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Chad Batka for The New York TimesFrom left, the director Diane Paulus with the actors Phillip Boykin and Audra McDonald at a rehearsal for “Porgy and Bess” at the American Repertory Theater.

There’s a spanking new version of “Porgy and Bess” on the way, one that seeks to transform the classic 1935 opera into a commercial Broadway musical. To that end, the director Diane Paulus and the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks have added new scenes, punched up some dialogue, invented biographical details and — most radically — added a more upbeat ending. Such tinkering with the renowned Gershwin work was bound to draw fire from some quarters, and indeed it has, following the publication of an Arts & Leisure article by Patrick Healy about the production, which stars Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis. It begins performances at the American Repertory Theater next Wednesday in Cambridge, Mass., with plans to transfer to Broadway next winter.

Nearly all the readers who responded expressed some degree of concern over this effort to refresh this landmark of American culture for modern audiences. (Michael Musto in The Village Voice even had a little fun with it.)
Among those most rankled was the composer Stephen Sondheim, himself no stranger to bold re-interpretations of his own work, who sent in this letter to the editor on Tuesday.

The article by Mr. Healy about the coming revival of “Porgy and Bess” is dismaying on many levels. To begin with, the title of the show is now “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” I assume that’s in case anyone was worried it was the Rodgers and Hart “Porgy and Bess” that was coming to town. But what happened to DuBose Heyward? Most of the lyrics (and all of the good ones) are his alone (“Summertime,” “My Man’s Gone Now”) or co-written with Ira Gershwin (“Bess, You Is My Woman Now”). If this billing is at the insistence of the Gershwin estate, they should be ashamed of themselves. If it’s the producers’ idea, it’s just dumb. More dismaying is the disdain that Diane Paulus, Audra McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks feel toward the opera itself.


Ms. Paulus says that in the opera you don’t get to know the characters as people. Putting it kindly, that’s willful ignorance. These characters are as vivid as any ever created for the musical theater, as has been proved over and over in productions that may have cut some dialogue and musical passages but didn’t rewrite and distort them.

What Ms. Paulus wants, and has ordered, are back stories for the characters. For example she (or, rather, Ms. Parks) is supplying Porgy with dialogue that will explain how he became crippled. She fails to recognize that Porgy, Bess, Crown, Sportin’ Life and the rest are archetypes and intended to be larger than life and that filling in “realistic” details is likely to reduce them to line drawings. It makes you speculate about what would happen if she ever got her hands on “Tosca” and ‘Don Giovanni.” How would we get to know them? Ms. Paulus would probably want to add an aria or two to explain how Tosca got to be a star, and she would certainly want some additional material about Don Giovanni’s unhappy childhood to explain what made him such an unconscionable lecher.

Then there is Ms. Paulus’s condescension toward the audience. She says, “I’m sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.” I don’t know what she’s sorry about, but I’m glad she can speak for all of us restless theatergoers. If she doesn’t understand Bess and feels she has to “excavate” the show, she clearly thinks it’s a ruin, so why is she doing it? I’m sorry, but could the problem be her lack of understanding, not Heyward’s?

She is joined heartily in this sentiment by Ms. McDonald, who says that Bess is “often more of a plot device than a full-blooded character.” Often? Meaning sometimes she’s full-blooded and other times not? She’s always full-blooded when she’s acted full-bloodedly, as she was by, among others, Clamma Dale and Leontyne Price. Ms. McDonald goes on to say, “The opera has the makings of a great love story … that I think we’re bringing to life.” Wow, who’d have thought there was a love story hiding in “Porgy and Bess” that just needed a group of visionaries to bring it out?

Among the ways in which Ms. Parks defends the excavation work is this: “I wanted to flesh out the two main characters so that they are not cardboard cutout characters” and goes on to say, “I think that’s what George Gershwin wanted, and if he had lived longer he would have gone back to the story of ‘Porgy and Bess’ and made changes, including the ending.”

It’s reassuring that Ms. Parks has a direct pipeline to Gershwin and is just carrying out his work for him, and that she thinks he would have taken one of the most moving moments in musical theater history — Porgy’s demand, “Bring my goat!” — and thrown it out. Ms. Parks (or Ms. Paulus) has taken away Porgy’s goat cart in favor of a cane. So now he can demand, “Bring my cane!” Perhaps someone will bring him a straw hat too, so he can buck-and-wing his way to New York.

Or perhaps in order to have her happy ending, she’ll have Bess turn around when she gets as far as Philadelphia and return to Catfish Row in time for the finale, thus saving Porgy the trouble of his heroic journey to New York. It will kill “I’m on My Way,” but who cares?

Ms. McDonald immediately dismisses any possible criticism by labeling anyone who might have objections to what Ms. Paulus and her colleagues are doing as “Gershwin purists” — clearly a group, all of whom think alike, and we all know what a “purist” is, don’t we? An inflexible, academic reactionary fuddy-duddy who lacks the imagination to see beyond the author’s intentions, who doesn’t recognize all “the holes and issues” that Ms. Paulus and Ms. McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks do. Never fear, though. They confidently claim that they know how to fix this dreadfully flawed work.

I can hear the outraged cries now about stifling creativity and discouraging directors who want to reinterpret plays and musicals in order to bring “fresh perspectives,” as they are wont to say, but there is a difference between reinterpretation and wholesale rewriting. Nor am I judging this production in advance, only the attitude of its creators toward the piece and the audience. Perhaps it will be wonderful. Certainly I can think of no better Porgy than Norm Lewis nor a better Bess than Audra McDonald, whose voice is one of the glories of the American theater. Perhaps Ms. Paulus and company will have earned their arrogance.

Which brings me back to my opening point. In the interest of truth in advertising, let it not be called “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” nor even “The Gershwin-Heyward Porgy and Bess.” Advertise it honestly as “Diane Paulus’s Porgy and Bess.” And the hell with the real one.

So we know where Mr. Sondheim stands. How about you? Drop us a line and let us know.

As Maurice Jones-Drew walked off the field, his white pants had a mix of grass, dirt and blood stains. They might be worth keeping that way.

After all, few players have had that much success against that defense.

Jones-Drew ran for 105 yards, Josh Scobee kicked four field goals and the Jacksonville Jaguars snapped a five-game slide with a 12-7 victory over the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night.

"It finally feels good to win one after all those losses," said Jones-Drew, the first player to run for 100 yards against the Ravens since last December. "It was nice to show the world what we're about. We beat a very good team."

Stepping into the national spotlight for a few hours, the Jaguars used their best defensive effort in seven years to slow down Ray Rice, Joe Flacco and Co.

"You've got to give them credit. They played like it was their Super Bowl," Ravens receiver Anquan Boldin said.

The victory could be a turning point for a young team trying to create confidence after losing eight of its previous nine games. Instead of talk about coach Jack Del Rio's job security, the Jaguars (2-5) got back in the mix in the wide-open AFC South.

"We knew this was an opportunity to right things and gain a little respect," Del Rio said.

They relied on Jones-Drew and the defense to get it done.Jacksonville didn't allow a first down until the 5:26 mark of the third quarter, a mix of stout defense and inept offense. Flacco finally got the Ravens (4-2) on the scoreboard with a little more than two minutes remaining. He capped a 90-yard drive with a 5-yard touchdown pass to Boldin.

The Ravens failed to recover an onside kick when the ball bounced inches short of going the required 10 yards. Scobee followed with his third field goal of at least 50 yards, tying an NFL record held by many.

"As long as I'm getting those opportunities, I will gladly take them," Scobee said. "Given that we haven't scored a lot of points this season, I know that every time I'm out there it's very important."

Baltimore had a final possession, but in fitting fashion, Jacksonville's defense came up big. Drew Coleman stepped in front of Ed Dickson and intercepted Flacco's final pass.

The Ravens finished with 146 total yards, the fewest yards the Jaguars have allowed since 2004.

"They basically beat us with their defense," coach John Harbaugh said. "I don't think it was any one thing. It was a lack of execution. It's almost as bad as you can play on offense."

The Jaguars set a franchise record by allowing only 16 yards in the first half, including 1 yard passing by Flacco, who was under relentless pressure for much of the night.

"We need to make sure when we're not on our 'A' game, we're not this," said Flacco, who completed 21 of 38 passes for 137 yards.

Baltimore finally got a first down on its 28th play of the game when Rice broke off a 12-yard run. That was only the second play longer than 10 yards for the Ravens.

"We were confident about this game," Jaguars defensive tackle Terrance Knighton said. "We knew we had to outplay them. The difference between this and the other weeks is that we started fast. Our defense is capable of that. That's why we hold ourselves to a high standard. We just needed to taste victory. Now that we have, we're going to keep it rolling."

The teams combined to go 0 of 16 on third-down conversions in the opening half. The Jaguars began the third quarter with six first downs, only for the Ravens defense to stiffen after yet another mistake.

The Ravens stopped Jacksonville, but Brendon Ayanbadejo was called for a personal foul and ejected from the game when he punched Guy Whimper in the facemask after the play. That gave the Jaguars first-and-goal from the 3, but Blaine Gabbert failed to complete two passes in the end zone and Scobee kicked a 22-yard field goal.

An earlier field goal was set up by another Baltimore blunder.

After Gabbert completed passes of 24 and 11 yards to the Ravens 38, Gabbert was sacked on third-and-8 at the 40. The Jaguars chose to punt, but Paul Kruger was penalized for running into the kicker. The 5-yard penalty put Scobee in field goal range, putting the Jaguars up 6-0 with a 54-yard kick.

Scobee, who extended his franchise record with a field goal for the 15th straight game, kicked two 54-yarders.

Jacksonville needed every yard and point it could muster. The NFL's worst offense put the game on Jones-Drew's shoulders. He carried 30 times, most of them right into the middle of Baltimore's revered defense.

"We just grinded them," Gabbert said. "Mojo's a beast back there."

NOTES: Ravens S Ed Reed had his shoulder popped back into place in the fourth quarter, but returned after a few plays off. ... Houston's Arian Foster was the last player to run for at least 100 yards against Baltimore. ... The Jaguars, who snapped a six-game losing streak in prime time, improved to 7-3 on Monday night. ... Rice ran eight times for 28 yards. ... Baltimore's star was Sam Koch, who punted nine times for a 52.2 yard average.