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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 a biography of Louis Armstrong that will be published by Harcourt in the fall of 2009. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, just out from Pantheon. He contributed an essay to Coudal Partners' 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)
Becoming an artist
In one piece
Among the brethren
By the clock
Size matters
No, but I heard the movie
The Doctor is in
A doll's house

SEE TERRY TALK 
To watch Terry's wsj.com review of Shrek the Musical, go here.

Archive  5501 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).

BOOK 
Frederic Spotts, The Shameful Peace: How French Artists and Intellectuals Survived the Nazi Occupation (Yale, $35). New from the author of Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics, the first book-length study of how France's culturati coped with the German occupation. The answer is in the title. Virtually all French artists played ball with the Nazis in one way or another, and some of the greatest (including the incomparable pianist Alfred Cortot) did their bidding with foul alacrity. Spotts' book is insufficiently detailed and lacks full source notes, but the story it tells is both true and compelling--as well as depressing. Anyone naïve enough to think of artists as a nobler breed should read it and weep (TT).

PLAY 
Back Back Back (Manhattan Theatre Club, City Center, 131 W. 55, closes Jan. 25). Itamar Moses, America's most talented young playwright, knocks it out of the park with this taut, touchingly elegiac conversation piece about three big-league baseball players who get swept up in the steroid scandal. Unpromising as the subject matter may sound, Back Back Back is actually one of the smartest plays of the year, and you don't have to know anything about sports (I don't) to follow the action. Very strongly recommended (TT).

MUSICAL 
Irving Berlin's White Christmas (Marquis, 1535 Broadway, closes Jan. 4). Yeah, O.K., it's straight-up commodity theater, but this Broadway version of the 1954 Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye film is a 100% pro job, directed to the hilt by Walter Bobbie (Chicago) and handsomely designed by Anna Louizos. As for the songs, you'll have to go a long, long, long way to beat them, and the smart, tart Kerry O'Malley sings "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me" as if the world will be coming to an end at eleven p.m. tonight. Refreshingly unironic and determinedly uncampy, this show is guaranteed to please Mom, Dad, and anyone who likes old-fashioned musicals (TT).

CD 
Schubert Piano Trios (ArtistLed). Magnificently played performances of Schubert's resplendent B Flat and E Flat Trios by Philip Setzer, David Finckel and Wu Han. It's all in the family: Setzer and Finckel play violin and cello in the Emerson String Quartet, while Wu Han, the brilliant pianist, is Finckel's wife. As for the record label, it's a mom-and-pop Web-based operation run out of the Finckels' New York apartment--but rest assured that there's nothing remotely amateurish about the playing or production on this must-have album (TT).

DVD 
Road House. Ida Lupino was never sexier than in this crisp 1948 thriller about a nightclub owner (Richard Widmark at his craziest) who falls for a hard-edged dame from the big city, then jumps off the deep end when she prefers his best friend (Cornel Wilde). A wonderful, insufficiently appreciated film noir, long overdue for transfer to DVD. This is the one where Lupino sings "One for My Baby" in a hoarse little voice (yes, it's hers) that sounds as though its owner had just downed a double Drano on the rocks (TT).

Out of the Past

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

DVD 
The Man Who Came to Dinner. With one exception, Hollywood did poorly by the plays of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. This screen version of their most enduringly popular comedy, released in 1942, is the only Kaufman-Hart film that clearly suggests the theatrical quality of the play on which it's based, in large part because Monty Woolley, who created the role of Sheridan Whiteside on Broadway, repeated his justly celebrated performance for the cameras. Yes, it's stagy, but so was the irascible Whiteside, a (barely) fictional portrait of Alexander Woollcott, and Woolley played him with enormous relish and malice aforethought. Don't ask me why Bette Davis was cast as the good-egg heroine--she's soooo not the type--but everyone else is competent or better, while the script, by Julius and Philip Epstein, sticks surprisingly close to the play. Jimmy Durante, of all people, plays Banjo, a character based on Harpo Marx, and does it well (TT).

BOOK 
Rex Stout, Some Buried Caesar/The Golden Spiders. So you've never read a Nero Wolfe mystery and want to know the best way to make the acquaintance of the portly detective who raises orchids, never leaves his New York brownstone on business, and leaves the legwork (and narration) to his trusty assistant Archie Goodwin. What's your next move? I suggest that you order a copy of this double-decker Bantam paperback that reprints two of the best Wolfe novels, the first originally published in 1939 and the second in 1953. Rex Stout's witty, fast-moving prose hasn't dated a day, while Wolfe himself is one of the enduringly great eccentrics of popular fiction. I've spent the past three decades reading and re-reading Stout's novels for pleasure, and they have yet to lose their savor (TT).

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