September 11, 2010

Read Don Bernard in the NC Stage version of The Double Falsehood. This makes me, I would imagine, the world’s veteran in that role. At a third hearing the play is almost making sense, and both funnier and slyer than I had thought. CA’s tight-jawed dramatic intensity in a role such as Julio is beyond perfect– it is culmination and send-up in one instant.

Watched the Irving Berlin vehicle On the Avenue last night. The need for a way to make a musical without too much affront to reality required many old Hollywood musicals to be set backstage of a Broadway show, where bursting into song would be topical, if not exactly plausible. Was Broadway really like that? A bunch of lavish, silly reviews strung together only by the personality of the stars? If so, we have advanced, a little, and I will moderate my lamentation about the decline of theater in these latter days. I found the Broadway excerpts trying, but the movie itself actually sort of engaging. Stepin Fechit was in it, and he was deadly funny, though there is little indication that the people on stage with him got it– or else they were masters of the straight face. The guy who gave the DVD commentary knew every bit player and each one of the 200 movies they had been in. It was sweet, somehow, for everyone to be lovingly remembered.

Everyone expects something to be blown up today. I don't. I feel we are done with that version of the world.