The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  Like “The Glass Menagerie,” the new play is a quietly woven study of intangibles. But to this observer it shows deeper insight and represents a great step forward toward clarity. And it reveals Mr. Williams as a genuinely poetic playwright whose knowledge of people is honest and thorough and whose sympathy is profoundly human.

  Miss Tandy is a trim, agile actress with a lovely voice and quick intelligence. Her performance is almost incredibly true. The rest of the acting, is also very high quality indeed. Marlon Brando, as the quick-tempered scornful, violent mechanic; Karl Malden as a stupid but wondering suitor; Kim Hunter as the patient though troubled sister—all act not only with color and style but with insight.

  By the usual Broadway standards, “A Streetcar Named Desire” is too long; not all those words are essential. But Mr. Williams is entitled to his own independence. For he has not forgotten that human beings are the basic subject of art. Out of poetic imagination and ordinary compassion he has spun a poignant and luminous story.

  Those Foul Words

  By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON | February 23, 2008

  WAS BIG DADDY ALWAYS SUCH A POTTY mouth?

  While the current production of Tennessee Williams’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” has garnered attention for its all-black cast, it is the saltiness of Big Daddy, played with unrestrained ribaldry by James Earl Jones, and particularly his liberal use of a certain four-letter word, that has raised the eyebrows of some theatergoers.

  Williams wrote “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1954, but he made changes for the 1955 Broadway production in accordance with the wishes of the director, Elia Kazan.

  The language in the first three lives of “Cat” is strong, but only as strong as would be allowed in the 1950’s. Hence the presence of cute but weird modifiers like “rutting” and “ducking.” Williams had reservations about the Broadway “Cat,” saying, in a 1973 interview, “I was never happy about it.”

  In 1973 Williams revisited the play for a production at Stage West, a regional theater in Springfield, Mass. He produced a revision that combined elements of the 1955 Broadway version and his original version, restoring his preferred, ambiguous conclusion. He also, at this point, added the swearing.

  Maybe the shock comes from watching the actor known from “On Golden Pond” and “Star Wars” get so down and dirty. When the play was written, you couldn’t utter certain words onstage, Mr. Jones said, adding, “I love saying”—well, you know—“onstage.”

  Arthur Miller, Moral Voice Of American Stage, Dies at 89

  By MARILYN BERGER | February 11, 2005

  Aurther Miller.

  ARTHUR MILLER, ONE OF THE GREAT American playwrights, whose work exposed the flaws in the fabric of the American dream, died Thursday night at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 89.

  “Death of a Salesman,” which opened on Broadway in 1949, established Mr. Miller as a giant of the American theater when he was only 33. It won the triple crown of theatrical artistry that year: the Pulitzer Prize, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Tony.

  But the play’s enormous success also overshadowed Mr. Miller’s long career: “The Crucible,” a 1953 play about the Salem witch trials inspired by his virulent hatred of McCarthyism, and “A View From the Bridge,” a 1955 drama of obsession and betrayal, ultimately took their place as popular classics of the international stage, but Mr. Miller’s later plays never equaled his early successes. Although he wrote a total of 17 plays, “The Price,” produced on Broadway during the 1967-68 season, was his last solid critical and commercial hit.

  His reputation rests on a handful of his best-known plays, the dramas of guilt and betrayal and redemption that continue to be revived frequently at theaters all over the world. These dramas of social conscience were drawn from life and informed by the Great Depression, the event that he believed had a more profound impact on the nation than any other in American history, except, possibly, the Civil War. “In play after play,” the drama critic Mel Gussow wrote in The New York Times, “he holds man responsible for his and for his neighbor’s actions.”

  The Broadway producer Robert Whitehead, who worked frequently with Mr. Miller, said in reminiscing about their work together that he found a “rabbinical righteousness” in the playwright. “In his work, there is almost a conscious need to be a light unto the world,” he said, adding, “He spent his life seeking answers to what he saw around him as a world of injustice.”

  Broadway theaters dimmed their marquee lights last night at curtain time in his memory.

  It’s Free Theater In The Park, But New Yorkers Still Pay a Price

  By MANNY FERNANDEZ | August 20, 2006

  FRIDAY NIGHT’S PERFORMANCE OF BERTOLT Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” began about 8 p.m. at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. David Suker showed up about 8:45 p.m. He was not late. He was early.

  Mr. Suker, 38, was the first person in line for tickets to the next night’s performance. He had a long wait ahead of him—some 16 hours before the theater would hand out the free tickets—but he had his blue air mattress and its battery-powered pump, a bottle of seltzer, a sleeping bag, a lantern and his Army training.

  Why did he wait so long? The political nature of the play—a 17th-century drama starring Meryl Streep as a resourceful mother who profits from a war that ultimately claims her children—appealed to him. But really, he said, he did it for a woman. They had a date planned for last night, and he figured what better way to impress her than with two tickets to one of the most popular shows in the city.

  The Shakespeare in the Park play, presented by the Public Theater, has created a kind of theatergoers’ endurance test, with people like Mr. Suker camping out overnight, hoping to get a ticket for one of the theater’s 1,872 seats.

  The lines have become the Delacorte’s unofficial second stage, as lively, improvised and quietly dramatic as the play itself.

  And time is indeed money in New York City: people were selling tickets to last night’s show on craigslist.com for $45 each and up to $150 for a pair. One ticket holder wrote, “$100 for my time on line or best reasonable offer.”

  Visions of Heaven—and of Hell; “Angels in America”

  By DAVID RICHARDS | May 16, 1993

  A scene from “Romeo and Juliet” performed in the Public Theater’s 2007 Shakespeare in the Park season.

  NOT UNTIL THE VERY END OF “MILLENNIUM Approaches,” Part 1 of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” do we see an actual angel—crashing through a bedroom ceiling, as it happens, and sending chunks of plaster raining down on a young man dying of AIDS.

  Her majestic wings are spread wide and high. The billows of her blindingly white gown could have been styled by Bernini. From the impassive expression on her face, however, there’s no knowing if she’s come on a mission of vengeance or mercy, retribution or deliverance.

  For that, we will have to wait until the fall, when “Millennium Approaches” will be joined at the Walter Kerr Theater by “Perestroika,” Part 2 of the vision. If nothing else, Mr. Kushner has written the greatest cliff-hanger in Broadway history.

  The winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama, “Angels” has ridden into New York on a tidal wave of publicity that began building 16 months ago when the play was staged by the Royal National Theater in London. No work of art is ever well served by ballyhoo. In this instance, by encouraging monumental expectations, the hype may be pointing us in exactly the wrong direction. If you want the most out of Mr. Kushner’s unfettered dramaturgy, it helps to think smaller, not bigger. The characters have great feverish declarations to make, but it is their confessional side that usually ends up being the most moving.

  When that Angel finally does appear in a shaft of opalescent plaster dust, she has this to announce: “Greetings, prophet; the great work begins: the messenger has arrived.” She is addressing a character who is spent and confused, just as she is addressing a checkmated nation. But I had the odd impression that she was talking to Mr. Kush
ner himself, whose great work also lies ahead.

  Having described the illness in “Millennium Approaches,” does he now have it in him to envision the cure? And if there is none, will the compassion of his art provide the solace we all crave?

  “Fantasticks” Will Trip The Lights No More

  By JAMES BARRON | January 14, 2002

  Exterior of the Sullivan Street Theater in 2002. A revival of the show opened on August 23, 2006, at the Snapple Theater Center.

  THERE WERE NAYSAYERS WHO SAID THAT after creaking along for nearly 42 years, it had become “The Anachronisticks.” There were those who found it so uplifting they called it “The Optimisticks.”

  And then there were all the actors who said they had once been in the cast of “The Fantasticks,” at the tiny Sullivan Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village. Some probably would call them “The Egotisticks.”

  “The Fantasticks,” the Methuselah of musicals, closed last night after its 17,162nd performance. Now theatergoers can only try to remember. And to stop spelling words that end in “istic” with a K.

  The chief producer, Lore Noto, once dreamed of catching up to “The Mousetrap,” the Agatha Christie murder mystery that has been playing in London since 1952. Mr. Noto had to settle for claiming that “The Fantasticks” was “the world’s longest-running musical” and “the longest-running live theater performance at a single location.” (“The Mousetrap” has played in more than one theater.)

  “I thought this thing would never end,” said Liz Bruzzese, who was in the cast in the 1980’s. “It’s like the Empire State Building—you always think you’ll go see it someday.”

  But less-than-sellout crowds and a real estate deal finally doomed “The Fantasticks.” “The new owners of the playhouse did their best to accommodate our productions,” Mr. Noto said on the show’s Web site, thefantasticks.com, “but dwindling grosses combined with escalating costs decided the issue for us.” On closing night, a ticket cost $40, or 10.66 times the $3.75 price on opening night, May 3, 1960.

  “The Fantasticks” was a career-starter or career-builder for scores of actors. Its alumni include F. Murray Abraham, who said he made $70 a week when he was in the show; Jerry Orbach, who went on to Broadway and to “Law and Order” on television; and Eileen Fulton, who managed to appear on “As the World Turns” and in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the same time.

  Big Finales, All Together Now: A Month of Broadway Closings

  By CHARLES ISHERWOOD | January 3, 2009

  FOR THOSE SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE ROMANTIC allure of attending the last performance of a Broadway show, January will be one for the history books. The annual post-holiday doldrums in the theater district are proving particularly doleful in 2009, as more than a dozen plays and musicals—almost half of the current lineup, incredible though it may seem—get ready to close by the end of the month.

  Harvey Fierstein, who has returned to the cast of “Hairspray,” will saunter forth from a giant, glitter-bedecked aerosol can and rasp his last girlish rasp. Patti LuPone will tear into the worn soul of Mama Rose for the last time. And the questing kids from “Spring Awakening” will sing their last moody hymn to the wondrous ache of self-discovery.

  It is haunting to think that that there could be more shows closing on one Sunday than there will be running on all of Broadway by the time the Tonys roll around in June. It’s also undeniable that the undertow of sadness at these closings will be unusually strong this year.

  So, as you watch the lights dim, look at the real human being through the mask of the fictional characters a little more vividly. The chorus kid with the megawatt smile, the all-but-legendary musical diva with a devoted following, the up-and-coming young leading man—when the curtain falls they will all be actors anxiously awaiting their next engagement, at a scarily perilous time for everybody. So keep clapping, please, and a “Bravo!” or two would surely be appreciated.

  When “Off” Meets “Off Off”

  By CHARLES ISHERWOOD | May 4, 2008

  CASUAL THEATERGOERS MAY HAVE LITTLE OR no idea of the difference between Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. So here’s a quick primer.

  If you are paying $65 or $75 for a full-price ticket, you are seeing an Off Broadway show. If you are fanning yourself with your program and wondering about fire-code violations, it’s definitely a double-Off experience.

  Actor you recognize from television: Off. Actor you recognize because he’s your son’s second-grade teacher and he invited you (well, actually implored you) to see the show: Off Off.

  Engulfed by the sound of uncrinkling candy wrappers: Off. Surrounded by tattoos and Obama buttons: Off Off.

  There often seems to be little overlap—in either aesthetics or audiences—between these large categories of New York theater. The major Off Broadway companies have thousands of subscribers in the general vicinity of middle age, reasonably ample resources and a site to call their own. They specialize in straightforward narrative theater. The world of Off Off Broadway is a welter of scrappy companies fighting for attention, producing when and where they can, and forsaking linear storytelling and text-based work in favor of productions that mix mediums more freely. And the cultural and financial divide between these two classes of theater often seems to outstrip the gap between Broadway and Off Broadway.

  OPERA AND MUSIC

  The New Opera House—“Faust,” Witnessed by 3,000 People

  October 23, 1883

  A VERY GREAT AUDIENCE ASSEMBLED LAST evening in the new Metropolitan Opera house on the occasion of its formal public opening. The lines of carriages were so long that the three entrances were unequal to the task of receiving their occupants promptly, and at 8:23 o’clock, when Signor Vianesi lifted his baron, people were still pouring in from every side. An outburst of applause greeted the signor’s appearance, whereat he halted, wheeled about, and gravely bowed to every corner of the vast auditorium before repeating his signal for the opening overture. The curtain rose on the first act of “Faust” at 8:30 o’clock, and Signor Campanini was warmly greeted. At this time the house was well filled. The exceedingly comfortable seats in the parquet were all occupied, the rows of boxes were tenanted, the balcony was nearly filled, and the family circle was not full by a good deal.

  The artists were all warmly received: Medames Nilsson and Scalchi and Signor Campanini particularly. The artists received numerous floral baskets and bouquets, and Signori Campanini and Del Puente were given wreaths of laurel and oak leaves respectively.

  Never Misses a Cue. Never Sings, Either.

  By JAMES BARRON | December 1, 2002

  WHEN THE TRUMPETS STRUCK UP THE FIRST bars of the triumphal march, he had to know that his cue was just moments away. This performance was not, after all, his debut in “Aida” at the Metropolitan Opera. It was the seventh time since the season opened that he had appeared in Verdi’s famous love triangle. So, standing backstage as choristers in white-and-gold costumes and stagehands in sweatshirts and jeans swirled by, he waited.

  His big moment is in Scene 2, one of the most famous triumphal scenes in opera. Night after night, he is perhaps the most recognizable figure in the throng celebrating Radames’s victory. He is also the only one in “Aida” who has never missed a cue and never forgotten the words. (All right, he doesn’t have any.)

  He is Casco, the white horse who leads the triumphal procession in “Aida.” Loaded with shiny props, Casco clomps across the stage just before the king complicates everything by giving Amneris’s hand in marriage to Radames.

  Casco is in his late teens or maybe 20, the equivalent in human years of someone approaching retirement age. And while not as temperamental as some tenors, he can throw a teeth-baring, floor-stomping tantrum when he feels like it. But only backstage.

  “Once he’s onstage,” said Maeve Deady, a riding-academy instructor who uses Casco for lessons when he is not at the Met, “he’s an angel.’’

  There is no star on his dressing-room door because his dressin
g room does not have a door—it is the south tunnel, a long driveway under the Metropolitan Opera House near a door leading to the Met’s tight backstage corridors—and he does not get the red-carpet treatment, either. The Met puts brown paper over the red carpet that runs past the singers’ dressing rooms on the way to the stage. A horse is a horse, of course.

  The Met Gives Gala Hug to Itself

  By DONAL HENAHAN | October 24, 1983

  Patrons file in to watch “Madama Butterfly” at the Metropolitan Opera in September 2006.

  THE METROPOLITAN OPERA’S GALA IN honor of its 100th birthday reminded me of the old song about a fellow determined to get his arms around a very large lady. He hugs a bit, makes a chalk mark, hugs some more, chalks some more and goes on working away in sections, a-huggin’ and a-chalkin’, until the embrace is accomplished. Over 11 hours, with time out for dinner, the company did a magnificent job of hugging itself. There were many thrilling moments, though not until almost the 11th hour, literally, did sentiment take over the proceedings.

  At the rear of the stage, as an honorary audience, sat 25 of the Met’s former stars, looking rather like a jury at a vocal audition.

  When the curtain rose after the evening’s final intermission, an authentically gala touch was added and the night went up in a grand crescendo from there on. At the rear of the stage, as an honorary audience, sat 25 of the Met’s former stars, looking rather like a jury at a vocal audition. The names alone were exciting enough—Ramon Vinay, Helen Jepson, Rïse Stevens, Dorothy Kirsten, Zinka Milanov, Jarmila Novotna, Eleanor Steber, Cesare Valletti, Bidu Sayao and Ferruccio Tagliavini, to mention a few.