THEATER

Linda Lavin (left) and Stockard Channing in Other Desert Cities.

Elizabeth Marvel and Thomas Sadoski as
Brooke Wyeth and Trip Wyeth in Other
Desert Cities. Photo: Joan Marcus

Lincoln Center Theater Production of
Other Desert Cities
Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater 
65th St. @ Lincoln Center Plaza
(212) 239-6200 
Final Performance prior to theater re-location, Feb. 27.
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 endearing drama since The Substance of Fire in 1992. I certainly hope that its marvelous five-person cast led by Brooke Wyeth as Elizabeth Marvel will be back intact. Brooke returns home for Christmas to Palm Springs after being away from her parents (Polly and Lyman) for six years, inclusive of a nervous breakdown. 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. (George Murphy, 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, Linda Lavin, in a typically acerbic  star turn, knows a lot more about her niece than meets the eye or ear of her parents. Director Joe Mantello keeps the Baitz-and-switch conversation and action flowing at a fever pitch around John Lee Beatty’s impressively understated set.  
 


Lincoln Center Theater Production of
War Horse
Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center
150 W. 65th St.
New York, NY 10023
(212) 362-7600
 Previews begin March 15
Reprinted from My Kind of Holiday: “This Time I Saw London.” (by James Feinberg).
It’s a play, and a musical, and a puppet show, and a war. War Horse has literally everything, and there’s nothing to regret about this incredible display of talent and craftsmanship. Documenting the story of a boy whose horse is sent to fight in World War One, War Horse uses enormous puppets, which are controlled by three people who work together with the elegance of ballet dancers. The show’s acting is superb, and its occasional singing of British battle songs merely livens up an already excellent time. Even jokes are littered throughout the wartime epic, and the audience loves them. War Horse does absolutely everything right, and there’s not one thing they scrimp on. The special effects are amazing, if a little loud, and the puppetry cannot be matched. The horses are so realistic that you begin to believe in them. The goose is so real that you begin to sympathize with it when it gets the door slammed in its face. This show is amazing. I am not exaggerating when I say it is the best play I’ve ever seen. And to top it off, Stella Richards arranged for us to sit dead center in the same orchestra row in which the Queen viewed it.

Tate Donovan and Frances McDormand in Good People.
Photo: Joan Marcus

Manhattan Theater Club’s
Good People
Friedman Theater
261 W. 47th St.
212-239-6200
To add to the luster of this year’s Broadway season, count playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, director Daniel Sullivan, scenic designer John Lee Beatty  - all associated with Good People - among its treasures. Note that I have not included Frances McDormand. If you share with me an admiration for her performance in the movie, Fargo, wait until you sample her acting chops on Broadway. She belongs in a self-contained realm of her own with its own oxygen – where, to quote Alan Jay Lerner – “she almost makes the day begin.” She is Marg (with a hard “g”) Walsh from “Southie” Boston, the hardscrabble boyhood haunt of Lindsay-Abaire and the cinematic locale for Mystic River and The Town. In the play’s opening scene Margie is informed by her boss, Stevie (Patrick Carroll), whom she knew when he was a boy, that he has to sack her from her dollar store job for frequent lateness, else it would be his head. She combatively pooh-poohs the notion by blaming her tardiness on having to tend to the needs of a grown daughter with a child’s mind, and inveighs at Stevie with a few well-chosen Southie barbs, but to no avail.  Her desperation prompts her to contact Mike Dillon (Tate Donovan) whom she dated 30 years before, for a job, any job.  He is one of the few who made it out of the old neighborhood – as an accomplished fertility doctor. “A lace curtain Irishman,” is how she describes him pejoratively. There follows a sensational exchange that takes place in Dillon’s office, beginning with Margie’s notion that the receptionist was treating her shabbily and continuing with verbal gymnastics that showed that Dillon,  after some initial pleasantries, could give as good as he gets. This remarkable scene is topped off by Marg insinuating herself to Dillon to a party invitation at his home where she believes she well might meet a prospective employer. The fact that she received a message on her machine that the party had been canceled owing to the couple’s suddenly sick child, does not deter her from proceeding to the Dillon home, under the misguided assumption that the phone call was a ruse, to avoid her appearance. In the penultimate scene, when she arrives unannounced at the home, she realizes that the phone call was on the level.  Moreover she is welcomed effusively by Dr. Dillon’s enormously charismatic wife Kate played with poise and charm by the excellent Renée Elise Goldberry who encourages Marg to divulge what might be potentially manipulative recollections of her high school days with Mike. In smaller roles are Becky Ann Baker and Estelle Parsons as Jean and Dottie, loyal friends and Bingo-playing enthusiasts to Marg.

André Braugher (center) flanked by Jay Wilkison (left) and André
Holland in the Seder scene from The Whipping Man.

Manhattan Theater Club’s
The Whipping Man
NY City Center Stage 1
131 W. 55th St.
212-581-1212
There have been in my estimation, two truly great American non-cable TV series: Friday Night Lights and Homicide, Life on the Street. Emerging as the breakout stars for Homicide were Melissa Leo, who just won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and André Braugher as Detective Frank Pembleton. Braugher’s most recent series, Men of a Certain Age has punctuated his charismatic and comedic presence.  I had seen him but once on a live stage, in 1996 at the Delacorte Theater in the Park as Henry V, my favorite of all Shakespeare roles, in a performance  that was – to be kind - un-nuanced. Happily, what Braugher brings to the intimate confines of City Center Stage I as Simon, is a performance that is almost other worldly, with a scene taking place at a seder table in a nearly destroyed plantation that is as emotionally lifting as the Chanukah sequence from The Diary of Anne Frank. The participants are two Black men recently freed from slavery in 1865, Simon and John (André Holland) and a wounded Confederate soldier Caleb DeLeon staggering in to the family mansion, with a bullet lodged in his leg. What the three have in common is they are Jewish. Simon and John learned to worship in the faith of Caleb’s father and have been charged in the aftermath of the Civil War with loyally guarding the remnants of their home while the others have retreated to ostensibly safe havens. John and Caleb essentially grew up together. After tending to him, with hooch as an anesthetic in a scene redolent of Gone with the Wind, it is revealed that young John‘s back was the repository for whippings administered for any sins of the plantation’s slaves. It is Simon who determines that the three shall celebrate the first night of Passover.  In place of the matzoh is a small square of hardtack, collard greens for the bitter herbs and a purloined bottle of wine, with four kiddish cups (one for Elijah the Prophet). “Let all who are hungry come and eat,” says Simon. “Let all who are in need come celebrate Pesach. This year we are slaves, next year we may be free.” This pronouncement was followed by a magnificent rendering, fittingly enough of Let My People Go. Special praise for Playwright Matthew Lopez, Director Doug Hughes, the ubiquitous Scenic Designer John Lee Beatty and MTC Artistic Director Lynne Meadow for her consistently superior product.

Primary Stages’
Black Tie
59E59 Theaters
59 E. 59th St.
(212) 279-4200
After a couple of clinkers, A. R. Gurney is back in form … well, almost. In this   engaging comedy he borrows liberally and urbanely from the Topper series featuring Constance Bennett and Cary Grant as George and Marian Kerby and Roland Young as the invisible man, Cosmo Topper.  The play takes place late afternoon and early evening in a hotel suite in the Adirondacks in which Gregg Edelman as Curtis and Carolyn McCormick as Mimi are preparing for their son’s wedding. Edelman, despite his Ashkenazic ornamental name, meaning nobel man, plays Curtis a typical Gurney-esque White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. On hand for most of the show is Curtis’s’ father (Daniel Davis) who dishes out copious advice and disdainful critiques to his son on the proper preparation for a wedding that Emily Post and Dorothy Dix might have found daunting. Trouble is, PaPa is a ghost, whom only Curtis can see and hear. Rehearsal dinner? How do you rehearse a dinner?” is a typical off-putting remark. Curtis, having decided to wear his father’s old tuxedo to the dinner, is informed icily by dear old dad: “we call it a dinner jacket.”  The performances of Edelman, Davis and Carolyn McCormick as Curtis’s wife are uniformly excellent. Would that I could say the same for the young actors who play their sniveling son Ari Brand (Teddy, the bridegroom) and their cheeky daughter Elvy (Elsie). Charitably, the intended bride , is offstage throughout. A further comment about Gregg Edelman. He, like the storied Richard Kiley, is both a first class actor and singer. He was wonderful in the recent revival of Wonderful Town.  I would love to see him in a revival of No Strings, that underrated Richard Rodgers musical that starred Kiley and Diahann Carroll. 

Roundabout Theater Company’s
The Importance of Being Earnest
American Airlines Theater
227 W. 42nd St.
Extended through July 3
To me, the most memorable adaptation of Wilde’s Earnest was the 1952 movie, which contained such sublime actors as Michael Redgrave as John Worthing, Joan Greenwood as Cicely Cardew and especially Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell. Curiously enough, on stage that role is more often than not played by men, just as Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt has had actors as varied as Jack Benny and Charlie Ruggles in drag in the title role (capped off by Ray Bolger in the wonderful musical version.) Tony winner Brian Bedford reprised the role of the matriarch which he first did a couple of seasons ago at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The interpretation seemed more W. S. Gilbert’s Katisha than Wilde’s Bracknell, in an otherwise serviceable Roundabout Theater production which had the virtue of Dana Ivey nailing it as the Cecily’s tutor Ms. Prism, much as Margaret Rutherford did in the film version.  With each role – and I say this respectfully - Ivey becomes the very model of Maggie Smith, in character, demeanor and humor.

  
(L-R) Brian Cox, Jason Patric, Jim Gaffigan,
Chris Noth, Kiefer Sutherland in That
Championship Season. Photo: Joan Marcus.

That Championship Season.
Jacobs Theater
242 W. 45th St.
212-239-6200
So here we have two Broadway vehicles about two despots with the power to cloud men’s minds; one being Coach Vince Lombardi, the other, simply enough, The Coach (portrayed by Scottish actor Brian Cox). Of the two, That Championship Season is a slam dunk,versus Lombard’s fumble in the backfield.  I saw the original TCS in 1972, whose cast included two notable acting performances from among five who were gathered for the 20th reunion of a winning Scranton Catholic high school basketball team in the coach’s home: Charles Durning as the Svengali-like, win-at-any-cost, albeit terminally ill coach and Paul Sorvino as Phil Romano who became a millionaire in the strip-mining business, using his close ties to the town mayor and former teammate George Sikowski to obtain mining permits. He helps George financially, while he is servicing George's wife. Sikowski (played in this revival by Jim Gaffigan) is likely to lose his bid for re-election. That his challenger is Jewish is especially galling to him and the coach (whose heroes are Senator Joseph McCarthy and Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic scourge of Royal Oak, Michigan. In this revival, Romano is played by Chris Noth who has considerable stage presence. Interestingly enough (at least to me) both Noth and Durning appeared in a first-right revival of the political play, The Best Man. James Daley is a diffident  junior high school principal, and his brother, Tom, an embittered alcoholic and would-be writer. Daley is played effectively in a bit of reverse casting by 24’s dauntless Jack Bauer, Kiefer Sutherland, while Tom is portrayed by Jason Patric, who was six years old when That Championship Season opened off-Broadway and moved to Broadway. Patric is the grandson of Jackie Gleason and son of the late Jason Miller who wrote the play. The DNR doesn’t fall far from the acting tree.

CONCERTS

The Collegiate Chorale’s
Concert Version of
Kurt Weill’s
Knickerbocker Holiday
Alice Tully Hall
Lincoln Center
Jan. 25 & s 26
With the glorious Collegiate Chorale under the baton of James Bagwell and the cast directed by the sterling Ted Sperling, this was indeed a night to remember, a re-creation of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson’s 1938 operetta/musical. Although my parents didn’t take me to see it, I recall listening to Walter Huston’s speak/sing September Song on the radio in the role of Peter Stuyvesant. The cast included lovely and charming Kelli O’Hara as Tina and Victor Garber as Stuyvesant. Garber, compared to Huston or Charles Coburn, who did the role in the movies, has  considerably more generous vocal command.

 
Singing of the musical vision of Burton Lane at the Y  were:
(L-R) James Clow, Joshua Henry, Michele Ragusa, Liz Callaway,
Heidi Blickenstaff. Photo: Richard Termine

Lyrics & Lyricists
The Musical Vision of Burton Lane
92nd St. Y
Feb. 12, 13, 14
Of the more than 40 years I have attended Lyrics and Lyricists concerts, this one stood out among the top two or three. Each of the performers was uniformly excellent singing Burton Lane melodies from The Royal Wedding, On a Clear Day and of course, Finian’s Rainbow, but two stood out: Liz Calloway (no surprise there) and Joshua Henry (late of the Scottsboro Boys) who has a soaring baritone and infectious personality. Contributing mightily to the musicianship and historical pertinence of Lane and such collaborators as “Yip” Harburg and Alan Jay Lerner, was Broadway movie director David Loud who was glib, witty, authoritative and cannily oversaw a polished performance. Upcoming for the final Lyrics and Lyricists of the season will be a tribute to Betty Comden and Adolph Green on May 21, 22 and 23, whose words propelled such shows as On the Town, Wonderful Town, Bells are Ringing and the greatest of all movie musicals, Singin’ in the Rain.

Kelli O'Hara as Babe in the unforgettable revival of The Pajama Game, in which she played opposite Harry Connick, Jr.

One Night Only
March 21, 7:30 pm
Broadway’s Classic Hits
Starring Kelli O’Hara and Nathan Gunn
Benefitting the New York Philharmonic
Conducted by Ted Sperling.
Avery Fisher Hall
Lincoln Center
212-875-5656
Kelli O’Hara and Nathan Gunn are among two of the finest musical performers who have ever graced the Broadway Stage, and I say this from the perspective of one who has been attending theater for more than seven decades or ever since Rodgers’ and Hart’s Jumbo graced  the old Hippodrome Theater. Here are some of the numbers I’ll have the good fortune of hearing. I hope you’ll be able to join me in the audience. Richard Rodgers: Carousel Waltz;  Rodgers & Hammerstein: If I Loved You; Jerome Kern/Hammerstein: All the Things You Are;  Make Believe; Cole Porter (4 from Kiss Me Kate) Wunderbar, So In Love, Where is the Life that Late I Led?,  From this Moment On (Movie version); Kurt Weill/Alan Jay Lerner, This is the Life; Weill/Ogden Nash: That’s Him; Leonard Bernstein/Betty Comden/ Adolph Green: Lonely Town; Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim: Tonight.

MOVIES

Mikael Persbrandt and Trine Dyrham in a scene from the Academy
Award winning In a Better World.

In a Better World
If I had seen the new Danish-made film, In a Better World, two weeks earlier I would certainly have placed it on my 10 Best Movie list. It is in my estimation, the best Foreign Language film I’ve seen this past year, eminently worthy of the Oscar it will likely receive Sunday. It is notable for the remarkably captivating performances of two gifted 10-year-olds in their very first movie roles, Markus Rygaard as Elias and William Jøhnk Nielsen as Christian. Elias’s parents Anton and Marianne are separated and struggling with the possibility of divorce. Mikael Persbrandt brings a compelling dignity to Anton, a doctor who commutes between his home in Denmark and his volunteer humanitarian work in an African refugee camp. Torn by the obligations of his profession, his absences from Marianne (Trine Dyrholm) and their two sons, he is unmindful of the difficulties Elias, the older of the two, faces in school at the hands of a bully. It is tough being the Swedish kid in a Danish school. Enter Christian who has just moved from London with his father Klaus (Ulrich Thomsen) where his mother lost her battle with cancer.  On his arrival at school he bonds with Elias and faces down Elias’s tormentor Sofus  (Simon Maagaard Holm).  I was reminded of 11-year-old Tom Brown of School Days fame, who is looked after by a more experienced classmate, Harry "Scud" East  after, being targets of a bully named Flashman. To me, there is something reassuring about movies like Tom Brown’s School Days, Young Abe Lincoln or Shane, where the oppressee (read: Flashman, Jack Armstrong, Jack Wilson) decks the oppressor. Here two bullies get their comeuppance but with potentially tragic consequences for the boys and their parents.  The movie arrives in New York in April, I urge you to see it.

The Rabbit Hole
This film, adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire about a couple whose four-year-old son ran into the street of their suburban house and was hit by a car, is a disappointment, owing to an uninspired performance by Nicole Kidman as the child’s mother Becca. It is a role that Cynthia Nixon took to on stage with believability, acumen, and yes even humor. Becca’s husband, Howie, in the play version is played intelligently by John Slattery and on screen by Aaron Eckhart . Since the action of the movie begins eight months after the accident, we the audience are spared the raw impact of such a devastating experience. Dianne Weist, so brilliant as the psychiatrist in HBO’s In Treatment series a couple of seasons, retreats to her mewling ways as Becca’s mother in a role with which Broadway’s Tyne Daly also never came to grips.
 

Incendies
The official Canadian entry, an Academy Award contender for Best Foreign Language film, is as challenging as a giant Rubic’s Cube. Nod off for a few  fleeting seconds, and you may need to diffidently inquire of your mate about the twins  Jeanne and Simon Marwin (Melissa Desormeaux Poulin, Maxim Gaudette) “Are you sure they’re really brother and sister?” Or “is there father definitely dead?” Insinuations  such as these are advanced from the opening scene when the twins sit down with notary Jean Lebel (Remy Girard) to be read their mother Nawal’s will (Lubna Azabal). They are stunned to receive a pair of envelopes, one for the father they thought was dead, the other for a brother they didn’t know existed.  While Simon is unmoved by their mother’s posthumous mind games, he joins Jeanne in her determination to comb their ancestral homeland in the Middle East for answers to the  enigmatic posture of the woman who brought them into the world. With Lebel’s selfless help, the twins and you will doubtlessly piece together a puzzle that is at once tragic and elevating.

BALLET

Hallelujah Junction
Choreography By Peter Martins
Music by John Adams
Duo-Pianists: Cameron Grant and Susan Waters
February 25 performance.
It was good to see Peter Martins at the top of his game, channeling the music of John Adams, whose most ambitious works are generally operatic: (viz) Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. Some day this may be regarded as among the top creative pairings since Stravinsky and Balanchine. To the relentless dissonance of twin pianos, Sterling Hytin, Robert Fairchild and Andrew Veyette excelled in their craft.

MUSEUMS

Big Deal at The Met: Cezanne's Famed Card Players.
Reviewed by My Kind of New York Arts Correspondent Nancy Treiger.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave.
212-708-9400
Cézanne’s Card Players Series are United in Landmark Exhibition.
Special Exhibition Galleries, 1st floor
Through May 8.
You and your grandchildren will delight in viewing this extraordinary exhibition which unites for the first time Paul Cézanne's series of Card Player canvases together with their complementary oil studies and drawings. They are  among his most beautiful and moving works. He made them in the 1890s at his family estate just outside Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. Also included is a carefully selected group of Cézanne's related paintings of peasants, several of which depict the same local models who appear in the Card Player compositions. The exhibition was organized by The Met and one of my favorite boutique galleries, The Courtauld Institute, London. They show how the subject of card playing emerged from Renaissance banqueting scenes to become a staple of Flemish and Dutch Baroque painting.

Map of the Qianlong Garden.

Forbidden City via Satellite.

Emperor’s Private Paradise
Treasures from the Forbidden City
Galleries for Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 2nd floor, north wing
Through May 1
This glorious exhibition presents some 90 paintings, decorative works, architectural elements, and religious works created for an elaborate two-acre private retreat built deep within the Forbidden City in 1771 as the retirement residence of one of China's most extravagant monarchs—the Qianlong Emperor (1736–95)—who presided over China's last dynasty, the Qing, at the zenith of its power and wealth. No expense was spared to make this complex as sumptuous and comfortable as possible. The costliest materials, including rare woods, semiprecious stones, cloisonné, gilt bronze, porcelain, and lacquer were employed to ornament every surface of this world. In the end the emperor declined to retire here and the space remained a virtual time capsule, relatively untouched since imperial times.

Still Life with Guitar, Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973)

The Museum of Modern Art
11 W. 53rd St.
Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Third Floor
Through June 6
This fascinating  exhibition takes as its point of departure two works given to MoMA Art by Pablo Picasso in the early 1970s: Guitar, assembled from cardboard, paper, wire, glue, and string in 1912, and a second version made of sheet metal in 1914. Mundane in subject and unprecedented in mode of execution, the two Guitar constructions resembled no artwork ever seen before. Within Picasso's long career they bracket a remarkably brief yet intensely productive period of material and structural experimentation that included faux wood-paper and cut newspaper. MoMA brings together some 65 closely related collages, constructions, drawings, paintings, and photographs from over 35 public and private collections worldwide.  
 

Frick Museum East Gallery.

Rembrandt and His School
Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections
The Frick Collection
One E. 70th St.
212-288-0700
When the industrialist Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919) was asked whose talents he would most like to have possessed, he replied, “Rembrandt’s.” Like Frick, the Dutch art historian and collector Frederik Johannes Lugt (1884-1970) was a great admirer of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) whose prints and drawings, avidly studied and collected. The exhibition is installed in three separate spaces: The Oval Room, where Rembrandt’s  Self-Portrait, having undergone conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is displayed, along with The Polish Rider, The Old Woman with a Book (attributed now to Carel van der Pluym) and the Portrait of a Young Artist. It continues in the Cabinet Room and in the Lower-Level Galleries. In of one the galleries, all the drawings were executed by Rembrandt, the teacher. Demonstrating how to convey what he wished to record, he went on walks with his students, stretching what he saw and expecting his students to do the same. In addition, a common practice in those days, a method that continues today, is learning by copying the drawings of old masters. There works are also exhibited in this space. He other Lower Level Exhibition Gallery is devoted to works of his students. The highlight of this Exhibition for me are Rembrandt’s drawings. Small and intimate, we see the master at work!

Two Girls With an Oleander by Gustav Klimt.

Vienna 1900: Style and Identity
Neue Galerie
1048 5th Ave. @ 86th St.
212-628-6200
My, it’s hard to believe that this exquisite museum which I visited during its opening week, is celebrating its 10th birthday. It is one of the jewels of our city, thanks to the vision of the collector Ronald S. Lauder. If you’re a Gustav Klimt fan who painted beautiful women surrounded by mosaic patterns or  Egon Schiele's contorted nudes, you’ll revel in the collection Lauder has brought together. For this exhibition, you’ll see Klimts and Schieles you never thought existed and atonal snippets from Arnold Schoenberg that are the polar opposites of Strauss Waltzes. And hear this, the first gallery, entitled Unmasking the Inner Man,” includes a re-creation of Doctor Freud’s psychoanalytic couch which you the tired art fancier are invited to sit on. That might inspire you to take in a matinee or evening performance of the excellent off-Broadway Freud’s Last Session.