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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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TT: Words to the wise

December 3, 2004 by Terry Teachout

“Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings 1950-1964” closes Saturday at Lucas Schoormans Gallery. It’s the first Morandi exhibition in New York since 1981. God only knows when there’ll be another one. Please don’t miss it.


(To read what I wrote about this remarkable show last month in the Washington Post, go here.)


The gallery, which is at 508 W. 26th St., has just published an exquisite little catalogue. To order a copy, e-mail info@lucasschoormans.com, or call 212-243-3159. I suspect that supplies are limited, so don’t dally.

TT: The West did it (but Japan helped)

December 3, 2004 by Terry Teachout

Friday again, and I’ve reviewed two shows in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Pacific Overtures and Playwrights Horizons’ Rodney’s Wife.


Pacific Overtures is a triumph:

This is one of the most entrancingly beautiful shows ever to come to Broadway. Even if you don’t like it, you won’t be sorry to have seen it.


Originally produced in 1976, “Pacific Overtures” tells the once-familiar story of the naval expedition led by Commodore Perry that opened Japan to the West in 1853–but tells it from the Japanese point of view. The characters are played by Asian-Americans (Perry is a giant monster in a mask). John Weidman’s book makes use of narrative techniques derived from Noh theater, while Mr. Sondheim’s iridescent score melds the spare, percussive textures of Japanese music with his own Ravel-perfumed harmonies.


What makes this production still more individual is that it has been staged and choreographed by a Japanese director, Amon Miyamoto. When I first saw it a few years ago at the Lincoln Center Festival, it was even sung in Japanese (with English supertitles). That deliciously distancing touch is gone from this English-language version, but Mr. Miyamoto and his designers have otherwise been careful to present “Pacific Overtures” in an idiomatically Japanese style, with simple d

TT: Almanac

December 3, 2004 by Terry Teachout

O soft embalmer of the still midnight!

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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