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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 25, 2003

Considerable joy

July 25, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Deaf West Theatre’s revival of Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn opened last night on Broadway. Here’s the first paragraph of my review in this morning’s Wall Street Journal:

Why on earth–and how on earth–would a deaf theater company bring a musical to Broadway? Neither part of this question can be briefly answered, but in the case of Deaf West Theatre’s magical production of “Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” which opened last night at the American Airlines Theatre, the results need no explaining. This stage version of Mark Twain’s novel, first seen on Broadway in 1985, is now being revived by a mixed cast of deaf and hearing actors who not only speak and sing their lines out loud but simultaneously “say” them in American Sign Language. Laborious as the process may sound, Jeff Calhoun, the director and choreographer, has shaped it into a miraculously fluid theatrical spectacle….

To read the rest of the review, you’ll have to fork out a dollar for the Journal, whose “Weekend Journal” section is worth at least that much in gold.

Not as you or I

July 25, 2003 by Terry Teachout

I had lunch the other day with a classical composer I know. He told me, perfectly seriously, “I just had the worst nightmare–I dreamed I was trapped inside an E minor chord.”

He also told me about attending a drunken dinner party of fellow composers, who clustered around the piano after dessert to sing funny songs. Did you know that every poem Emily Dickinson ever wrote can be sung to the tune of the Gilligan’s Island theme? “Beeeeee-cause I could not stop for death/He kind-ly stop-ped for me….” Or that all limericks can be sung to the tune of “It Ain’t Necessarily So”?

Think about this the next time you see a composer take a bow at a new-music concert. Don’t let appearances fool you–these people are kinky.

P.S. A reader writes:

I’ve only very recently overcome the unfortunate habit of singing Emily Dickinson’s poems. “Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” “The Marine Corps Hymn,” and, perhaps worst of all, “Deep in the Heart of Texas” also work. But I warn you: That way madness lies.

Almanac

July 25, 2003 by Terry Teachout

“Boredom is one of the flattest, most self-evident, most self-justifying of all esthetic judgments. There is no appeal from boredom. Even when you tell yourself you like boredom, there the verdict is.”

Clement Greenberg, Homemade Esthetics

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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