Skylark, with Hoagy Carmichael.  Robert Kimball and Deborah Grace Winer team up as co-artistic directors.

JAZZ ON DVD

In the ‘30s, Anita O’Day was most famously a lead band singer for Gene Krupa and Stan Kenton.

As Benny Goodman did for Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton, so too did Gene Krupa in 1941 eschew race for Roy Eldridge, not only having him as a valued member of his band but putting him on equal footing with a white female singer (O’Day), in the history-making duet: “Let Me Off Uptown.”

O’Day in an austere, tailored outfit reflective of Newport’s upper crust, wowed her audience with a rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” at the town’s Jazz Festival that in my view, belongs with Ella Fitzgerald’s Lady Be Good and Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit, in its otherworldly interpretive qualities

Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer
For a trip to Paradise, dispense with those cruise tickets, sit back, hold hands with a septuagenarian, and view the world through the prism of perhaps the most enthralling of all white big band era female singers, and that would include such icons as Helen Forrest, Chris Connor, June Christy, Connie Boswell, Jo Stafford and Peggy Lee. I placed a conference call to the brilliant young co-producers who extracted such refreshingly candid and amusing golden nuggets from O’Day in her late-in-life interviews in which she recounted her heroin and drinking lapses and abortions. Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden relied, not on stringent chronology but adroit intercutting of archival performance footage, punctuated by fond reminiscences from friends and colleagues and cutaways to O'Day's original reviews and publicity material. Until I viewed their documentary, I always believed that Mel Tormé picked up scat from Ella Fitzgerald’s Lady Be Good. Perhaps so, but after being mesmerized by their creative effort, I contended he could not have been un-influenced by O’Day’s Love for Sale.

Click here: YouTube - Love for sale.

What is more, Tormé’s ability to simulate a saxophone must have been at least partly inspired by Four Brothers, in which O’Day’s voice becomes a reed instrument in Woody Herman’s band in 1958 (as singer Carmen McRae describes.)  

Click here: YouTube - Anita O'Day Sings and Carmen McRae Comments!

How does she rate with black female singers, specifically Ella, Sarah and (Lady Day) Billie Holliday? Well she certainly belongs in their hallowed territory. As for the last, she became known endearingly in the trade as “Lady O’Day.” With the Gene Krupa Band she recorded one of the first celluloids of the future jazz standard, Skylark which I regard as the closest thing to perfection in pop balladry (with Hoagy Carmichael’s exquisite melody and Johnny Mercer’s flawless lyrics). I have at least a baker’s dozen recordings of Skylarks done by such worthies as Sinatra, Tormé, Nancy LaMott and Joyce Carr. To listen to it, by O’Day, is akin to hearing it sung for the first time.

Click here: we7 (playing) - Anita O'Day - Skylark - Listen Free 

Discovered by Krupa, O’Day had her first hit in 1941 with the swinging novelty Let Me Off Uptown, which daringly featured a history-making vignette, an interracial voice-and-trumpet duet with Roy Eldridge in which they riff together as equal opportunity players.

Click here: YouTube - Gene Krupa - Let me off uptown

Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer is $29.95 for the two-disc set , which you can secure from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other music sources. Disc One contains the movie and commentary. Disc Two contains 45 minutes of uninterrupted musical performances and 45 minutes of outtake interviews with Anita.

CABARET

Jimmy Webb
FEINSTEIN'S AT LOEWS REGENCY
540 Park Avenue (at 61st Street)
New York , NY 10021
212-339-4095
Through August 12th @ 8:30 PM
http://feinsteinsattheregency.com
By Guest Reviewer Bob Feinberg

Sitting at a candle-lit table in the clubby Feinstein’s at Loews Regency on a drizzling summer evening waiting for Jimmy Webb to take the stage, it’s just so tempting to contemplate a tired metaphor referencing the immortal line “someone left the cake out in the rain,” from the Webb masterpiece MacArthur Park. But when Webb mounts the stage, sits at the grand piano and begins to pound out the driving chords of The Highwayman, the audience is swept along for the ride.

Webb’s musical accomplishments are larger than life: composer of By The Time I Get To Phoenix, Wichita Lineman, Galveston, MacArthur Park, Up, Up and Away, Worst That Could Happen, and countless other classics; the only artist to ever receive Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration; recipient of the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award and the National Academy of Songwriters Lifetime Achievement Award. Webb is a member of the Board of Directors for both The Songwriters' Hall of Fame and ASCAP.

During the course of a 90-minute show, Webb embraces his audience, and the embrace is fondly returned. He sings with gusto, although he gladly invites the audience to help him with the high notes. In between songs, he shares stories of drinking with Richard Harris; meeting Sinatra (“Mr. Sinatra,” as Webb calls him); and serenading a young British lass (“Once I get them on the piano bench, it’s in the bag…”) Webb’s is a bygone world of an Oklahoma minister’s son who played the piano to accompany his father’s choir and escaped to southern California where he wrote songs for his hero, Glenn Campbell. For an hour and half, an intimate group of enthusiastic fans had the great pleasure and rare opportunity to visit that world.

DISCUSSION & ANALYSIS

World Politics With Ralph Buultjens
The 92nd St. Y Lexington Avenue & 92nd Street
212-415-5500
Ralph Buultjens, a leading analyst of world affairs, examines key foreign policy issues that could alter the global balance of power., a professor at New York University and Cambridge University, is the author of 10 books. Owing to the fast-changing nature of global politics, topics may change.

MUSEUMS

La Bohème Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) Sketches for Act IV (1895) Autograph manuscript, 12 December 1895 The Dannie and Hettie Heineman Collection

Poster for the original production of La Bohème Milan : G. Ricordi (1895) Lithograph James Fuld Collection

Program for world premiere of The Girl of the Golden West 10 December 1910 , Metropolitan Opera, New York Fuld Collection;

First edition libretto Tosca Text by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa Milan: G. Ricordi, 1899 James Fuld

Celebrating Giacomo Puccini's 150th Birthday 
With Original Manuscripts from Madama Butterfly and La Bohème 
The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave., at 36th Street, New York  
212-685-0008
Sept. 15, through Jan. 10, 2010
Why am I excited about this exhibition? Because La Bohème is the first opera I ever witnessed. My sister and I saw, not simply a concert version, but a full-blown costumed outdoor production at the old Lewisohn Stadium on the CCNY campus in Manhattan. I was about 8 at the time. And to this day it remains my favorite opera. We had the old 78 rpm multi-record album starring Licia Albanese as Mimi and Beniamino Gigli as Rudolfo with whom I tried desperately to do a sing-along of my still favorite aria Che Gelida Manina. Since that initial introduction at the Stadium, boy and man I've seen it more than a half-dozen times, at the Paris Opera, where it was sung in French (which did not diminish its lyric beauty) and at the Frankfurt Opera House, with a mostly American cast, sung in German, which did diminish its beauty. I saw the controversial Franco Zeffirelli production at the Met, with Pavarotti, which I enjoyed enormously and most recently Baz Lurhmann's 2002 Broadway version with young stars and giant English Librettos in strategic areas of the stage, one of the few time in years that I left the theater humming the score. On view are approximately 40 items related to Puccini's career, including rarely seen original manuscripts for Butterfly and  Bohème and three other Puccini works, the little known Le Villiand and Edgar,  and the popular La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West, which I saw with Dorothy Kirsten). A display of first-edition librettos constitutes a chronology of Puccini's operatic output, augmented by information about premieres, casts, and first performances in cities throughout the world during the composer's lifetime. There is also a display of personal letters, a period poster and playbills, souvenir postcards, and letters linked to Puccini's tempestuous relationship with Arturo Toscanini ,who conducted the world premieres of La Bohème and Fanciulla, and after Puccini's death, Turandot. It’s difficult for me to contemplate that my family went to Sunday afternoon concerts of the revered NBC Symphony conducted by – yes – Toscanini only 40 or so years after those premieres . The showing of a poster from Tosca reminds me that in 1948, I saw bass-baritone Lawrence Winters, a protégé of Todd Duncan and the first African-American to sing at a prominent American opera house, New York’s City Opera, singing the villainess Scarpia … in white face.

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
11 West 53 Street 
Http://www.MoMA.org 
(212) 708-9400 

Final Installation of Song Dong’s “Waste Not.”

Projects 90: Song Dong
Through September 7, 2009
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor Beijing-based artist Song Dong (b. 1966) explores notions of transience and impermanence with installations that combine aspects of performance, video, photography, and sculpture. Projects 90, his first solo U.S. museum show, presents his recent work Waste Not. A collaboration first conceived of with the artist's mother, the installation consists of the complete contents of her home, amassed over 50 years during which the Chinese concept of wu jin qi yong, or "waste not," was a prerequisite for survival. The assembled materials, ranging from pots and basins to blankets, oil flasks, and legless dolls, form a miniature cityscape that viewers can navigate around and through.

James Ensor’s Oyster Eater.

Works of James Ensor
Through Sept. 21
James Ensor (1860–1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and a precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early 20 th. This exhibition presents approximately 120 works. I enjoyed his early period much more than those late-in-life works concerned with the macabre and grotesquerie. Historically this is well worth your viewing, given his substantial influence on generations of later artists.

Opus 217 from the collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller.

Nine Masterpieces on Loan to MoMA from David and Peggy Rockefeller.
This intimate installation highlights a group of nine exceptional early modern European paintings that have been promised to MoMA over the years by David and Peggy Rockefeller. Featuring superb examples of Post-Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist painting that range in date from Paul Cézanne's Still Life with Fruit Dish (1879–80) to Pablo Picasso's The Reservoir, Horta de Ebro (summer 1909), this presentation celebrates the Rockefellers' longstanding generosity to the Museum and the early flowering of modern art. Among the other works included are Henri Matisse's vibrant Interior with a Young Girl/Girl Reading (1905–06) and André Derain’s Charing Cross Bridge (1906 or 1907), a brilliantly colored Fauve cityscape.

Katharine Hepburn and Dan Tobin in The Philadelphia Story on Broadway, 1939.  Photo by Vandamm Studio.  Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Katharine Hepburn: In Her Own Files
Features Correspondence, Annotated Scripts,
Journals, Scrapbooks and Photographs
Vincent Astor Gallery
The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts Exhibition
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
212-870-1630
Free Admission.
Through October 10
The exhibition portrays Hepburn’s stage career in four chronological sections: the early years when she had small roles in productions outside of New York, but missed opportunities on Broadway; her return to Broadway with the Theatre Guild after her success in film; her commitment to Shakespeare and the classics; and the later years when she accepted three major theater roles ­– the musical Coco (1969), A Matter of Gravity (1976), and The West Side Waltz (1981) -  and was even considering projects into the mid-1990’s. The personal theatrical papers of Katharine Hepburn, acquired by The Library for the Performing Arts in 2007, are on view for the first time in a fascinating new exhibition. Her long and rich theater career is documented through typed scripts (some of which, like Coco, is annotated in Hepburn’s hand), hundreds of photographs (publicity shots and formal portraits, as well as informal snapshots and rehearsal candids), scrapbooks, promotional ephemera, and 60 years of correspondence (fan mail, congratulatory notes, and letters from such notable friends and admirers as Judy Garland, Richard Burton, John Ford, Vivien Leigh, Peter O’Toole, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, and Jeremy Irons, among scores of others. She saved telegrams from her friends and from stage crews and even the cards that come with flower bouquets, including many signed “Pot,” Hepburn’s pet name for long-time companion Spencer Tracy. Admission is free. Files shows the evolution of an acting career that began with small parts in the theater. Even after she achieved superstardom in Hollywood, she often returned to the stage where each time she found new risks, new audiences, and, more than once, abject failure. In a stage career that lasted more than a half century  (1928 – 1981), she complemented her brilliant film career with memorable theater roles in everything from drama to comedy to musicals, in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw and by Philip Barry and Alan Jay Lerner, both on Broadway and on national tours .Her acerbic wit is displayed in her descriptions of life on the road, including her arrest in Kansas for speeding as she tried to get to the theater for a performance of As You Like It Notable also are a copy of a curtain speech she delivered in tribute to the fallen students at Kent State and an impassioned plea she composed for Joseph Papp’s Save-the-Theaters campaign. Also included are such unique items, as her pages of handwritten rehearsal notes, and a rare photograph of her from The Big Pond in 1930, a production she appeared in for one night only before being fired.

Katharine Hepburn was the recipient of four Academy Awards, along with numerous other acting honors. Her stage credits include Art and Mrs. Bottle (1930), The Warrior’s Husband (1932), The Philadelphia Story (1939), As You Like It (1950), The Millionairess (1952),The Merchant of Venice (1957), Much Ado About Nothing (1957), Twelfth Night (1960), Antony and Cleopatra (1960), Coco (1969), A Matter of Gravity (1976) and West Side Waltz (1981). She was born May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Conn., and died on June 29, 2003.

Mayer Kirshenblatt, The Gramophone, 1999, acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. © 2009 Mayer Kirshenblatt.

Mayer Kirshenblatt, Boy in the White Pajamas , 1992, acrylic on canvas. Collection of the artist. Courtesy of Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. © 2009 Mayer Kirshenblatt.

They Called Me Mayer July:
Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood
in Poland Before the Holocaust.
Jewish Museum 1109 5th Ave at 92nd St.
Through October 1
(212) 423-3200
This is a charming and vivid representation of a man’s recollection of his childhood in a town in Opatów, Poland (Apt in Yiddish). While you marvel and kvel over a part of Jewish life that may have been coincident to that of your own parents and grandparents you learn things about the mysticism, rites, idiosyncrasies of a religion that you may never have know. I certainly didn’t. Now a nonagenarian, Mayer Kirshenblatt, glib and droll, was encouraged by his daughter to share his memories of the vibrant Jewish world found in the Poland of his youth, whereupon he taught himself to paint at age 73 and in a style that is reminiscent of Chagall and Grandma Moses, he vividly chronicled life in in the 1920s and early 30s. Kirshenblatt, who left for Canada in 1934, presents over 80 paintings and drawings that exemplify his mission to remeber the world of his childhood in living color, lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived. This unique project is a blend of memoir, oral history, and visual interpretation. Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, the project is a remarkable record -- in both words and images -- of Jewish life in a Polish town, south of Warsaw of Opatow, familiarly known as Apt,before World War II, as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy