The Final Word

I've been reading The New York Times Book Of Broadway.  Published in 2001, it's a collection of the Times' reviews of 125 of the most significant production of the 20th century.

I like reading contemporaneous discussions of art and entertainment, before everyone knows what they're officially supposed to say.

What you often get is a timid approach.  Even though almost all the reviews in the book are positive, critics prefer to compare a production to the past, and not say this is a breakthrough.

Thus in the Kiss Me Kate review, it's said this is Cole Porter's "best score in years." In years?  What was better?  Not even Anything Goes compares to Kiss Me Kate.  Regarding Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (performed in 1956, 14 years after it was written and a few years after O'Neill's death), the reviewer states the play is so powerful it ranks with Mourning Becomes Electra and Desire Under The Elms.  Today, few O'Neill fans would put those plays (which have not dated that well) as high as Long Day's Journey.

Perhaps most astonishing, in the review of A Streetcar Named Desire, while well-known lead Jessica Tandy gets a paragraph for her work, relative newcomer Marlon Brando--in a performance that changed American acting--gets a pat on the head for half a sentence.

The reviewers are also not necessarily good at picking out the big hits in musicals.  Discussing Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, it's stated there's no tune that will become the same sort of standard as "White Christmas" or "Easter Parade." Very few songs get that big, so perhaps the critic--Lewis Nichols in this case--felt safe making this prediction, but the score produced a number of hits, and one, "There's No Business Like Show Business," became the very sort of anthem Nichols couldn't hear in the score.  In other reviews, the critics don't bother to mention the title tunes in both Hello, Dolly! and Cabaret.

Most of the reviews, written under deadline, aren't much, literarily speaking.  For instance, the review of The Odd Couple (by Howard Taubman) is mostly a rewind of the plot, sprinkling in many of Neil Simon's best gags.  I'm sure Simon was glad to get a rave, but couldn't have been happy with all those spoilers.

There are also odd moments here and there.  For instance, The Front Page is called a melodrama.  While the plot by itself could be considered melodramatic, I don't see how it can be called anything but a comedy.

Then there's Brooks Atkinson's notorious 1940 review of Pal Joey.  It had a rather seamy subject for a musical of that era, and Atkinson famously wrote "Although Pal Joey is expertly done, can you draw sweet water from a foul well?"

The musical was still a hit (the book mistakenly claims it only ran 198 performances, when it lasted almost twice as long--not the only such mistake in the book), and Atkinson himself all but apologized when he saw the highly successful revival 12 years later.  Unfortunately, that review didn't make the book.

PS  A popular word among these critics is "tatterdemalion." I saw three uses and for all I know missed others.  Now maybe three uses in a book that spans decades doesn't seem like a lot, but most books I've read didn't see the need to use the word even once.