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ABOUT "ABOUT LAST NIGHT" AND ITS AUTHORS 
This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout, Laura Demanski (otherwise known as Our Girl in Chicago, or "OGIC" for short), and Carrie Frye (who signs her postings "CAAF"). Terry, who lives in New York, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the music critic of Commentary. more

ABOUT TERRY'S BOOKS 
Terry recently finished writing Rhythm Man: A Life of Louis Armstrong, forthcoming in 2009 from Harcourt. He wrote the introductions to William Bailey on Canvas and the paperback edition of Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. more

ABOUT TERRY'S OPERA 
Terry is collaborating with Paul Moravec on The Letter, an operatic version of Somerset Maugham's 1927 play. It was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and will open there on July 25, 2009. Here is an ongoing series of progress reports on the writing and production of The Letter.
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Lend me your ears (and eyes)
Men at work
Men at work (II)
Men at work (III)
Men at work (IV)
For better and worse
Men at work (V)
Men (and women) at work (VI)
Notes from an unkept diary
The case for lower-case opera
The envelope, please

SEE TERRY TALK 
To view Terry's December videoblog, go here.

Archive  4993 entries and counting

CONTACT
tteachout@artsjournal.com
ogic@artsjournal.com
caaf@artsjournal.com

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TOP FIVE

A list of new things we've liked (subject to unexpected and wildly capricious updating).

PLAY 
Boeing-Boeing (Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48). Bliss comes to Broadway in the unlikely form of a half-remembered French comedy that crashed and burned when it last played the Great White Way in 1965. Marc Camoletti's seven-door farce, in which two hapless bachelors juggle three sexy stewardesses and a haughty Parisian maid, is feather-light, totally dated, utterly irrelevant, and rib-crackingly funny, in large part because of the brilliant performances of Mark Rylance and Christine Baranski. Give your brain a night off and do some serious laughing (TT).

CD 
Hilary Hahn, Schoenberg/Sibelius Violin Concertos (DGG). America's best young classical violinist has taken on a real nutcracker this time around: Arnold Schoenberg's 1942 concerto, a finger-twistingly hard piece of twelve-tone neoromanticism that sounds like Brahms gone bonkers. Even if you don't buy Schoenberg's music, you'll find this specimen perversely fascinating, and Hahn has taken out a gilt-edged accident insurance policy by coupling it with Sibelius' ever-popular D Minor Concerto. Needless to say, the violin playing is fabulous, and Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra provide immaculate support (TT).

BOOK 
William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories (Library of America, $35). How did I fail to laud this collection when it came out earlier this year? Too busy, I guess, but it's never too late to sing the praises of Maxwell, a legendary New Yorker fiction editor who doubled as one of this country's most remarkable and least appreciated novelists. The Folded Leaf, written in 1945 and included in this collection, is the place to start, a deeply intelligent tale of adolescence angst that avoids all the pitfalls common to that genre. Also included is "The Writer as Illusionist," a 1955 essay in which Maxwell discussed his soft-spoken art with characteristic acuteness (TT).

CD 
Legendary Piano Recordings: The Complete Grieg, Saint-Saëns, Pugno, and Diémer (Marston Records, two CDs). Edvard Grieg, the first composer of significance to make records, cut nine 78s of his own compositions for piano during a visit to Paris in 1903. One year later Camille Saint-Saëns made the first in a series of sixteen recordings in which he plays piano solos and accompanies a good violinist and a not-so-good mezzo-soprano. All these stupendously rare performances, plus other important piano recordings of similar vintage, have now been transferred to CD by Ward Marston in meticulously pitch-corrected versions. The sound may be primitive, but the interpretations come through with uncanny, even eerie clarity, and as you listen to Grieg rippling blithely through "Butterfly" or Saint-Saëns tossing off his "Valse nonchalante" with fey elegance, you will feel closer to the lost world of nineteenth-century pianism than you ever before thought possible (TT).

PLAY 
The Four of Us (City Center, 131 W. 55, extended through May 18). Prodigy playwright Itamar Moses' latest is a sharp-witted study of two young writers whose friendship is endangered when they succeed at different rates of speed. It has the feel of a first-rate indie flick, enhanced by the intimacy of an off-Broadway stage production. Smart, crisp, touching (TT).

Out of the Past

Not new, but still worth a look or listen (and no less subject to change without notice).

FILM 
The Westerner. Gary Cooper has been largely overlooked by postmodern film buffs, but a new DVD reissue of this 1940 film might help break through the wall of silence. Directed by William Wyler, The Westerner is a fictionalized retelling of the not-entirely-legendary tale of Roy Bean, the hard-drinking self-made Texas judge who dispensed Law West of the Pecos and had a thing for Lillie Langtry, the celebrated turn-of-the-century British actress. Walter Brennan won and earned an Oscar for his scene-stealing performance as Judge Bean, but Cooper gets plenty of licks in as a dryly amusing drifter who slips out of the judge's noose by falsely claiming to know the Jersey Lily. Hijinks ensue, climaxing in a spectacular showdown. You'll know who wins well before the first shot is fired, but all the fun is getting there. Gorgeous cinematography by Gregg "Citizen Kane" Toland (TT).

FILM 
The Red Pony. Lewis Milestone's uncommonly sensitive 1949 adaptation of John Steinbeck's quartet of short stories about a fanciful boy and the ranch hand he idolizes is a "children's movie" that adults can watch with enormous pleasure. The cast, led by Robert Mitchum, Myrna Loy, and Louis Calhern, is impeccable, Tony Gaudio's Technicolor cinematography is quietly handsome, and Aaron Copland's score is one of the major achievements of his middle period. Steinbeck wrote the script himself, proving yet again that his work plays better on screen than it reads on the page (TT).

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