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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

OGIC: Spring, l’enfant terrible

March 16, 2004 by Terry Teachout

As a first-day-of-spring baby, I can assure everyone that this week’s weather is far from exceptional. The day I was born, there was a massive snowstorm, seeming to herald no good. I have vivid memories of sharp disappointment one year when the power got knocked out and we had to cancel my kiddie party, even though this left all the prizes and cake for me (which only seemed just; I always did regard birthdays as one of the great excuses for petty tyranny). When I lived in New York I hosted a joint birthday party with a friend on a night in early spring when you could just about measure the snow in feet and the wind mph in scores. All day long, making hors d’oeuvres and sugar syrup, we listened to the alarmists on the radio urging everyone to STAY IN YOUR HOUSE and tried to think of countermeasures. In the end, twenty hardy or foolhardy souls made their way to the Bowery, and most of them stayed for breakfast.


Aw, this is nothin’.

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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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