THEATER

White Christmas is
Excerpted From James Feinberg’s new blog: Truthiness.
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L-R: Meredith Patterson (Judy Haynes), Tony Yazbeck (Phil Davis), Beth Johnson Nicely,  Megan Kelley in Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Not to be Missed.
White Christmas
Paper Mill Playhouse
22 Brookside Drive
Millburn, NJ 07041
973-376-4343
Through Dec. 24.
Before the days of “alternative” musicals and their ilk, the geniuses at Tin Pan Alley turned out one hit after another on their lunch breaks, filling the world with what could only be considered brilliant musicals. There was no such thing as a flop.  It was either good, or it never got written.

This was in the days of Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, and, most relevant in this case, Irving Berlin, whose classics such as “Annie Get Your Gun” have lodged him in our memories as one of the greatest composers and lyricists ever born.  Now, at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn through December 24th, one of his hits is being brought back to the public eye.  “White Christmas,” platform for memorable standards such as the title song and Berlin’s ode to the ivories, “I Love a Piano” (which opens the second act with unbelievable gusto), is a masterwork in any theater or on any screen.  The Paper Mill did it fair and perfect justice.          

“White Christmas” is a timeless paradigm of the Christmas story—the story enveloped in warmth and gratitude towards all human beings, where lovers whisper to one another beneath the mistletoe and things all turn out all right because it’s Christmas, and it’s snowing.  Berlin set the bar for such musicals and even such stories, with his tale of retired soldiers, now song-and-dance men, who put on a show to save an inn overseen by their former general.  Though less powerful without the display of pure talent that came from Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby in the movie version, the songs remain beautiful and the lyrics achingly perfect.  Before the time of “Sunset Boulevard” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,”  there were once real musicals where the sole purpose was to showcase unmitigated talent.  And that’s what White Christmas is, at the Paper Mill or anywhere else, a true barrage of talent.  The storyline really doesn’t matter.  What does is following the individual elements through to their conclusion.  You care less about unrequited love than you do about each lyric and its meaning, and its cooperation with the next lyric.

White Christmas is light, easy entertainment, quick on its feet and loud in its devotion.  The Paper Mill cares more than many other theaters because it doesn’t really have anything to lose.  It’s a large, popular theater that showcases the best New Jersey can offer, and it’s almost but not Broadway in the sense that  it doesn’t have angry producers hovering over it.   It can do whatever it likes, and what it likes is usually what the public will like.  That’s admirable.

But there are more stars in this show than just the theater it’s debuting in.  Lorna Luft, half-sister to Liza Minnelli and daughter to Judy Garland, appears as Martha “Megaphone” Watson, a former Broadway actress who claims Ethel Merman once told her, “You are loud!” She seems much happier and gentler than her sister, whose intimidating stage presence and literal megaphone voice can sometimes frighten an audience.  Luft plays her role laudably and with a carefree feel.  White Christmas is comfortable for her and us.

So as you settle in this holiday season, why not choose White Christmas to keep you warm? It’s just as large, encompassing, and cozy as  your draped blanket, and just as delicious and pleasant as your hot cocoa.  On Christmas Eve this year, there’s no better journey than back to 1954 to enjoy the beauty and the pure sagacity behind this show.  It’ll knock your Yuletide stockings off.

Satisfactory
The Ego and the Id
Freud’s Last Session Disappoints.
Reviewed by James Feinberg  
New World Stages
349 W. 50th St.
(212) 239-6200

Do I expect too much of New World Stages?

To any experienced in the theater, the preceding sentence may seem odd and misinformed.  New World Stages has no standing on Broadway.  In fact, the seven-theater establishment is housed in what was once an underground movie theater.  But the Stages have good judgment, after picking up revivals of Rent and Avenue Q, or so it would seem.  But when I went to see the longest running show Off-Broadway this season, New World Stages disappointed me.  They put on a play that was long, inane, and monotonous.  The show was wildly rambling and had little point, describing a fictional meeting between C. S. Lewis (Mark H. Dold), the deeply theist author of The Chronicles of Narnia, and Sigmund Freud (Martin Rayner), the atheist psychologist who managed to link sex to innumerable everyday activities.  To call the play well-developed would be similar in nature to calling Elton John a real man’s man.  It makes no sense to me, and lacks any semblance of a plot. Now, to be fair, there are only two people in the play, and one, Martin Rayner, who usually plays the part of Freud, was absent, leaving dual understudy Tuck Milligan in his place.  Milligan’s   performance seemed to mostly consist of Mark H. Dold attempting to coax Milligan into entering the fun and games of the play’s intensiveness, such as it was.    Perhaps if I had seen the play with Rayner in the title role, I would have felt differently.  For some reason, though, I don’t think so. One can’t fault the playwright, Mark St. Germain, for running with an intriguing idea.  In 1939, Freud met with a young professor in his new home of England.  St. Germain was interested in the possibility that this professor could have been C. S. Lewis.  He imagined that “the meeting between these two men [would be] timeless.” The problem with St. Germain is that he gets so into the idea of religion that he makes the play seem like an amateur debate over the legitimacy of the Catholic Church.  Forgive me for expecting more of two of the most brilliant writers of the twentieth century, but I believe that if Lewis and Freud did meet (unlikely, since Freud was, at the time, in the midst of spiraling into a deep, solitary depression that would cause his purposeful morphine overdose) their conversation would be much more engaging and much more entertaining.  In another place, during a different, less enjoyable season, Session would have impressed me further.  It was just that in one of my more respected Off-Broadway theaters, I wanted more than what I was given.  I craved a show that gave Freud all he deserved, and Lewis all the literary self-references he could possibly spout.  If I could sum up the faults of this show in one sentence, it would be this—It wasn’t enough.  Good enough? Maybe.  Not substantive enough? That could be it.  But the key word is enough.  Theater should exceed expectations, astound you in a part of your sub-conscious where before you had only stored dreary reflection.  Freud’s Last Session did not give me that.  It stayed firmly in reality, something the arts are meant to transcend.  Sorry, New World Stages, but one dud ain’t bad.  Maybe next time.

 Memorable.
Lincoln Center Theater Production of
Other Desert Cities
Booth Theater
222 W. 45th St.
(212) 239-6200 
Extended indefinitely.
I had the joy of seeing this stellar play for a second viewing – this time performed on the proscenium stage of the Booth. Visually I preferred seeing it on the thrust stage of the Vivian Beaumont in Lincoln Center with its tiered seating last February. Yet this did not impede John Lee Beatty from calling upon his scenario fairy dust nor Joe Mantello from applying his staging wizadry. I see no reason why this play should not garner a Tony Award (for which it was ineligible last spring.) In sum, I was struck – as was my son who accompanied me - by the performance of Stacy Keach. I can state for the record, that Keach has grown immensely in the role of Lyman which he originated off-Broadway. Stockard Channing and Thomas Sadoski are two other hold-overs and the ensemble is completed by newcomers Rachel Griffiths and Judith Light.

Here is my original March, 2001 review interspersed with updated comments. To those of you out there who have not seen - and that means most of you - what I judge to be the best original play of the season – take heart. I have it on good authority that a soon-to-be announced theater will be found for Jon Robin Baitz’s most enduring drama since The Substance of Fire in 1992. I certainly hope that its marvelous five-person cast will be back intact. [Well, almost] Three-fifths are indeed back. Rachel Griffiths who was so marvelous in Six Feet Under takes over for Elizabeth Marvel as the wayward Brooke Wyeth who returns home for Christmas to Palm Springs after being away from her parents (for six years, inclusive of a nervous breakdown.) [I was enchanted by both Marvel and Griffiths.] A one-time novelist of budding promise, she informs them and her brother, of her soon-to-be published memoir disclosing the shocking revelation that an older brother, was a member of the notorious Weathermen. This bombshell obviously does not sit well with her A. R. Gurney-type patrician and normally unruffled parents, played deftly by the enormously versatile Stockard Channing as Polly, a confidante of Nancy Reagan, and Stacy Keach, as Lyman, who is finally able to embrace a role reflective of his talent, in this case a former movie actor and GOP chairman. (Ronald Reagan, anyone?) Brooke’s brother Trip - Thomas Sadoski - who excelled in his theatrical debut in reasons to be pretty as he does here on the intimate thrust stage of the Beaumont -will have none of her shenanigans, while her left-leaning, alcohol-imbibing Aunt Silda, played now by Judith Light who has the edge on Linda Lavin, in an acerbic and very funny star turn, knows a lot more about her niece than meets the eye or ear of her parents. Director Mantello keeps the Baitz-and-switch conversation and action flowing at a fever pitch around Beatty’s impressively understated set.

Frank Langella.   Photo: Joan Marcus

Man & Boy
American Airlines Theater
227 West 42nd St.
(212) 719-1300
Final Performance Nov. 27
I am a big fan of Terrence Rattigan. I glory in seeing such revivals as Separate Tables, After the Dance, The Winslow Boy and The Browning Version.  The last two are among my favorite of all plays in more than seven decades of attentive viewing.  Winslow Boy’s first act curtain line: "Yes, I will take the case -- the boy is clearly innocent!” is unsurpassed in the annals of theaterdom.  I don’t buy the conceit that Rattigan’s tales about the upper class became spoiled vintage with the advent of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. With this background, I was fully prepared to embrace Man and Boy, a 1963 play about which I was totally unfamiliar. In it, Frank Langella is Gregor Antonescu, a Romanian-born oil baron (Rupert Murdoch anyone?) Before he sets foot in the drab Greenwich Village basement apartment of an estranged son Vassily, we learn that the fate of stock markets around the world will be undermined owing to a dubious merger promulgated by Antonescu. When Langella makes his entrance, he is every ounce the self-absorbed character of Gary Essendine he portrayed with lip-smacking panache in the 1996 revival of Noel Coward’s Present Laughter. In doing so, he pumps the oxygen out of the air, deflating the surrounding cast members, least notably the person who plays his son, Adam Driver. The fiction surrounding this poor soul is that in order to perpetuate other schemes of uncertain viability, his father declared him dead for five years.  Moreover he insinuates surreptitiously to a potential business suitor Mark Herries (Zach Grenier) that the young man has a homosexual proclivity, with an eye toward potential blackmail. Not an intriguing prospect.

Alan Rickman (center ) is surrounded by a quartet of aspiring authors in his no-holds-barred writers master class. Surrounding him are (Clockwise with his back to the audience) Jerry O’Connell, Hamish Linklater, Lily Rabe and Hettienne Park.

 Worthy of your attention
Seminar
Golden Theater
252 W. 45th St.
(212) 239-6200
A few seasons ago, I reviewed a black comedy called Mauritious which featured two disparate but noteworthy actors, F. Murray Abraham and Allison Pil. It dealt with an intriguing - to me - philatelic scam. Having worked for a time for the bible of stamp collecting, Scott Publishing Co., I was totally rapt by the ingenuity of the author Theresa Rebecl’s script and hoped that I would see more of her work. Well it took some time but in Seminar, Rebeck explored a subject much dearer to my heart than philately, namely, creative writing. It is a craft that I will leave to you dear reader as to whether or not I am reasonably proficient. This I can tell you, for me, it’s an agonizingly slow process. My grandkids are much more facile with prose than I ever was. If I were one of the four young members laying out $5,000 for a kind of Master Class for aspiring professional writers,  mentored by “Leonard” played with lip-smacking bravado by Alan Rickman, I would not take kindly to having my slowly churned out verbiage vocally eviscerated on the basis of a fleeting look at my manuscript. From an audience viewpoint, I enjoyed the verbal assault on the sensibilities of the youthful scribes,  rendered  by an actor who last made his mark on Broadway in the 2002 revival of Private Lives – the classically trained Alan Rickman, ubiquitous in the Harry Potter movies. He is abetted by a quartet of fine ensemble performers, Hamish Linklater in his Broadway debut, Jerry O’Connell, Hettienne Park and the remarkable Lily Rabe who earned a Tony nomination for what I am told was a splendid performance as Portia in the Al Pacino revival of The Merchant of Venice. There is a richness and intelligence, not to mention humor in Rebeck’s script and Sam Gold’s staging that was – dare I say? – Stoppardian . Rickman’s virtuso pronouncements reminded me of the hilarious 20-minute solo turn of Simon Russell Beale in Stoppard’s Jumpers when he was  absorbed in writing a lecture to be delivered at a debate entitled "Man: Good, Bad or Indifferent."

Kim Catrall and Paul Gross are the past and future Amanda and Elyot in the revival of Noël Coward’s famed comedy in which he played opposite Gertrude Lawrence in the same roles.

Private Lives
Music Box Theater
239 W. 45th St.
(212) 239-6200
Curiously enough, Alan Rickman received a Tony Nomination in his last Broadway show, Private Lives in 2002. I did not see that revival but did see a terrific mounting  starring Brian Bedford in 1969 opposite Maggie Smith. This production  holds up adroitly in the Noël Coward tradition -  I imagine  - as it starred both  Noël  and Gertrude Lawrence in the 1930 original. Yet, according to the excellent biography by Philip Hoare which I read in 1998, Coward received 30 telegrams from Lawrence about doing the play. Her first said that she had read it and there was "nothing wrong with it that can't be fixed." Coward wired back dismissively that “the only thing that was going to be fixed was her performance.”Liverpool-born Kim Cattrall and the multi-talented Canadian-born actor Paul Gross  uphold the dynamics and chemistry of their predecessor Amandas and Elyots very well indeed, in their individual spheres. However director Richard Eyre falls in the farce trap in the second act leaning leans more on Noises Off than pure, unadulterated ... as Cole Porter termed it… C’ad

Disappointing
The Mountaintop
Bernard B. Jacobs Theater
242 West 45th St.
(212) 239-6200
Extended through Jan. 22, 2012

It is not that Samuel L. Jackson isn’t right for the role of Martin Luther King, Jr. in a play that purportedly takes place the evening before the horrifying assassination in April, 1968. It is that he is saddled with an embarrassingly untidy and manipulative script, titillated staging by Kenny Leon, better suited to the seduction scenes from Anna Lucasta, and dialoguethat might embarrass Mos Def. It’s beyond my ken how its young author Katori Hall, garnered London’s coveted 2010 Olivier Award for Best New Play. The play in fact is the mirror opposite of the commendable Thurgood which starred Laurence Fishburne three seasons ago as Justice Marshall. Based upon this evidence, it’s clear to me that Jackson, like Fishburne, has the chops to impress on stage as well as screen. It’s also tempting to believe how much better this play might have been as a one-person vehicle rather than sporting a flirtatious temptress with the sassiness and come-hither body language of Angela Bassett as the cheeky Lorraine Hotel maid Camae. On Bassett’s stage entrance, I reflexively drew a parallel to the Dominique Strauss-Khan incident at an east side hotel since she spends an undue amount of time in King’s room doing such bits of business as plying him with Pall Malls or a swallow or two of booze from her flask, or jumping up and down on his bed while she delivers a faux King-like speech.  Fortunately that seduction notion did not pan out. Then followed a couple of curve balls lobbed by the author that a) suggested Camae was a shill for J. Edgar Hoover or  b) was  … well I won’t say it … otherwise I would blow the remainder of the plot (which John Lahr,  the estimable critic for the New Yorker unconscionably saw fit to do). The background music by Branford Marsalis, contributed but little to the proceedings.

Follies
Marquis Theater
(NY Marriott Marquis)
46th St. betw. Bway & 8th Ave.
Through Jan. 22.
Funny how I have a propensity for seeing Stephen Sondheim’s ode to lavish stage musicals in years ending in “1.” There was of course the original 1971 production, which was co-directed by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett. I wasn’t knocked out by that production, due in large part to the miscasting of such cinema stars as the beauteous Alexis Smith, who couldn’t sing worth a darn and Yvonne de Carlo whose rendition of I’m Still Here andDorothy (Your Hit Parade) Collins’s Losing My Mind were so un-memorablethat it took 20 years for those songs to earn the praise they so richly deserved, thanks to brilliant interpretations by such people as Betty Garrett, Barbara Cook and Elaine Stritch. In the 2001 revival I was struck by three deliciously charming performers, Donald Saddler as Theodore who partnered Marge Champion as Emily in a charming ballroom dance number Rain on the Roof and Joan Roberts, the original Laurey in Oklahoma! as Heidi Schiller. They are still with us today – bless them - in their nineties.  As for this revival, it has much to recommend, notably Elaine Paige as Carlotta doing I’m Still Here and Jayne Houdyshell as a Merman-esque belter of Broadway Baby. Less successful is Bernadette Peters as Sally, doing a tepid Losing My Mind, which, along with Not a Day Goes By from Merrily We Roll are Sondheim’s most triumphant songs.

Relatively Speaking
Three one-act Comedies by
Ethan Coen’s Talking Cure, Elaine May’s Geoge is Dead, and Woody Allen’s Honeymoon Hotel,
Brooks Atkinson Theater
256 West 47th St.
(212) 307-4100
 Sixteen years ago  I saw and reviewed  Death Defying Acts which contained two extended sketches: David Mamet’s  Interview and Elaine May's  Hotline,  each of which were amusing and  covered the program's first half while Woody Allen's enormously funny one-act comedy, Central Park West, starring Linda Lavin, concluded  the program after intermission. I assume that the producers did their best to induce Mamet to re-up for this second helping. Not so. Ethan Coen of Fargo-fame has been anointed by the producers to fill that void. I saw the work of the Atlantic Theatrer Company production of Coen’s three one-actors. Offices, the worthiest of the trio, starred F. Murray Abraham.  In “Relatively Speaking, a tasteless snöre-gås-bored of comedies by  Coen, Elaine May and Woody Allen, Jewish mothers yet again come in for their comeuppance. From Molly Picon to Minerva Pious, to Gertrude Berg to Linda Lavin on to Julie Kavner who is in Woody Allen’s Honeymoon Motel, there have been a succession of Jewish mothers who were fertile territory for comedy writers.  Talking Cure, Coen’s contribution to  Relatively Speaking, is a studiously unfunny piece of drivel in which there is a battle ofwits (if one is presumptuous enough to refer to them as wits) between Jerry, a Post Office worker (Danny Hoch) confined to a mental hospital  and his therapist (Jason Kravits).  In May’s George Is Dead, Marlo Thomas plays Doreen who comes unannounced to Carla’s  New York apartment in the wee hours of the night to advise that her  latest husband has just been killed. (She has difficulty in remembering the names of her current husband and all the others who preceded him). Carla is not even remotely an intimate. Not only hasn’t she seen Doreen for years, but is in fact the daughter of Doreen’s former nanny.  How Carla, whose intelligence and self-assurance are apparent can be roped into making all the funeral arrangements on behalf of a woman whose mental acuity is on a par with Josephine Hull in Arsenic and Old Lace is beyond my ken. Coming just 10 months after A.R. Gurney’s amusing Black Tie in an off-Broadway production, Woody Allen’s Honeymoon Motel deals with a similar  conceit, the wrongheadedness of a wedding that threatens to becomes torpedoed before the bride crosses the threshold. The differences of course, is that Gurney’s people are patrician WASPS, while Allen’s subjects sound as if – to steal a line from Morey Amsterdam - they gargled with chicken fat.  Interspersed among the one-liners that Henny Youngman might have recited and probably did - was a plot twist that came through like a knuckle ball. It’s an interesting premise which I will not divulge here. Honeymoon almost, but not quite, salvages what well might have been a torpid evening.

The New York Philharmonic Accompanies
Christopher Plummer in
Henry V.
Sept. 17.
By My Kind of NY Arts Correspondent, Len Elman

Henry V (or “Hank Cinq” as we called it in my college days) may or may not not be Shakespeare’s greatest play, but it tells a truly exciting story, and it contains some of Shakespeare’s most stirring poetry. It is also a paean to English nationalism, given that its unabashed chauvinism was an inspiring counterpoint to the Battle of Britain.     With the proper background music and a great Henry, it could have been made into an outstanding movie. And in fact in 1943 it was -with William Walton supplying the music and Lawrence Olivier the Henry.On September 17th the New York Philharmonic played an expanded version of the music, accompanied by a resplendent Christopher Plummer, wearing a maroon velvet jacket (suitably regal)  and who recited (from memory)  some of the most famous passages from the play. (“Once more into the breach . . .”; “For England, Harry and St. George”, “A little touch of Harry in the night . . .” and of course the “Band of Brothers” St. Crispian Day’s  speech just prior to the Battle of Agincourt.  The orchestra played Walton’s stirring music with verve; the two choruses were first rate, and  Plummer, the 81-year-old Royal Canadian, was more than a little touch of Harry that night. I can only say:
    But we in it shall be remembered-
    We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
    For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
    Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
    This day shall gentle his condition;
    And gentlemen in England now abed
    Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
    And hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks
    That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 
Ching-lish
Longacre Theater  
 220 W. 48th St.
 212-239-6200
David Henry Hwang, author of this fitfully amusing comedy, has one show of consequence under his belt, the drama M. Butterfly, for which he deservedly garnered the 1988 Tony Award. The premisebehind Ch’ing-lish revolves around a naïve western businessman Daniel Cavanaugh (Gary Wilmes), a maker of signs,  from Cleveland who determines that big bucks await the company who creates and produces signage with proper English translations – rather than the almost endearingly mistranslated English that graces signs and billboards throughout China. Case in point: Take notice of safe: the slippery are very crafty  a distortion of  “slippery slopes ahead.” The trick is to convince the Minister of Culture (Larry Lei Zhang) of the worth of such a quixotic project. Enter the Vice Minister (Jennifer Lin) who initially is adversarial, but later has a hot affair with Cavanagh – each of whom are patently blasé about the fact that they have faithful marriage partners.  To which I say, zero is the sum total of 1,000 tons. Fortune cookie translation: Much Ado About Nothing.
 
BALLET

Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham. So go the churchgoers in the most captivating ballet I have ever seen. It is Alvin Ailey’s ambitious anthem that never ceases to thrill.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Revelations
New York City Center  
131 West 55th Street, btw. 6th & 7th Aves.
(212) 581-1212
Through Jan. 1, 2012
Performance Times for Revelations. Select performances with a cast of 50 are indicated in red. Evening performances other than Tuesdays and opening night, begin at 8 pm. Tuesdays, opening night and New Year’s Eve have a 7  pm curtain. Matinees begin at 2 pm & 3 pm.
Nov. 30 opening night, Dec. 1, 2, 3 (mat 2pm), 3, 4 (mat. 3 p.m.), 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (mat 3 p.m.), 11, 14, 15, 18 (mat. 3 p.m.), 20, 21 (mat. 2 p.m.), 22, 24 (mat. 2 p.m.), 24, 25, 27, 28 (mat. 2 p.m.) , 28,  29,  31 (New Year’s Eve), Jan 1. 
 
Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham!  When I hear that triumphant refrain, it can mean only one thing. I am blissfully in the bosom of my favorite of all dance creations, Revelations, from one of the world’s great dance companies. The company, founded by Alvin Ailey who died much too young, thrived under the nurturing leadership of the statuesque former Ailey dancer Judith Jamison. The company’s newest artistic director is Robert Battle. Taking my children and/or grandchildren each season in which the AADT visits City Center is as axiomatic as taking them to the Nutcracker at the City Ballet or to Peter Luger’s for steak. When readers and friends ask me for advice on where to take their kids or grandkids each holiday season, I simply say, “Revelations,” no matter their age.  My wife and I are penciled in for Dec, 14, when we’ll be witnessing Revelations with a cast of 50! For you grown readers, there is no better time than New Year’s Eve for revelry at Revelations.

CIRCUS

So it’s goodbye, adieu and shalom to Grandma.

Big Apple Circus
Dream Big
Damrosch Park @ Lincoln Center
62nd St. betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.
bigapplecircus.org
 1-888-541-3750  
Through January 8, 2012
 Reviewed by My Kind of New York, arts correspondent Claire Dippel
This is the year to attend The Big Apple Circus. If you have been there in the past, it is your chance to wave goodbye to your pal Grandma the clown and to appreciate the tremendous design and top notch acts they are offering this year. If you have never been – it is high time you went to enjoy the one-ring up close charm of this talented group of performers. I took my eight- year-old and my five year old. The eight year old wrote this review:

“At the circus there was a kid that volunteers to try on an imagination helmet. The kid’s imagination is a rope lady that jumps on to a rope. At the circus there is a doll lady that would make you laugh a lot. The doll lady falls in love with the magician. There are animals too. There is a capybara that sings a song! There is also a porcupine that opens a door. Also a little girl that is 10 years old does the trapeze! This is the best Big Apple Circus that I have ever been to.”

I agree with the spellbinding acts she mentions (Anna Volodko is the “rope lady,” Muriel Brugman and Scott Nelson are the “doll lady and magician,” Jenny Vidbel wrangled the animals, and the Cortes’ are the trapeze talents).
 To that list, my five-year-old and I would add the remarkably talented Dmitry Chernov who makes  juggling look easy and whose costume was fabulous  And, of course, Grandma (whose actual gender was the BIGGEST shock to that same five-year-old!)

MOVIES

George Clooney in his finest movie role.

Descendants
In front of the camera or behind the camera, George Clooney continues to mature as perhaps the premiere movie presence of our time. I like his work, I like the causes on whose behalf he espouses and I like his pluck (see: Good Night and Good Luck). At the beginning of Descendants, I throught that everyone came across as oddballs. But then I reminded myself to be patient as I had to be when watching Sideways, that homage to the California vineyards,for which Alexander Payne wrote the script and helmed it as he does here. Clooney as Matt King a real estate lawyer low-keys the fact that his net worth is in mega territory, thanks to the good fortune of having a family tree that extends to the earliest Haole settlers  (with some indigenous royal blood mixed in for good measure). It is his mission to sell off, on behalf of his cousins and him,  an immense parcel of beach front in Kauai for mixed-use development. Meanwhile, his wife, Elizabeth (Patricia Hastie), lies on life-support in a Honolulu hospital after a boating accident, with no hope of emerging from her coma.  As “the back-up parent,” Matt is obliged to manage and monitor his two irreverent daughters, Alex, 17 (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller), who is 10. They are both first rate performers. When Matt learns unimpeachably that Elizabeth had an ongoing affair, he is devastated and determines illogically to confront his wife’s lover Matt (Matthew Lillard).  Matt’s compliant wife Elizabeth (Judy Greer) caught in the undertow of a marital crisis not of her doing, practically steals the movie in just a few fleeting scenes. I say practically because there are any number of cameo-plus turns that contribute mightily to the warp and woof of this Oscar-bound movie’s unanticipated, often funny, events and incidents

No Bows.
The Skin I Live In
With few exceptions, Akira Kurusawa being a notable one, I can think of no great  director inclusive of  Ingmar Bergman, Hitchcock, Wilder and Kubrick, who hasn’t made at least one unwatchable movie.  Pedro Almodóvar, whose creative arsenal includes Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, All About My Mother and the incomparable Talk to Her, has exceeded the infuriatingly contemptible quotient with a film that is beyond the pale or palatable. The premise deals with a plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard whose wife was burned in a car crash and jumps to her death after having viewed herself. Ledgard,  played by  the versatile and unctuousAntonio Banderas,  obsesses  on creating a new kind of porcine skin, fireproof and impenetrable with which to  grace  the body of Vera (portrayed by the gorgeous Elena Anaya of Talk to Her fame) who is at once his patient, prisoner and love slave. It made my skin crawl.

Margin Call
After a near-disastrous career turn as Bobby Darrin in the 2004 flick, Beyond the Sea – one year after he took over as artistic director of London’s venerable Old Vic Theatre, it’s a pleasure to see Kevin Spacey in a role almost as fulfilling as his break-out appearance in The Usual Suspects. As A. O. Scott of the NY Times artfully suggests, “ His comeback has arrived more or less simultaneously with the global­ crisis of capitalism.”

In  Margin Call,  he is an upper-middle-level executive at a major investment bank on the brink of 2008-style turmoil , whose pragmatic judgment vis-à-vis “right-sizing”  puts him at the ethical eye of the storm. The always  reliable  Stanley Tucci is the fired analyst who sets the plot in motion. He leaves behind a little keepsake for Tucci’s assistant – a SanDisk containing his risk analysis of the firm’s ill-gotten mortgage-backed securities. Others who contribute mightily to the dramaturgy are Paul Bettany and Jeremy Irons as the implacable mogul of the company. Demi Moore – long missing from the screen – is miscast as a hard-hitting yes - woman.

Leonardo DiCaprio

 J.  Edgar
This movie is so bad, it made my hair hurt. Until I read Joe Morganstern's Wall Street Journal review, I thought:  Are Alice and I the only ones in the civilized viewing public who had the opposite take on this movie from that of Manohla Dhargis  (NY Times) and David Denby (New Yorker) who hailed it? Well, as far I’m concerned, Morganstern nailed it. For instance, like me, he opines that the only person who comes out of this with his cinematic reputation intact is Armey Hammer as Hoover’s aide and likely lover Clyde. Clint Eastwood’s direction in my view was episodically confusing. The creative team uses a plodding device to take us back and forth to different eras, with Hoover dictating relevant details to an FBI biographer.  Jack Lucas as Charles Lindbergh sounded as if he could use a dose of Gas-X, Judi Dench as Hoover’s adoring and adored mother, Annie, minced around her premises like Josephine Hull in Arsenic and Old Lace. Did I forget someone? Oh yes, Leonardo DiCaprio. Word of advice: Leonardo:  next time someone like an Eastwood or Spielberg, despite his or her well-earned director chops, asks you to spend five or six hours a morning in the dressing room having layers of latex administered to your pretty kisser, tell him only if he wants you to play Quasimodo. Biggest mistake? Eastwood thinking he could tackle the story of  the notorious G-man – from Dillinger to Lindbergh, to Roosevelt to Rev. King to Bobby Kennedy - in a mere two-plus hours - may have lost possession of his senses. Evidence to me that much of what might have been shown had to end up on the cutting-room floor. Case in points, a) the fact that Bruno Hauptmann’s dubious guilt vis-à-vis the Lindbergh baby’s death was not addressed and b) the sequence in a nightclub with Jamie LaBarber as Ginger Rogers who purportedly dated Hoover to buttress his machismo. There seated next to her was a blonde look-alike somewhat senior to her.  I have little doubt she was portraying Rogers’ mother Lela Rogers, who was a founder of the reprehensible Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, comprised of such HUAC -friendly “witnesses” as Adolph Menjou, Robert Taylor and John Wayne as its president, whose raison d’etre was fingering “communists” in the movie industry. Citing author Ray Wannall who wrote The Real J. Edgar Hoover: For the Record, it was Lela –not Ginger - who according to Walter Winchell was Hoover’s “new favorite person.” It seems that J. Edgar screen writer Dustin Lance Black did some shorthand to suggest it was Ginger not Lela who dated Edgar. Perhaps if this was an eight-part HBO series, there would have been time to devote to this pair of left-wing-busting momsers. But no - not only is Lela (Lea Thompson)  not even referenced, save for that  fleeting shot of the two blondies, she speaks not a word. The tepid FBI Story directed by Mervyn LeRoy, glorified the Bureau and starred James Stewart as Agent “Chip” Hardesty. I saw the 1959 original and viewed it again on TCM.  Hoover played himself and had a cameo role, without screen credit, while Clyde Tolson was listed in the credits as “FBI agent.” As I understand it from reading up on it and reading the final screen crawl,  Hoover had complete say and sway as to the script and most certainly approved (if not suggested) Stewart for the lead role.

CABARET

Karen Akers.

Karen Akers Sings Sondheim at the
The Algonquin Oak Room
Last October my wife and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Oak Room to hear a dear friend who is one of our finest interpreters of the American Songbook. On a magical evening last October at the Algonquin, Karen Akers proved to any naysayer present that Steven Sondheim’s virtuosity with a melody is at least as glorious as his lyric poetry. I cite as an example what I regard to be  Sondheim’s most  astoundingly beautiful song from the under-appreciated  Merrily We Roll Along. Here it was performed by Karen accompanied, on the piano by her outstanding musical director of long standing, Don Rebic.   

Not a day goes by,
Not a single day
But you're somewhere a part of my life
And it looks like you'll stay.
As the days go by,
I keep thinking, "When does it end?
Where s the day I'll have started forgetting?"
But I just go on
Thinking and sweating
And cursing and crying
And turning and reaching
 And waking and dying
 And no, not a day goes by
 Not a blessed day

MUSEUMS

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Self-Portrait, late 1901 / early 1902 Black chalk with watercolor on paper National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection, © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Two Women with Hats, Paris, autumn 1921 Pastel on paper 41 3/8 x 29 1/2 inches Private collection © 2011 Estate of Pablo Picasso

Picasso’s Drawings, 1890-1921: Reinventing Tradition
The Frick Collection
One East 70th St.
Through Jan. 8, 2012
This is a fascinating perspective of Pablo Picasso, the draftsman. It explores the remarkable development of Picasso’s drawing over the course of a 30-year career encompassing some of the most important steps in his career. The works of pencil ink, watercolor. Gouache and pastel demonstrate how Picasso interpreted the methods of his artistic predecessors, while redirecting the course of 20th century art.

Ronald S. Lauder’s Collection includes an extraordinary complement of mailed armor and arms.

The Ronald S. Lauder Collection: Selections from the Third Century BC to the 20th Century/Germany, Austria, France. On Public View for the First Time in Celebration of Neue Galerie’s 10th Anniversary.
1048 Fifth Ave. @86th St.
212-628-6200
Through April 2, 2012
This is a rare and enticing glance into the private collection of the co-founder of the immensely popular Neue Galerie. In addition to the Old Master paintings; decorative art of Vienna 1900 ; 19th-20th Century drawings and sculptures from the likes of Brancusi, Cezanne, Kandinsky, Klee,  Klimt, Matisse, Picasso , Rhichter, Schiele, Seurat and Van Gogh, I was struck by Lauder’s impressive collection of medieval art, arms and armor.

Poet Robert Burns’s Rare Manuscript
and a Cache of Letters Relating to Auld Lang Syne
on Display at The Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Avenue
(212) 685-0008
Dec. 14-Feb. 5, 2012
How did a traditional Scots folk song—with lyrics that many people scarcely understand—emerge as one of the world's most enduring popular songs? The Scots words for "old," "long," and "since" combine to form a phrase that translates loosely as "time gone by," "old time's sake," or, in some contexts, "once upon a time." While the song has become indelibly associated with New Year's Eve, it remains an anthem of friendship and remembrance. The exhibition features rare printed editions, a manuscript of the song in the poet's own hand, and selections from the Morgan's important collection of Burns letters—the largest in the world.

The Great Trees, L'Estaque 1906-07 Oil on canvas mounted on composition board, Fractional gift to The Museum of Modern Art from a private collector

Violin and Glass 1913-14 Oil and charcoal on canvas Private Collection

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism
Acquavella Galleries
18 East 79th St.
(212) 734-6300
Exhibition ended Nov. 30
This extraordinary exhibition, ranging from his 1906 Fauvist paintings to his complex, moody compositions of the mid-1950s, punctuated Braque as a modern master whose achievements extend beyond his well-known Cubist collaboration with Pablo Picasso. The exhibition included more than 40 major paintings and papiers collés by the artist, all on loan from prestigious international public and private collections.  As a young man, Braque was a leading member of the Fauves, together with Henri Matisse, André Dérain, and Maurice de Vlaminck, before being inspired by the structured compositions of Paul Cézanne. This adherence to structure would guide Braque for the remainder of his career, especially during his close six-year collaboration with Picasso. Together, Braque and Picasso invented a new aesthetic by portraying their subjects from multiple vantage points. They created a new pictorial world in which an object was deconstructed and then reconstructed on the basis of geometric criteria. They used forms that resembled geometric cubes, leading art critic Louis Vauxcelles to assign the name “Cubism” to the new movement. Still lifes became Braque’s preferred vehicle for innovation, and he was celebrated for instilling the most everyday objects with a profound spirituality usually reserved for devotional painting. Braque described his fascination with the genre, “A lemon and an orange side by side cease to be a lemon and an orange and become fruit. The mathematicians follow this law; so do we.” In addition to fruit, other familiar objects such as tobacco pouches and musical instruments became frequent sources of inspiration. At 79, Braque became the first living artist to be accorded a solo exhibition at The Louvre.

MUSIC

Joshua Bell Performs the
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
With the New York Philharmonic.
Dec. 7, 8 – 7:30 p.m.
Dec. 9, 10 – 8 p.m.
In re-hearing Joshua Bell doing the Tchaikovsky, as I will on Dec. 8, I will bet that Joshua Bell’s own cadenza, will embrace the solo passages, giving it a distinction,   from other renditions of my favorite of all violin concerti. Speaking of betting, Bell told me in an interview 10 years ago, that he likened a cadenza to engaging in one of his favorite indulgences, high stakes casino gambling. Bell performs on the 1713 Gibson ex Huberman Stradivarius. While on the subject here are my other favorite violin concertos in order of preference: 2) Beethoven 3) Brahms  4)  Wieniawski 5)Mendelssohn 6)  Bruch 7) Sibelius 8) Prokofiev 9) Bach 10) Mozart (#4).