A blog about theater and the arts
The third big portrait show here in London is the Modigliani exhibition at the Tate Modern. The Soutine show at the Courtauld is small and impressed me within its very narrow range. The Cézanne at the National Portrait Gallery is a big show and provides lots to think about. This Modigliani is also a big show, but I’m not convinced that’s entirely a good thing.
Like Network, Ink tackles the role of the media in today’s world. In James Graham’s new play, it’s 1969 and the young Rupert Murdoch has just purchased The Sun and is determined to disrupt the comfortable elitism of Fleet Street journalism.
Also like Network, the play features stellar actors moving with propulsive energy through a spectacular set. Unlike Network, it’s subtle and nuanced. It rejects any temptation to preach or make easy judgments.
I’m still sorting out my feelings about Network, the new stage adaptation of the 1976 movie about Howard Beale, the “I’m-mad-as hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore!” newscaster. Is it a timely revival of a prophetic piece about the role of media and global corporations taking over our lives? Or is it self-important and meretricious?
A day after seeing An American in Paris at the Dominion, I went to Dominic Cooke’s production of Follies at the National. An American in Paris is an exercise in nostalgia, with its predictable love story and Gershwin tunes. We go to bask in the make believe that Broadway perfected in the first half of the 20th century. Follies is no such comfort food. To paraphrase George Elliot’s assessment of Middlemarch, Follies may be the American musical written for grownups.
Sondheim deconstructs the nostalgia of the old musical and brings us to very dark places in this show. For all the darkness, though, I never feel that he rejects the sweet innocence of the older American musical. The music in this show is a remarkable combination of Sondheim’s contemporary worldly sophistication along with loving homages to the old Broadway masters.
How strange to see in just a few days two compelling exhibits of portraiture!
The Cézanne blockbuster at the National Portrait Gallery encompasses some 50 paintings, and I find myself struggling (as I did with Soutine) to determine how much these paintings reveal of their subjects and how much they show us the painter’s distinctive way of seeing a confusing, baffling world.
My first stop on this London trip was to the Courtauld Gallery to see a small but spectacular show of Chaïm Soutine’s portraits of hotel staff. The cumulative effect of these 21 portraits of bellboys, pastry cooks, and chambermaids is far greater than the sum of its parts. What makes this so?
