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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Digital update

October 28, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Don’t ask me how (I’m not entirely sure), but I managed to pry a 2,600-word essay on Paul Whiteman out of myself yesterday using only nine fingers. Actually, I can strike keys more or less accurately with my mutilated digit, but not with the Astaire-like precision of my normal typing, so bear that in mind when you stumble across the occasional typo in days to come.


I also went to a play last night, where I saw something astonishing: a playgoer in the front row of the theater had a heart attack in the middle of the next-to-last scene. The ambulance crew was on the scene within minutes, and as they charged down the aisle, I heard a critic sitting behind me mutter, “Well, it wasn’t that bad.”


Today I write my Washington Post column for Sunday and go to another play tonight, but I did want to poke my head in and check on how you were. I see Our Girl is tempting you with two of her most flagrant enthusiasms, both of which I share. When I visited her in Chicago a couple of years ago, we spent most of my stay watching selected videotaped episodes of Buffy, a marathon that left me persuaded of everything she says below about that excellent show.


As for Jamesian movies, I put my money on The Heiress, which isn’t on DVD but can be rented on videocassette at well-stocked stores. Great cast (Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson), great direction (by William Wyler), and an Oscar-winning score by Aaron Copland whose awesome virtues I think I’ve mentioned before. It’s the real reason why The Heiress is so Jamesian. Do seek it out, OGIC.


And now I have to get back to my nine-fingered writing life. Y’all have fun now, you hear?


P.S. Is it just me, or has that Dale Peck interview vanished from Gawker?

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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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