About Last Night

From the Mint, another gem

October 23, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal, I review a webcast of the Mint Theater Company’ 2018 revival of Miles Malleson’s Conflict. Here’s an excerpt.

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The thing I miss most about live theater is seeing shows in small houses, sitting in the midst of happy audiences who know they’re watching something special. For me, one of the off-Broadway troupes that best satisfies this craving is the Mint Thearer Company, which specializes in unjustly forgotten 20^th-century plays. The works they choose, no matter how obscure, are always worthy of revival, and their finely wrought small-scale productions make the strongest possible case for the plays.

Imagine my delight, then, when the Mint announced earlier this year that it’s been stockpiling broadcast-ready three-camera archival videos of its productions since 2013, and that it plans to brighten up pandemic life by webcasting several of them while New York’s theaters remain closed. The latest one, Miles Malleson’s “Conflict,” was taped during a live performance at the 99-seat Beckett Theatre in 2018. I saw it then and reviewed it with great enthusiasm in this space. Now that I’ve watched the show with earphones on my laptop—an experience directly comparable in intimacy to seeing it at the Beckett—I can confirm that my first impression was on the mark: “Conflict” is an outstanding play, and the Mint’s production, directed by Jenn Thompson, was and is platinum-plated….

“Conflict” is a most unusual piece of work. It’s a highly political play—Malleson was a passionate advocate of socialism and, later, a Communist fellow traveler—that sounds for much of its length like a drawing-room comedy….

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Read the whole thing here.

An introduction to the Mint Theater Company:

Replay: Langston Hughes reads “The Weary Blues”

October 23, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Langston Hughes reads his poem “The Weary Blues” on the CBC in 1958, accompanied by a jazz combo:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: G.K. Chesterton on evil

October 23, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil.”

G.K. Chesterton, “The Flying Stars”

Digital tourism and the snowball effect

October 22, 2020 by Terry Teachout

A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings:

This week the critics discuss the recent Tony Awards announcement and surrounding controversy, and the imminent opening of some live theatre productions in New York, including the Donmar Warehouse’s Blindness. They also reflect on a listener question about sound design, and discuss the many changes that the theatre ecology is continuing to undergo. Their picks this week include Party Hop by Natalie Margolin (on YouTube), Undermain Theatre’s production of St. Nicholas by Conor McPherson, and the Working Theatre’s American Dreams, which was mentioned in a previous episode by our guest Tamala Woodard.

To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

Almanac: G.K. Chesterton on intellectuals

October 22, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“She hasn’t got any intellect to speak of; but you don’t need any intellect to be an intellectual.”

G.K. Chesterton, “The Scandal of Father Brown”

Bye-bye, Bye Bye Birdie

October 21, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I take a look at a little-known survey that sheds light on the future of theater in America. Here’s an excerpt.

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As theater lovers wait restlessly for Broadway to resume performances after the coronavirus pandemic has been brought under control, the revival of “The Music Man,” which stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster and is now set to open on February 10, 2022 (yes, I know, we’ll see), is the show that has stirred up the most excitement. That’s no surprise, since it’s a great musical with a dream cast. But for me, the most interesting news about the American musical is not the latest rescheduling of an as-yet-hypothetical revival: It’s the release of a statistical survey that, read carefully, serves as a crystal ball in which you can see the possible future of American theater.

Dramatics, a monthly magazine for theater students and teachers, has been publishing since 1938 an annual survey of the musicals and plays most often produced by American high schools. Thousands of drama teachers throughout the country supply Dramatics with the data for these lists, and National Public Radio has taken on the daunting task of compiling all of the surveys, thus making it possible to see how the favorites have changed over time….

You may wonder why anyone other than their parents should care about what musicals high-schoolers are performing. Certainly most journalists seem not to: So far as I know, NPR is the only major media outlet to take note of the most recent of these surveys. But I think they’re making a mistake. According to Dramatics, nearly 50 million people attend high-school musicals each year, most of them young people for whom they serve as an introduction to the musical as a genre. It stands to reason, then, that the shows they see and in which they perform today will have a powerful influence on the ones they’ll want to see on Broadway ten years from now—or 40….

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Read the whole thing here.

A scene from Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird: