“For The Sun Will Rise And The Moon Will Set”

We have now attended three different productions of the musical, “Cabaret”, in the last four years.

The finest of the three productions was a Bloomington Civic Theatre production we caught in February 2013. The Bloomington staging was the only staging that fully respected the material—and the only staging with any sort of period feel. The Bloomington production was also the only production that successfully evoked Germany.

The Bloomington presentation featured the finest stage design, and the finest orchestra, of the three “Cabaret” presentations.

In January 2009, we caught a production of “Cabaret” by New Repertory Theatre Company of Watertown, Massachusetts.

The Watertown production was not distinguished, but it held our interest.

Watertown had by far the best Sally Bowles.

The just-opened Theater Latté Da production tried to jam the musical down the audience’s throat.

The production had the subtlety of a bull on a rampage.

The entire enterprise reminded me of the Ken Russell film, “The Boy Friend”, in which small-time players of a provincial British theater troupe are told, mid-performance, that an important film producer is in the audience—and begin to mug, shamelessly and frantically, to capture the producer’s attention.

Pickings Were Slim

Joshua’s sister visited us over the three-day holiday weekend, and we were able to take her to a few things, having saved everything on our calendars for her visit.

Pickings were slim.

The Guthrie is dark this month; all three Guthrie theaters have been closed since the holidays and will not resume operations until February. The Guthrie is having financial problems, and most Guthrie employees have been given unpaid furloughs for part of the month of January.

Most other theater companies in town are between productions or offering performances of plays we have seen too many times or have no wish to see.

The Minnesota Orchestra is not in session, Minnesota Opera is preparing Verdi’s “Macbeth", due to open later this month, and the Cowles Center (which presents mostly dance) has nothing to offer civilized persons for the entire 2013-2014 season.

Nonetheless, we managed to make it out a few times, which was better than staying home and reading aloud from Thucydides’s “History Of The Peloponnesian War”.

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On Friday evening, we attended Theatre In The Round’s presentation of John Guare’s “Six Degrees Of Separation”.

“Six Degrees Of Separation” is not a strong play, and it has many faults.

To begin, the play’s dialogue lacks vividness and imagination. Clunky line follows clunky line, no rhythm develops, and poetry and high style are absent from the text. It becomes impossible for any drama or light to emerge, what with the flat, featureless writing.

The plot of the play, based upon real-life events, is not promising: a middle-aged New York couple is taken in by a skillful con artist—and consequences flow. The play might have been more rewarding (and more entertaining) if the playwright had satirized the foolish Manhattan husband and wife rather than used their gullible natures as the basis for a superficial examination of 1990s New York mores and morals.

Of perhaps greatest importance, the existential message at the center of the play—that all humankind is interconnected by no more than six degrees of separation—is both false and off-putting (as well as far too dreary to contemplate). Are there only six degrees of separation between me and North Korea’s Supreme Leader and Great Successor, Kim Jong-un? I very much doubt it.

Happily, “Six Degrees Of Separation” is a very short play—ninety minutes, with no intermission—and the play ends not a moment too soon: ten minutes more, and the audience would have been heading for the exits.

I thought Theatre In The Round gave the material a fair shot. The production was satisfactory, and the cast was satisfactory. However, “Six Degrees Of Separation” is a play that should be laid to permanent rest. It makes the plays of Edward Albee look like Shakespeare.

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On Saturday evening, we went to Saint Paul to hear a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert.

The conductor was Matthias Pintscher, a no-longer-young German composer (Pintscher will turn forty-three in another week) based in New York the last few years.

Pintscher was, I thought, incompetent. He lacked the command and presence of a genuine conductor—and it appeared that the musicians were ignoring him as much as possible, trying to prevent Pintscher from damaging performances of music the musicians can play in their sleep.

The popular, unchallenging program: Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 2; Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella” Suite; Webern’s orchestration of the six-voice Ricercata from Bach’s Musical Offering; and Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4 (“Italian”).

The performances, bland and impersonal, resembled run-throughs with a local répétiteur, everyone awaiting the arrival of an out-of-town guest conductor to shape the proceedings. The concert had to be experienced as an “open rehearsal”.

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On Sunday afternoon, we went downtown to the Pantages Theatre to attend Theater Latté Da’s new production of the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Joe Masteroff musical, “Cabaret”. The production had opened the previous evening after three previews.

Theater Latté Da’s production was based upon the Sam Mendes version of the musical, first produced in London in 1993. The Mendes version is darker than the 1966 original, and lengthens—and emphasizes—the proceedings in the cabaret itself, at the expense of the proceedings outside the cabaret.

Last season, Bloomington Civic Theatre had presented the original version of the musical, which has largely fallen by the wayside in recent years. We attended one of the BCT performances of “Cabaret”—and, in my judgment, the original version is vastly superior to the Mendes version. Among other things, the changes wrought by Mendes unbalance the show: the proceedings outside the cabaret lose their significance, and their resonance; all that remains is a tale of seedy show business, something more appropriate for Las Vegas revues.

And, indeed, Theater Latté Da’s “Cabaret” was very much a Las Vegas show, desperate to hold the attention of a general audience. Everything was overplayed, overstated, overcooked, oversold, over-the-top. I kept waiting for Siegfried And Roy to appear.

The audience appeared to love this particular production of “Cabaret”.

The production left me depressed.

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On Monday we went to the Museum Of Russian Art to see the current Romanov exhibition, “The Romanovs: Legacy Of An Empire Lost”, a collection of “historically significant objects” from the 300-year Romanov dynasty.

Approximately 200 artifacts were on display. Although all items were being seen by the public for the first time, I felt as if I had seen this exhibition before, a hundred times, here and elsewhere.

I believe it is time to give these endless Romanov exhibitions a rest.

The Pantages

The Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis.

The Pantages has the most beautiful interior of all old Minneapolis theaters (the exterior is modern).

Last weekend, when Joshua’s sister was visiting us over the three-day holiday weekend, we went to the Pantages Theatre to see a new production of the Kander-Ebb musical, “Cabaret”.

Music Of The Night

I have never attended a performance of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, “Phantom Of The Opera”.

I have listened to the two-disc cast album a few times, and I find the score uninteresting and of low quality. My assumption is that the show has been a gargantuan hit not because of the score but because of the spectacular staging by Harold Prince, recreated all over the world since 1986.

Last year producer Cameron Mackintosh unveiled a simplified staging for the U.K. provinces, recreations of the original staging having become cost-prohibitive in recent years. (In the English-speaking world, the original staging may now be seen only in London and New York—and nowhere else.)

At the end of last year, the new, simplified staging was previewed in the U.S. in Providence, Rhode Island, after which it officially opened here in Minneapolis. Word-of-mouth has been very, very positive; ticket sales have been exceptionally robust.

We talked about going—until, as a refresher, we listened to forty minutes of the cast album, which bored us no end and put “paid” to the notion of attending a live performance. The score of “Phantom Of The Opera” is, simply put, cheap swill. I do not understand how anyone can manage to sit through the thing without screaming.

Packing It In

We skipped Bloomington Civic Theatre’s production of the Claude-Michel Schönberg-Alain Boublil-Jean-Marc Natel-Herbert Kretzmer musical, “Les Misérables”, which played in October and November.

I was told that the production was excellent. (The extended run sold out.) The production team had received authorization from the show’s licensers to convert the original instrumentation (with its extensive use of synthesizers) into a genuine full-orchestra arrangement—and I was told that the new orchestration was masterly, and the BCT orchestra work exceptional.

For whatever reason, “Les Misérables” has never appealed to me, and I’ve never seen a production of the show. By the time we gave some thought to attending one of the BCT performances, BCT had long since sold all tickets to all performances.

Back in July and August, the current National Touring Company production of “Les Misérables” had also hit town, surely the 500th visit to Minneapolis of a National Touring Company production of “Les Misérables”. We skipped that “Les Misérables”, too.

I think I’ll hold out on seeing “Les Misérables” until the show’s 50th-anniversary presentations, due to pop up everywhere in the 2030s, no doubt.

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Likewise, we shall skip Theatre In The Round’s production of Agatha Christie’s “Spider’s Web”, a production that closes this coming weekend.

In each of the past two seasons, we had caught productions of Christie plays at Theatre In The Round—“The Hollow” and “Appointment With Death”—and a third Christie play in three seasons was too much for us to contemplate.

I believe Theatre In The Round devotes too much attention to mystery plays.

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Jungle Theater’s current production of Alfred Uhry’s “Driving Miss Daisy” is proving so popular that the run has been extended until year-end.

I do not know what accounts for the popularity of “Driving Miss Daisy”—it seems to come around as often as “Les Misérables”—and sometime I shall have to sit through a production of the play.

I have seen the film version, which may be enjoyed, but the material itself is thin and maudlin—as well as manufactured and blatantly commercial—and we are too busy with work and holiday preparations to waste time on something like “Driving Miss Daisy”.

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The new Guthrie production of Garson Kanin’s “Born Yesterday” received a mixed press—which in the Twin Cities is the same thing as a bad press, since negative notices are banned here.

I am not an admirer of the play, which is hopelessly formulaic . . . but a superb production might get me in the door.

The Guthrie production, I am told, is inept, badly-cast and badly-played—and we shall not be going.

Joshua and I saw an undistinguished production of “Born Yesterday” over Labor Day Weekend in 2009 at Canada’s Shaw Festival. I recall we had trouble sitting through the play.

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Yesterday The Guthrie announced a fiscal deficit for its 2012-2013 season, its first such deficit in twenty years. The company also announced that total attendance for the 2012-2013 season had been 375,000 persons, 50,000 persons fewer than the previous season.

The Guthrie’s Artistic Director, Joe Dowling, specifically mentioned three productions that had proven deeply disappointing at the box office: Christopher Hampton's “Tales From Hollywood”; Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”; and a stage adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s novel, “Home Of The Gentry”.

We attended all three productions specifically cited as reasons for last season’s box-office woes. Indeed, the three cited productions were the three productions we had most wanted to see last season.

What is the significance of yesterday’s revelations?

To begin, I would suggest that the size of the Guthrie’s serious audience has declined, perhaps to the point of imperiling the institution’s long-term viability.

Further, the information released by The Guthrie supports the proposition that anything remotely challenging does not find an audience in Minneapolis—which undercuts the often-mouthed local platitude that Minneapolis is a theater center. If only commercial twaddle sells here, Minneapolis has become an entertainment center, a very different thing than a theater center.

According to Dowling, The Guthrie has lost almost 50 per cent of its subscribers since 2000—a decline Dowling attributes to a fundamental change in theater-going habits.

I might be inclined to accept Dowling’s premise if commercial fluff sold as poorly as the good stuff.

However, it is commercial fluff that now sells, while the good stuff plays to empty seats—which tells me that The Guthrie has been an active participant in the dumbing-down of its mission, consciously cultivating a popular audience instead of a serious one.

This season, The Guthrie is giving the musical, “My Fair Lady”, a two-month run. This season, as in every season, the deplorable “A Christmas Carol” is receiving a lengthy Christmas run. (What kind of person actually GOES to “A Christmas Carol”?) Commercial comedies like “Born Yesterday” and “Crimes Of The Heart” are receiving unwarranted attention.

Commercial theater has no rightful place in a state-subsidized enterprise—and if only commercial vehicles are keeping The Guthrie afloat, the company might as well shut its doors, as it no longer serves the purpose for which it was established.

The Guthrie will be losing more subscribers. After almost forty years, my parents, who use their tickets less and less each passing year, are—once the current season concludes—packing it in.

“Morning’s At Seven”

On Friday evening, my parents, my middle brother, and Joshua and I went to Theatre In The Round to see its current production of Paul Osborn’s 1939 play, “Morning’s At Seven”. (The play’s title is borrowed from Robert Browning, and does not reflect a grammatical error.)

The play is a tale of four aging sisters, in their sixties and seventies, who live in a small town in the American Midwest. The year is 1938.

One sister is married and childless; she and her husband have a permanent live-in guest, her unmarried sister, who after decades of living under their roof is beginning to get on their nerves.

Another sister lives next door. She, too, is married, and is the only sister with offspring: she has a forty-year-old son who has proven himself reluctant to let loose his mother’s apron strings. The son has been engaged for a dozen years to a woman from the same town—and yet he has never brought her home to meet his family.

Another sister lives across town. She has “married up”, and her husband views her family members as “morons” and discourages her from visiting them (not that that stops her).

The play takes place over a single weekend. Two events set the plot into motion: the first sister announces that she wants to move into a new house and leave the existing house to her unmarried sister; and the son of the second sister announces that at last he is going to bring his intended home to meet the family, a move preliminary to their wedding, shortly to occur.

And, for the next two hours and forty-five minutes, the characters mull over and discuss these events, which are supposed to be dramatic as well as humorous.

“Morning’s At Seven” opened on Broadway in 1939 and—with an all-star cast—promptly bombed. In the pre-television era, during which New Yorkers attended the theater several nights a week, “Morning’s At Seven” closed after a one-month run.

The play was not to be revived until 1980, when it received a second Broadway production, again with an all-star cast—and became an unexpected hit, running for sixteen months and spawning national tours.

A third Broadway production was mounted in 2002, once again with an all-star cast. The 2002 Broadway production lasted only three months.

I am clueless why anyone would consider “Morning’s At Seven” worthy of revival. The play has no merit as drama, the play has no merit as comedy: it is jaw-droppingly earnest, and jaw-droppingly bad, as if Henrik Ibsen had supplied the comedy and George S. Kaufman the drama.

The Theatre In The Round production did the material no favors (other than provide work for area actors “of a certain age”). However, I am not convinced that any cast could bring such a feeble script to life—and, in any case, I believe the play to be pointless.

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Osborn is remembered, to the extent he is remembered at all, for adapting existing material into screenplays. Osborn worked in Hollywood for decades.

Osborn lived to see the successful 1980 revival of his 1939 play.

I wonder what went through Osborn’s mind as he watched his failed play from four decades earlier transformed into a surprising commercial hit.

Osborn HAD to have known, in 1980, that his 1939 play was a piece of wood-rot.

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Somewhat pressed for time, we ate a quick dinner at a pub only steps away from the theater. The pub has a very limited menu, and we had been advised to go for the walleye, served with Minnesota wild rice and asparagus.

The walleye was excellent. We were pleased.

Pugnacious And Rancorous

If proof ever were needed that Broadway is dead, the current Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie” would provide all the evidence necessary.

An overproduced play, poorly-cast, poorly-played and poorly-directed, utilizing a thrust-stage design in a proscenium theater, all attracting the most superlative notices: What more could one want?

Williams’s delicate and poetic memory play in the current Broadway staging is pugnacious and rancorous, staged with all the subtlety of The Battle Of Vicksburg. I believe all persons associated with the production suffered under the misapprehension that they were mounting an Arthur Miller family drama: I have never seen so much hatred expressed onstage.

The Amanda Wingfield was Cherry Jones, who does hatred very well. Indeed, hatred is the sole emotion Jones can express with conviction; Jones has based her entire career on expressing hatred, even in roles that require none. If theatergoers ever wanted to see Amanda Wingfield played as Beatrice Hunsdorfer from “The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds”, they now have their chance.

The Laura Wingfield was played as a total loon. Twice she appeared to go into catatonic trances. As Joshua said to me during the performance, “No wonder her mother is having so much trouble marrying her off.” I felt sorry for the young woman asked to play the role in so ridiculous a manner.

The Tom Wingfield was . . . bizarre. I believe the director was going for a “violence-about-to-erupt” quality, but I very well may be wrong, as the actor had so little talent it was difficult to tell.

The Gentleman Caller was vapid, and barely registered, but there was little doubt that he was a human being . . . which could not necessarily be said of the others onstage.

Persons seeing “The Glass Menagerie” for the first time in the current Broadway production would have a warped notion of what the play is all about—they would leave the theater thinking the play’s inspiration had come from an ancient biography of some long-forgotten figure, a battleaxe female army general who was mother to a very weird son and a very weird daughter.

I predict all sorts of awards . . .

“The Glass Menagerie” On Broadway

Broadway theaters are dark on Sunday evenings.

However, over three-day holiday weekends on which a Federal Holiday falls on Monday, custom is for one Broadway house—and only one—to offer a special early-curtain performance that Sunday evening. In my experience, it is invariably a straight play, and not a musical, that offers the special Sunday evening performance. (Such custom does not apply over the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays, when ALL Broadway theaters adopt special schedules.)

Over Columbus Day Weekend, the special early-curtain Sunday evening performance was offered by the current Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s “The Glass Menagerie”.

We had no genuine interest in seeing “The Glass Menagerie” yet again, but we attended the performance for want of viable alternatives.

We had planned to go to the Joyce Theater and see Lar Lubovitch Dance Company that Sunday evening—but, for reasons unknown to us, the Sunday evening Lar Lubovitch Dance Company performance at the Joyce Theater had been cancelled not long after being announced.

A Reduction, Not An Elevation

In October 1908, George Archer-Shee, a 13-year-old Royal Navy cadet at Osborne Naval College on the Isle Of Wight, was accused of stealing and cashing a five-shilling postal order (worth roughly $20.00 today). The only evidence against the young Archer-Shee came from an elderly postal clerk at the Osborne post office, who proved unable to identify Archer-Shee among other cadets when given an opportunity to do so.

Nonetheless, Archer-Shee was expelled from Osborne—without an opportunity to defend himself—and unceremoniously shipped home.

Archer-Shee’s father, Martin (grandson of the noted portrait painter, for whom he had been named), believed his son’s passionate protestations of innocence, and sought counsel to clear his son’s name. At great expense, the elder Archer-Shee engaged one of Britain’s most acclaimed barristers, Edward Carson. Carson, too, had a son at Osborne, and Carson was at first skeptical about the boy’s denial of the theft. Carson extensively, even cruelly, questioned the young Archer-Shee before accepting the boy’s innocence—and accepting the case.

Thus was set into motion one of the great dramas of the pre-war period, a drama that was to fill the pages of London’s newspapers for the next three years: an upper-middle-class family, at considerable risk to its reputation, was to take on the British government—against which legal recourse was normally impossible—in hopes of finding redress.

Since Osborne Naval College was an arm of The Admiralty, a civil action was not possible: the Crown was not amenable to suit. Only a “Petition Of Right”, for which Parliamentary approval was necessary, would allow the matter to be heard in special proceedings in the High Court.

For two years, Carson marshaled all of his skills with Parliament and the London press to pressure the government to relent and to allow a “Petition Of Right”. Carson was ultimately successful: the petition was granted in 1910.

A trial before the High Court convened shortly thereafter. On the fourth day at trial, the Solicitor-General, witnessing Carson’s demolition of The Admiralty’s case piece-by-piece, halted the proceedings and publicly acknowledged the young Archer-Shee’s innocence. The boy’s name was cleared at last.

But the matter was not at an end: the Archer-Shee family wanted compensation for its gargantuan legal bills—and Parliament, once again, was its only recourse.

Parliament proved sympathetic: in 1911, a resolution was attached to a Naval Bill, which as a practical matter forced The Admiralty—at risk of seeing its funding delayed—to concede to a private hearing to resolve the issue of compensation for the Archer-Shee family.

At the hearing a few weeks later, The Viscount Mersey sat in judgment. (The following year, The Viscount Mersey was to head The Board Of Inquiry investigation of the sinking of the RMS Titanic.) The Viscount Mersey awarded the Archer-Shee family the sum of 7210 Pounds—worth roughly $600,000 today—which The Admiralty promptly paid.

Having been vindicated, the young Archer-Shee went on to complete his education, after which he moved to New York to work on Wall Street.

With the advent of World War I, Archer-Shee returned to Britain to be commissioned into the British Army. He was to die only weeks later: he perished in October 1914 during the First Battle Of Ypres.

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In 1946, playwright Terence Rattigan wrote a play inspired by the Archer-Shee affair, “The Winslow Boy”.

In creating his drama, Rattigan took many liberties with the real-life scenario, surely the prerogative of any dramatist—yet Rattigan’s liberties ultimately transformed such rich material into melodrama: Rattigan had not elevated the material, he had reduced it.

In Rattigan’s play, the father’s health and spirit are broken by the lengthy battle with the British government. An elder son is forced to withdraw from Oxford because the family can no longer afford the expense. A daughter’s engagement is terminated, her fiancé no longer wishing to be associated with a family whose name is under a cloud (yet the daughter quickly develops a romance with the powerful barrister hired to clear her brother’s name). Of most importance, the family in the play is much less financially secure than the Archer-Shee family, and receives no compensation from the British government at the conclusion of its travails.

“The Winslow Boy” is Rattigan’s most-produced play. It is a well-crafted drama, albeit old-fashioned and too inclined to tug at the heartstrings. The play is thought to merit revival from time to time.

On Sunday afternoon, October 13, we attended the current Broadway production of “The Winslow Boy” at American Airlines Theatre. The performance we attended was a preview performance; the production was to have its official opening four nights later.

The production had originated at London’s Old Vic in March. The New York director and the New York design team—the latter’s work was appalling—were the same as at the Old Vic, but the New York cast was a new one.

Lindsay Posner was the director. I had encountered Posner’s work before: a 2005 London production of David Mamet’s “A Life In The Theatre”; and a 2011 London production of Simon Gray’s “Butley”. My previous experience had revealed Posner to be a workaday director.

The current “Winslow Boy” is not a distinguished production. My mother described it as “pure summer stock”, and I cannot disagree with that assessment. The production is minimally competent, not particularly embarrassing—and utterly devoid of imagination and freshness.

Roger Rees—who had directed last season’s Guthrie production of  “The Primrose Path”—portrayed the father. His portrayal was one of excess. Rees’s overplaying induced discomfort, especially his overplaying of the character’s physical deterioration: Rees began the play with a limp, soon began using a cane—and ended up in a wheelchair. Toward the end of the play, we were expecting him to produce an oxygen mask.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played the mother. She barely registered in the part.

Charlotte Parry portrayed the sister. Parry cannot carry off period drama, as we had observed in 2011 when we had seen Parry in the Broadway production of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance Of Being Earnest”. In “The Winslow Boy”, Parry was—once again—far too contemporary in tone and manner to be convincing.

The flamboyant barrister was played by Alessandro Nivola. Of all the cast members, Nivola came off best—but the role requires more bravura than Nivola could provide. (Curious jurisprudence note: in real life, barrister-playing Nivola is married to the daughter of the creator of “Rumpole Of The Bailey”—a fact that should have been mentioned in the program booklet, or so I would have thought.)

At the center of the play was the young actor playing the Winslow boy. He was much too old for the part—he looked and acted as if he were 25 years old—and such blatant miscasting fatally unbalanced the play and raised the play-killing question: since this strong, healthy, vibrant young man—he was anything but helpless—is so clearly able to take care of himself, why is everyone in his family getting so torqued up over a five-shilling postal order?

And therein lies one of the problems with Rattigan’s play: its overarching theme is the portrayal of a family falling apart, emotionally and financially, because of a dreadful external event—yet its protagonist/victim is the character least affected by the play’s events, and the one character prepared to move on with his life. It leads one to ask: perhaps the family would have been well-advised to drop the matter rather than destroy itself by taking on the British government?

I think Rattigan made a mistake in basing his play so closely on a real-life event from the past, and yet not allowing the triumphant final outcome that the real-life family had enjoyed. In changing all the particulars, what, fundamentally, was Rattigan’s point, other than the creation of weepy melodrama?

And weepy melodrama was precisely what the Broadway production of “The Winslow Boy” offered. In this sentimental, sappy staging, totally unconvincing and totally unmoving, the audience was invited to shed tears for the Winslow family, what with its reduced circumstances, ailing father, worried mother, jilted daughter and education-deprived older son. I found everything about the production uncomfortable; I squirmed.

The production made me rethink the play. Until two weeks ago, I had always admired the play because of its craft and its few moments of genuine drama. The New York production caused me to lose much of my admiration; where before I had seen some merit, I now see sentiment piled upon sentiment piled upon sentiment—and nothing redemptive.

I must not be the only one who disliked “The Winslow Boy”: the production—a limited run—is not selling. Now that it has officially opened, “The Winslow Boy” has been the subject of special discount offers everywhere—including on non-theater discount websites such as Travelzoo.

When a production is forced to enlist the aid and assistance of Travelzoo, it signifies that New York theatergoers are staying away in droves.

And when New York theatergoers are staying away in droves, there is a reason . . .

“The Winslow Boy” On Broadway

The current Broadway production of Terence Rattigan’s “The Winslow Boy”, which we caught on the Sunday matinee performance over Columbus Day Weekend.

The production was imported from the Old Vic in London, where it had played earlier this year.

The stage set was unbelievable—it looked as if it had been designed and constructed by high school kids for a high school production.

The producers of the Broadway version of “The Winslow Boy” made a major miscalculation in not commissioning new designs for New York.

Evoking Russia

The Guthrie Theater’s current production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”, by and large disappointing, at least has a Russian look.

The Metropolitan Opera’s current production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin”, also disappointing, evokes Russia not at all. The production has a peculiarly British look, entirely inapt for Alexander Pushkin’s tale.

The Met “Eugene Onegin” is so British through and through, it might as well be set in Chipping Cleghorn.

Bingo

The bingo scene in Park Square Theatre’s production of David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People”, a tale of South Boston.

The Park Square Theatre production was expertly-cast and expertly-played. In fact, the production was 100 times better than the play itself—and the bingo scene was, indeed, a highlight.

One-Hit Wonders

American theater is populated with one-hit wonders.

Whether it be Mary Chase (“Harvey”) and Joseph Kesselring (“Arsenic And Old Lace”) from decades past or more recent examples personified by Margaret Edson (“Wit”) and John Logan (“Red”), American theater has produced a proliferation of playwrights known for producing one, and only one, commercial and artistic success—and in all such cases the identities of the authors quickly dropped from view while the titles of their single successes lived on.

How many persons, for instance, can name the respective creators of “Teahouse Of The August Moon” and “The Great White Hope”?

I was put in mind of American one-hit wonders the weekend before last, when Joshua and I took Josh’s sister, visiting us that weekend, to local performances of two contemporary American plays.

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David Auburn’s “Proof”, first produced in 2000, is a play I admire. “Proof” is the only Auburn play ever to have gained traction.

“Proof” presents the story of a young woman who had cared for her late father, a mentally-ill mathematician, in his final years. During his decline, the father had filled notebook after notebook with mathematical formulas that may or may not have been little more than gibberish.

A former student of the mathematician arrives to review the notebooks to ascertain whether they contain anything of worth—and he judges everything to be worthless except for one exceptionally brilliant formulation.

To the former student’s surprise, the brilliant formulation turns out to be the work of the mathematician’s caregiver daughter—or so she claims.

It is in establishing proof of authorship—“proof” regarding the mathematical “proof”—that much of the drama hinges.

Tension is added by a budding romance between the two, as well as the arrival of a second daughter, efficient and practical beyond compare, who swiftly moves to wrap up her late father’s estate and close a chapter of life she found unsettling.

“Proof” was, deservedly, a great hit on Broadway. It ran for over two years—917 performances, a remarkable total for a drama—and won countless awards. I saw “Proof” toward the end of its Broadway run, when the production was on its second or third cast (and not in tip-top shape), and I thought the play worthwhile. I found the play even more intriguing upon a second acquaintance ten days ago.

The production, at Bloomington Civic Theatre, was very fine. The caregiver daughter and mathematician father (who appears in flashback) were particularly fine, the former student and second daughter somewhat less so.

I find “Proof” moving. It becomes more and more obvious, as the play progresses, that the caregiver daughter has inherited her late father’s mental illness. It is a sad, painful play.

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David Lindsay-Abaire writes kitchen-sink drama, a genre I thought had long ago died out. The playwright’s “Rabbit Hole” is his only play produced with frequency, although I cannot understand why: “Rabbit Hole” reminds me of scripts for Bette Davis/Ernest Borgnine movies from the 1950s.

The playwright’s more recent “Good People” opened in 2011 on Broadway, where—despite star casting—it ran only for 101 performances. “Good People”, nowhere else a success, has proven to be a triumph at Saint Paul’s Park Square Theatre, where we attended a performance at the urging of friends.

“Good People” is a story of working-class persons from South Boston, one of whom has managed to get out and establish a thriving career as a physician. To his discomfort, he is contacted by a former girlfriend on the make, who is down-on-her-luck and looking for assistance wherever she can find it.

A series of uncomfortable encounters—“confrontations” is too strong a word—ensues, during which the former girlfriend tells the physician that she gave birth to his child many years ago, and that the child is disabled.

Nothing gets resolved, although at the end of the play the former girlfriend is presented with a sum of money (the money does not come from the physician).

There is no genuine drama in “Good People”. The play resembles a hastily-written script for a low-budget television film. “Good People” is not a unified work of art—it is two or three soap-opera episodes strung together.

Park Square Theatre gave the undistinguished material an exceptional production. It is the production, and not the play, that is drawing theatergoers to Saint Paul.

Much of the Saint Paul “Good People” was played for laughs—and, suitably, we laughed along. Nonetheless, while enjoying the colorful performances, many of which indeed were superb (if not wicked), I kept asking myself:

Is there a play here?

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Playwrights David Auburn and David Lindsay-Abaire, whose plays we saw less than 48 hours apart, were both born on November 30, 1969.

It is one of those odd coincidences that can never be explained.

“Uncle Vanya” At The Guthrie

The Guthrie Theater’s joke-filled production of “Uncle Vanya”.

Entire scenes were reminiscent of Neil Simon’s “The Sunshine Boys”—surely not what Anton Chekhov had in mind.

“Uncle Vanya” At The Guthrie

The weekend before last, Joshua and I took Josh’s sister, who was visiting us that weekend, to The Guthrie Theater to see the Guthrie’s production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya”.

Josh and I had last seen a staging of “Uncle Vanya” in December 2011, when the University Of Minnesota drama department had presented “Uncle Vanya” and “The Cherry Orchard” in repertory (in 2011, we had caught both university Chekhov productions on the same day).

The current Guthrie production of “Uncle Vanya” was beautifully designed. Stage design, costume design, lighting design: all were faultless and of the highest quality. Stage design at The Guthrie is the finest in the world, finer even than may be seen at New York City Ballet, the Wiener Staatsoper or Britain’s National Theatre.

Alas, as I have bemoaned many times over the years, everything else at The Guthrie takes a back seat to stage design. Once the company creates and constructs a striking, imaginative and dramatically-apt series of stage settings—which always look exorbitantly expensive—the company views its work as largely complete. Nothing else at The Guthrie is at the same exalted level as the work of the design department.

The Guthrie’s “Uncle Vanya” was lightweight. “Uncle Vanya” is a very philosophical play, raising issues no less profound than those raised by Plato, yet the Guthrie production was facile, very much on-the-surface and one-dimensional. I would describe the production, above all, as “pleasant”—and “pleasant” is not what “Uncle Vanya” is all about.

Joe Dowling, Artistic Director of The Guthrie, directed “Uncle Vanya”. Dowling used a new translation by Irish playwright Brian Friel. Friel’s translation was a very free one, more adaptation than translation. Everything was very jokey, and not entirely dissimilar to a Neil Simon comedy—and, suitably, the audience laughed, nonstop, throughout much of the performance. I wanted to scream.

The acting ensemble was not bad, although the actor portraying the title character was not good enough to carry the role (he seemed to have dropped in from a television comedy). No one onstage offered a multi-dimensional or penetrating performance.

As stage director, Dowling is a good fund-raiser. I have yet to see a Dowling production that was in any way memorable—or even admirable. There’s a reason why Dowling gets no work in New York or London.

I pray nightly that Dowling soon announces his retirement.

1899: “Uncle Vanya” At The Moscow Art Theatre

Anton Chekhov’s 1897 play, “Uncle Vanya”, in the 1899 Moscow Art Theatre production.

The Moscow Art Theatre production was directed by Constantin Stanislavski, who also played the doctor. In the photograph, Stanislavski may be seen third from the right.

To Stanislavski’s consternation, Chekhov declined to explain or expand upon the text of the play. However, as Stanislavski was later to relate, Chekhov’s refusal forced Stanislavski to dig beneath the surface of the text to find psychological truth—and the exercise changed Stanislavski’s life and work (and world theater as well).

1963: The Guthrie Prepares To Open

Tyrone Guthrie, Artistic Director of The Guthrie Theater, conferring with the Production Manager and an Assistant Stage Manager during “Hamlet” rehearsals in 1963.

The Guthrie was to open that year with “Hamlet”—and the original Guthrie building was to close with another production of “Hamlet” forty-three years later.

Joshua’s one and only visit to the original Guthrie was during Easter Weekend 2006, when he and I attended a performance of that closing “Hamlet”.

I thought at the time—and I still think—that the demolition of the original Guthrie after only 43 years of use was a crime. It is my hope that the new building, a Jean Nouvel eyesore, enjoys a similarly-brief lifespan; I hope to live to see its demolition.

Guthrie stepped down as Artistic Director of The Guthrie in 1966, although he continued to direct at the theater that bore his name for another three years.

The final production Guthrie directed in Minneapolis was “Uncle Vanya”, a production that opened in 1969.

Last weekend, Josh and I took Josh’s sister downtown to see the current Guthrie production of “Uncle Vanya”.

Infuriating As Often As Not

Until this summer, we had never visited The Stratford Festival. It is unlikely we shall return anytime soon.

I thought The Stratford Festival was a mirror image of The Guthrie: both are major theatrical enterprises that have fundamentally lost their ways. In both enterprises, one-half of the attention is devoted to producing popular fare (for which no state subsidy—in theory—is warranted) and one-half of the attention is devoted to classic repertory. In both enterprises, popular repertory is presented with more conviction and flair than classic repertory, where productions are inept—if not infuriating—as often as not.

The international reputation of The Stratford Festival peaked in the 1970s, a decade during which The Stratford Festival served as the summer home for actors and directors from New York and London. The glory days for Stratford were short-lived: since 1980 or thereabouts, Stratford has served primarily as a venue for Canadian actors and directors. The result is that the Festival is now largely a provincial affair.

I was amazed, reading actor and director biographies in the Stratford program booklet, how few Stratford actors and directors had ever enjoyed a single professional appearance outside Canada. There was only a handful of New York or London credits to be counted in the lengthy Stratford cast lists and director lists.

The Festival’s practice of employing Canadians, and only Canadians, is a major mistake. Casting offices should be opened in New York and London in order to raise the quality of Festival casting. (I said much the same thing last year when discussing The Shaw Festival.) Until that occurs, The Stratford Festival will remain a big-budget yet insular institution, unworthy of international attention and respect.

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Tyrone Guthrie probably did not stay at Stratford long enough to give the Festival the deep roots it needed, artistically, to thrive long-term. Having helped found the Festival in 1953, Guthrie left Stratford in 1955.

Much the same thing happened in Minneapolis: having helped found The Guthrie (which opened in 1963), Guthrie left Minneapolis in 1966.

It strikes me as odd that a man of genius would work tirelessly to establish a new enterprise, only to walk away before a firm foundation had been put into place to secure that genius’s long-term vision.

Would George Balanchine have walked away from New York City Ballet in 1949?

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Tyrone Guthrie’s fondness for thrust stages may be seen, not only in Stratford and Minneapolis, but also in Chichester and London: Chichester Festival Theatre and the Olivier Theatre at The National Theatre employ thrust stages.

The era of thrust stages coincided perfectly with the period of Guthrie’s influence. As Guthrie’s influence waned, so did the construction of theaters with thrust stages.

I prefer proscenium theaters above all others, and I hold a slight preference for theater-in-the-round stages over thrust stages (the modern advent of theater-in-the-round stages occurred precisely at the same time as the modern advent of thrust stages; both were contemporaneous—and short-lived—phenomena). Too many design compromises and too many directorial compromises arise when productions are mounted on thrust stages. Only genius directors are capable of surmounting the obstacles; other directors carry on as if directing on a conventional proscenium stage—which more or less negates the supposed strengths and advantages of a thrust stage.

The Guthrie long ago figured out how to design for a thrust stage. Based upon what we observed this summer at Stratford, The Stratford Festival has yet to figure out how to design for a thrust stage. We were dumbfounded at the poor stage design we encountered at Stratford, production after production after production.

Stage design at last year’s Shaw Festival had been of the highest standard.

Stage design at this year’s Stratford Festival was so bad, it became depressing.

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There was nothing for us to do in Stratford other than attend theater performances.

Stratford, as a town, has the allure and charm of Mankato. Shorn of its theater festival, Stratford would be visited by no one.

Niagara-On-The-Lake, home of The Shaw Festival, had been much more festival-like and much more visitor-friendly. Niagara-On-The-Lake possessed countless fine restaurants, and many charming shops, and much old architecture—and historic Fort George was nearby, as was Niagara Falls.

We had enjoyed Niagara-On-The-Lake immensely. For us, The Shaw Festival truly had been a festival.

The Stratford Festival, in contrast, provided nothing more than a theater excursion.

We arrived, attended eight performances in four days, and departed.

(At Stratford, huge numbers of attendees are day-trippers from Toronto, who arrive by chartered bus, attend a single performance, and depart by chartered bus.)

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For the first quarter-century of The Stratford Festival, music was an important component of the program. Many of the finest musicians of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s appeared at The Stratford Festival, often on multiple occasions.

Glenn Gould, in recital, inaugurated the music program at Stratford in 1953. Gould was to return to the Festival often until retiring from the concert stage.

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf appeared at the Festival three times in a single week in 1955, twice in recital and once in concert—and was to return to Stratford for a recital in 1969.

Claudio Arrau was in residence at the Festival in 1956, appearing in recital and in concert throughout the summer; Arrau was to return frequently in later seasons.

Among the many artists that graced The Stratford Festival: Pierre Bernac; Julian Bream; Benjamin Britten; Aaron Copland; Rudolf Firkušný; Maureen Forrester; Lynn Harrell; Eugene Istomin; Peter Pears; Itzhak Perlman; Jacqueline du Pré; Jean-Pierre Rampal; Pepe Romero; Leonard Rose; Mstislav Rostropovich; Peter Serkin; Rudolf Serkin; Gérard Souzay; János Starker; Isaac Stern; Paul Tortelier; Barry Tuckwell; Van Cliburn; Shirley Verrett; and Jon Vickers.

Among ensembles that appeared at The Stratford Festival: the Guarneri Quartet; the English Chamber Orchestra; the New York Philharmonic; and the Chicago Symphony.

The music program at The Stratford Festival ended in 1978, a likely victim of finances. Louis Quilico and Gino Quilico, father-and-son opera singers (and both Canadian), gave the final Stratford recital in the late summer of that year.

“All For One, One For All”

On our final evening in Stratford, we attended a performance of “The Three Musketeers”, a stage adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas novel by Peter Raby, one-time dramaturge at The Stratford Festival.

Raby’s adaptation, from 1968, is not good, and I cannot imagine why The Stratford Festival continues to revive the adaptation from time to time (Raby’s “Three Musketeers” had earlier been revived in 1988 and 2000).

Act I, which goes on forever, is mostly exposition, while Act II, which also goes on forever, is an attempt to cover Dumas’s themes (such as they are).

“The Three Musketeers” has integrity only if presented as pure adventure yarn (the Richard Lester movies, in my opinion, captured the necessary tone to perfection). If a writer tries to make sense of the plot, or attempts to lend “depth” to the proceedings by presenting the story in political terms, the enterprise is doomed to fail.

Raby’s adaptation assiduously—and unsuccessfully—attempts to explain the background of the conflict between Britain and France that led to the siege of La Rochelle, on which much of the plot hinges. Far too much attention is devoted to the presentation of “back-story” and other pseudo-historic incidentals, such as explanations for the significance of Anne Of Austria’s diamonds, while far too little attention is paid to the motivations of key personages, such as Cardinal Richelieu. Scene by scene, Richelieu is portrayed as dark villain one moment and noble saint the next, surely a confusing state of affairs for anyone unfamiliar with the story—and much the same goes for the other figures borrowed from history. Theatergoers entering the auditorium without advance knowledge of the plot would have been unable to make sense of the complications and contradictions, and would have thrown their hands up in despair only minutes into the action.

Raby’s adaptation is so poor that I cannot imagine a competent stage director agreeing to touch the thing—and it was clear, five minutes into the performance, that The Stratford Festival in fact had not managed to engage a competent director. The blocking was poor (of the “line ‘em up side-by-side and have ‘em face the audience” school), the casting was bizarre (the Louis XIII and Anne Of Austria had to be seen to be believed), and the “acting” was execrable (total ineptitude coupled with what I would call “vamping”, a peculiarly-unpleasant combination). The Stratford “Three Musketeers” was one of the worse things I have ever seen.

Approximately one-third of the audience failed to return after intermission. We would have departed, too, but we had nowhere to go other than to return to our hotel—so we sat through the whole thing, trying for three hours to figure out why The Stratford Festival had not pulled the plug on this deplorable production early in the rehearsal period.

“The Three Musketeers” had been intended to provide a boost to the Festival’s box office this season, but we were told—accurately or no—that the production had not been bringing in the customers as expected. Apparently word-of-mouth about the production has been negative, in Canada and in the U.S., and prospective audience members have been warned off or scared off.

For us, “The Three Musketeers” provided a disappointing conclusion to the Festival. We had not expected much from “The Three Musketeers”—but we HAD expected something minimally competent and minimally enjoyable. Neither competence nor enjoyment was delivered.

One thing I can predict with some confidence: the Raby adaptation will never again be revived at Stratford.

Plans

Other than a football game (Minnesota’s season-opening win over U.N.L.V.), Joshua and I have seen and done nothing since returning from Canada more than six weeks ago.

We skipped Bloomington Civic Theatre’s presentation of “Singin’ In The Rain”, a production now closed. I have never seen any of the stage adaptations of the musical film, and I doubt I have missed much; the very notion of turning one of Hollywood’s greatest musicals into a stage vehicle strikes me as wrong-headed. In any case, we were told that the B.C.T. “Singin’ In The Rain” was not good.

We intend to skip Jungle Theater’s current production of “Fool For Love” because we are not in the mood for a Sam Shepard play. A couple of years ago, Josh and I saw an exceptional production of Shepard’s “True West” at Minneapolis Theatre Garage, but we are not keen on more Shepard at present. I have to be in the proper frame of mind to tolerate Shepard’s fundamentally ugly view of mankind, and at the moment I am not in that frame of mind.

Everything else on our list has been saved for this coming weekend, when Josh’s sister will come for a visit.

Despite the fact that Josh’s sister has no interest in sports, we plan to take her to the Minnesota/Iowa game. For us, this is the most important game of the year—we seldom miss the Minnesota/Iowa game—and we hope she will find some enjoyment at the stadium. Saturday will be Homecoming, and extra festivities will be on offer in addition to the standard game-day attractions.

We have tickets for Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at Minnesota Opera, and we are confident that Josh’s sister will enjoy the Puccini.

We also have tickets for Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” at The Guthrie Theater, and we have tickets for David Auburn’s “Proof” at Bloomington Civic Theatre.

Further, we have tickets for Molière’s “The Imaginary Invalid” at Theatre In The Round, but we shall not use them. We had looked forward immensely to the Molière, but our former landlady warned us off the production, telling us that Theatre In The Round’s “The Imaginary Invalid” was the worst thing to hit the Upper Midwest in decades.

Instead, at our former landlady’s insistence, we shall see a production that had not even been on our list: David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People” at Park Square Theatre. Our former landlady says that “Good People” is the finest production in town, and must not be missed—and we have decided to heed our former landlady’s advice.

Consequently, between Thursday evening and Sunday afternoon, we shall be dragging Josh’s sister to three plays, one opera and one football game.

However, only one of the plays, and not two, will be a classic—a slight change from our original plans.