television
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Thoughts on MAESTRO
One of the many posters on Facebook said he didn’t see where the drama was in Bradley Cooper’s film about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro. Here was an enormously successful and talented guy who had one artistic triumph after another who managed to hold onto his family and still shtup whoever he wanted. Where were the obstacles Continue reading
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“Days of Wine and Roses”
Popular culture has stamped the Fifties in our minds with images of Elvis Presley, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Mickey Mantle and Annette Funicello. The war was over, the economy was booming, bebop and abstract expressionism were bringing new ideas to music and art, and musicals like Guys and Dolls, Bells Are Ringing and The Music Continue reading
Broadway, film adaptation, Golden Age of Television, movies, musicals, New York, off-Broadway, playwriting, television, theater12 Angry Men, 1950s, Adam Guettal, Atlantic Theater, Blake Edwards, Cliff Robertson, Craig Lucas, Criterion, Executive Suite, Fred Coe, Jack Lemmon, John Frankenheimer, JP Miller, Judgment at Nuremberg, Lee Remick, Leonard Bernstein, Mad Men, Marty, Michael Greif, Patterns, Philco Playhouse, Piper Laurie, Playhouse 90, Requiem for a Heavyweight, The, The Apartment, The Trip to Bountiful, United States Steel Hour, Westinghouse Studio One -
Watching a TV series reminds me of a play I saw in 2007
Watched an oddball but extremely affecting British miniseries on Britbox tonight called Don’t Forget the Driver starring Toby Jones (in two roles) and co-written by Jones and Tim Crouch. The plot concerns a bus driver in Bognor Regis who discovers, having taken his bus to Dunkirk (apparently you can ferry a bus across to France Continue reading
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“The Bedwetter” and “Mr. Saturday Night”
Two new musicals are co-written by people who came to fame via stand-up comedy. Mr. Saturday Night, the Billy Crystal vehicle (which he co-wrote with Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, composer Jason Robert Brown and lyricist Amanda Green) is about a comic’s life post-fame. The Bedwetter, which Sarah Silverman co-wrote with Joshua Harmon and the Continue reading
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Lee Grant
One of the treats about living where I have (and do) on the upper west side is that, walking my dog, I kept (and keep) running into Lee walking her dog. We always stop and swap stories. One time, I saw her on the street, we chatted, and then I sat down at our local Continue reading
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Thoughts on “Prayer For the French Republic”
At a time when we’ve gotten used to tasty 90-minute hors d’oeuvres, it’s exhilarating to encounter a play with enough on its mind to hold the attention for three hours (including two 10-minute intermissions). Joshua Harmon’s Prayer For the French Republic (immaculately directed by David Cromer at Manhattan Theater Club’s off-Broadway house) is a full Continue reading
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Men in White, Sidney Kingsley, and Ancillary Thoughts
I recently read Sidney Kingsley’s play, Men in White (1933), and last night I watched the 1934 film adaptation directed by Richard Boleslawski. (Interesting that Boleslawski directed the film version of a work that had been directed on Broadway by one of his students, Lee Strasberg.) As was the case with Street Scene, the film Continue reading
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Ride Share
In 1992, a former cab driver named Will Kern drew on his experience to whip up a bracing entertainment called Hellcab. An actor played the driver and an ensemble of six played something in the neighborhood of 30 passengers who occupied the back seat during one shift on Christmas Eve. It didn’t pretend to be Continue reading
Alan Bennett, Hellcab, Judgment at Nuremberg, Kamal Angelo Bolden, Marty, Philco Playhouse, Playhouse 90, Reginald Edmund, Requiem for a Heavyweight, Ride Share, Simeilia Hodge-Dallaway, Talking Heads, The Days of Wine and Roses, The Miracle Worker, The Trip to Bountiful, Twelve Angry Men, Will Kern -
Living Up to the Dream
I’m close to the end of Bauhaus – A New Era, a German TV miniseries that tells a story of Walter Gropius and his relationship with a student, Dörte Helm, against the background of the arts school Gropius founded in Weimar after WWI. It’s currently running on MHZ Choice, a streaming channel that features foreign-language Continue reading
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Remembering Preston Jones
In the mid-1970s, I was assigned a piece by an in-flight magazine distributed on American Airlines. The story focused on three playwrights who first came to the theater community’s attention in regional theaters. The three playwrights were David Mamet, Marsha Norman and Preston Jones. I interviewed all three by phone. I was friendly with Mamet Continue reading
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 