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July 10, 2012
TT: Almanac
"The best comedy springs from the utterly serious."
Alan Ayckbourn, The Crafty Art of Playmaking
Posted July 10, 2012 12:00 AM
About...
ABOUT "ABOUT LAST NIGHT" AND ITS AUTHORS ABOUT TERRY'S BOOKS ABOUT TERRY'S PLAY AND OPERA LIBRETTI The production will then transfer directly to Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., where it will run Oct. 3-Nov. 4. To order tickets, go here. John Douglas Thompson will give a staged reading of Satchmo at the Waldorf on July 9 at the Vineyard Playhouse in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. For more information, go here. To read more about Satchmo at the Waldorf, go here. To read an excerpt, go here. To see a video of excerpts from the 2011 Orlando production, go here. • Terry collaborated with Paul Moravec on Danse Russe, a backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring that was premiered by Philadelphia's Center City Opera Theater on April 28, 2011. To read more about Danse Russe, go here and here. To view excerpts from the opera and see Paul and Terry talk about its creation, go here. Terry previously collaborated with Paul on The Letter, an operatic version of Somerset Maugham's 1927 play that was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera in 2006 and opened there on July 25, 2009. To see excerpts from the opera, go here. Dicapo Opera Theatre will give The Letter its New York premiere on February 7, 2013. For more details, go here. To read Terry's reports on the writing, staging, premiere, and reception of the original production of The Letter, click on the link.
THE LONG GOODBYE MORE ABOUT "POPS"
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BIOGRAPHY DVD
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 critic-at-large of Commentary. His Wikipedia entry is here.
Terry's latest book is Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the U.S., JR Books in England, Larousse in Brazil, and United Press/Alpina in Russia. He is currently at work on Mood Indigo: A Life of Duke Ellington. He wrote the introductions to William Bailey on Canvas and the paperback editions of Richard Stark's Flashfire and Firebreak and Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. One of his essays is included in Robert Gottlieb's Reading Dance, and he contributed notes on recordings by Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, and Oscar Peterson to Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology.
Terry's first play, Satchmo at the Waldorf, will be produced
this summer by Shakespeare & Company of Lenox, Mass., with John Douglas Thompson playing the dual role of Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser. Performance dates are Aug. 22-Sep. 16. To order tickets, go here.
To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here.
To read reviews of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, watch TV interviews and listen to radio interviews and podcasts about the book, and find out the answers to frequently asked questions about Armstrong and Pops, click on the link.
tteachout@artsjournal.com
ogic@artsjournal.com
caaf@artsjournal.com Search
TOP FIVE
Martin Puryear: New Sculpture (McKee, 745 Fifth Ave. at 57th St., up through June 29). New work, by turns witty, lyrical, and provocatively enigmatic, from America's foremost living sculptor, a virtuoso woodworker whose subtle inclination toward the surreal grows increasingly evident (TT).
Pat Metheny, Unity Band (Nonesuch). Nine new compositions by the master guitarist, all performed by his latest working band, a quartet that features Chris Potter on tenor saxophone. This is the first time that Metheny has recorded as a leader with a saxophonist since 1980, and Potter's presence is galvanizing. All hands--including Ben Williams on bass and Antonio Sanchez on drums--play with colossal vitality. This one's a keeper (TT).
Elijah Wald, The Dozens: A History of Rap's Mama (Oxford, $24.95). This impeccably researched study of the classic black insult game may be the funniest work of serious scholarship ever published--and the one that will give newspaper reviewers the most trouble, since virtually every paragraph of is studded with obscenities of the highest possible voltage. That said, The Dozens is a superlative piece of work, which won't surprise anyone who's read any of Elijah Wald's earlier books. If I ran the world, I'd give him a MacArthur (TT).
Shining Night: A Portrait of Composer Morten Lauridsen (Song Without Borders). This is the documentary by Michael Stillwater that I wrote about with the utmost enthusiasm earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal. I can't recommend it strongly enough now that it's available on home video, both as an introduction to one of this country's best composers and as a model of how to tell an artist's story on film (TT).
James Garner and Jon Winokur, The Garner Files: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, $25.99). Most ghostwritten celebrity autobiographies are a waste of time. Not so The Garner Files, which is unselfconscious, unpretentious, and ungossipy--but frank. If, like David Thomson and me, you esteem the star of Maverick, The Rockford Files, and Support Your Local Sheriff! as one of Hollywood's outstanding on-camera craftsmen, you'll gallop through it with delight. I only wish it were twice as long (TT).
Out of the Past
Michael Holroyd, Bernard Shaw: The One-Volume Definitive Edition. This meticulously revised 864-page redaction of Holroyd's massive four-volume biography, published in 1997, improves on the original by trimming away the endless digressions, putting the focus squarely on the complex relationship between Shaw's life and work. Sympathetic but never hagiographic, Bernard Shaw strikes a proper balance between the major and minor plays, makes no excuses for the playwright's totalitarian inclinations, and tells you everything you need to know in an unfailingly readable way (TT).
The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond. Budd Boetticher's 1960 portrait of an ice-cold sociopath (Ray Danton) is a high-velocity gangster film devoid of the slightest trace of sentimentality. Factor in Lucien Ballard's knowingly old-fashioned cinematography and Leonard Rosenman's letter-perfect score and you get one of the most satisfying B movies ever made (TT).
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