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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Thanks, I needed that

November 12, 2003 by Terry Teachout

Dear OGIC:


Yes, that’s a still from Next Stop Wonderland, the film that taught me to love Hope Davis (not that I needed more than about 10 seconds’ worth of persuading). As my beloved Brazilian friends have since taught me, she is the very essence of saudade.


(For the musical equivalent of same, click here and purchase the most beautiful CD imaginable. If Hope Davis could sing, this is how she’d sound.)


And what is this…er, horse hockey about my not liking ice hockey? Art it ain’t, but way cool all the same. Besides, you promised to take me to a game, remember?


I’d spank you for your impertinence, but I’m too busy laughing at those awful logos. Besides, I just this second woke up, and must now turn instantly to the task of reviewing four different shows for this Friday’s Journal. In reverse chronological order of my having seen them, they are: Taboo, the Boy George-Rosie O’Donnell spectacular (which I saw last night), Bright Ideas, Fame on 42nd Street, and the revival of Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker. All in one column, yikes. It’s like the straight line of a bad Broadway joke: what do Taboo and The Caretaker have in common. I dunno, what do Taboo and The Caretaker have in common? (Insert punch line here.) Rimshot. Isolated titters.


I’ll be done circa noon, unless my head explodes, at which time I’ll turn to the task of blogging in earnest. See you then.


P.S. No show tonight! I may hang with a musician friend who claims never to have seen High Fidelity or Casablanca. That can be fixed….

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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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