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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, which will be published by Harcourt in the fall of 2009. He contributed an essay to Coudal Partners' newly published Field-Tested Books (as did OGIC) and 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
Right turn at Albuquerque
Moment's notice
Men at work (VII)
Scene stealing (I)
Scene stealing (II)

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

Archive  5233 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 
Around the World in 80 Days (Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22, closes Sept. 28). A comic rewrite of Jules Verne's 1873 novel, sprinkled with zany punch lines, squeezed onto a thumbnail-sized stage, and performed with the utmost panache by five actors and two sound-effects wizards, all of them loony to the max. Think of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, only smaller and funnier (TT).

BOOK 
David Thomson, "Have You Seen...?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films (Knopf, $39.95, out Oct. 14). A companion volume to The New Biographical Dictionary of Film in which my favorite film critic holds forth on a thousand variously significant movies--some great, some good, some awful--all discussed in quirky single-page essays that are models of pithy, quotable idiosyncrasy. Now available for pre-ordering from amazon.com, Have You Seen...? will be the book of the season for smart filmgoers who love a good argument (TT).

CD 
Louis Armstrong, Rudy Vallee's Fleischmann's Yeast Show & Louis' Home-Recorded Tapes (Jazz Society, two CDs). Don't be thrown by the elephantine title--this is the most important historical release of the decade. The first CD consists of previously unreleased 1937 airchecks from NBC's Harlem Radio Review, the first variety series ever to be hosted by a black, in which Louis Armstrong and the Luis Russell band play as though the world were ending. The band never sounded remotely as hot as this on its commercial sides for Decca, and Armstrong is in full-tilt knock-'em-dead mode. The second CD consists of fascinating snippets from Armstrong's private stash of postwar reel-to-reel after-hours recordings, the same tapes on which I drew in writing Rhythm Man. Absolutely to be missed under any circumstances whatsoever (TT).

GALLERY 
Diebenkorn in New Mexico (Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St. NW, Washington, D.C., up through Sept. 7). If you haven't yet seen this important show of abstract paintings and works on paper, don't delay--time is short. Richard Diebenkorn created these works when he lived in Albuquerque from 1950 to 1952, and the best of them suggest with uncanny exactitude the austere yet wrenchingly vivid New Mexico landscape (TT).

CD 
Cy Walter, Rodgers Revisited: Cy Walter Plays Richard Rodgers Compositions (Collectables). Two years after I heralded the first CD reissue of the long-forgotten recordings of Cy Walter, the man who turned cocktail piano into an art, a sequel has finally come along. Walters' 1956 recital of thirteen songs by Richard Rodgers, originally released by Atlantic, is as suave and elegant a display of piano playing as has ever been committed to disc--but don't be fooled by the high gloss. Alec Wilder said in his original liner notes that "anyone who has heard his own songs played by Cy immediately has a greater respect for his own work....though utterly respectful of the composers and songwriters whose music he plays, he is also highly complex both rhythmically and harmonically in his interpretations of their music, all the while maintaining a constant balance of delicacy and sensitiveness." Listen to "The Gentleman is a Dope" and you'll hear what Wilder meant. More, please! (TT).

Out of the Past

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

BOOK 
Sybille Bedford, A Legacy (Counterpoint, $16). All of the adjectives Sybille Bedford's writing brings to mind belong to the same family: sharp, acute, penetrating, piercing, and so on. In her most famous novel, two marriages, inauspicious in different ways, bind together the fates of three families in late 18th- and early 19th-century Germany. How could it have taken me this long to discover Bedford? Why isn't a writer with her observational powers, slicing wit, and historical grasp--a woman whose work no less a cutting edge than Dorothy Parker found "almost terrifyingly brilliant"--better known? The curious can start with A Legacy, whose certainties and mysteries stand in perfect balance (OGIC).

FILM 
The Trouble With Harry. Most of Alfred Hitchcock's movies are funny--that's part of what makes them so jolting--but this one is a not-so-straight black comedy about a group of people in a small Vermont town who stumble across a corpse in the woods and can't decide what to do with it. Shirley MacLaine made her screen debut in this 1955 film, and the rest of the ensemble cast includes such familiar faces as John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick, and Jerry Mathers--yes, that Jerry Mathers. Eisenhower-era audiences didn't buy the premise of John Michael Hayes' screenplay, and even now The Trouble with Harry is probably the least well known of Hitchcock's middle-period major-studio pictures. Might its fey, off-center humor make it ripe for revival today? See for yourself, and be sure to note Bernard Herrmann's droll score (his first for Hitchcock) and the gorgeously autumnal cinematography of Robert Burks (TT).

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