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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 7, 2004

TT: One for three

May 7, 2004 by Terry Teachout

No, I’m not here, nor am I blogging from my secret hideaway. I wrote this posting on Wednesday and stowed it with Our Girl for your Friday-morning delectation.


As usual, I’m in The Wall Street Journal today, this time with reviews of Bryony Lavery’s Frozen, Mark Medoff’s Prymate, and Neil LaBute’s The Distance from Here.


Frozen is brilliant:

Here’s a phrase that makes my blood run cold: “That play deals with a lot of really good issues.” I myself prefer plays that deal with life, not issues, but the two have been known to overlap on occasion, and it’s not unheard of for a really good playwright to use a “really good issue” as the pretext for a voyage into the unchartable labyrinth of human motivation. More often, what you get is a pulpit-pounding sermon with a politically correct moral, but Bryony Lavery’s “Frozen,” which transferred to Circle in the Square this week after a successful Off-Broadway run, is the polar opposite, an issue-driven play that grinds no axes. It is superior in every way-script, performances, staging, set. If I had tonight off, I’d go see it again….

Prymate is awful:

Esther (Phyllis Frelich), a deaf-mute anthropologist, steals Graham (Andr

OGIC: Title envy

May 7, 2004 by Terry Teachout

The always captivating Eve Tushnet has been listing great titles, of books mainly. She comes up with so many, though, that the list quickly becomes a little bit numbing, the titles a little indistinct from each other. I’m curious what she’d say are her top five. Challenge!


Here are a few that I didn’t see on her list or those of her readers: Two Girls, Fat and Thin. I Lost It at the Movies (or should I say Kiss Kiss Bang Bang?). The Man without Qualities. The Gastronomical Me. And, what the hell, Consider the Oyster. And of course my all-purpose favorite, The Dud Avocado.


Speaking of Mary Gaitskill, while scanning my bookshelves last night I noticed that her Bad Behavior sits beside Donald Westlake’s Good Behavior. I have no memory of having consciously placed them so; perhaps they just sort of gravitated toward each other smittenly when I wasn’t looking. Hard to think of two more different books, but the spines do complement each other nicely.


Another title I love, but that is simply puzzling if you don’t know anything about the book, is Anthony Burgess’s novel about Keats, ABBA ABBA. Also in the context-counts category is the memoir of (Sir) Frank Kermode, Not Entitled, although on second thought, perhaps it’s a bit too cutely elliptical.


What else?

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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