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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 4, 2005

OGIC: Afterthoughts

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Last night I was all raving about Kelly Braffet’s novel Josie and Jack. Now I have a couple of addenda. First, in the earlier post I pronounced myself unimpressed by comparisons of the book to “Hansel and Gretel.” My (unstated) grounds were that the sister and brother in the fairy tale are victimized innocents whereas Josie and Jack are…not. Well, I’m a blockhead: I just rediscovered that the book’s epigraph comes straight from the Grimm Brothers’ story:

When the moon came they set out, but they found no crumbs, for the many thousands of birds which fly about in the woods and fields had picked them all up. H

TT: The re-Producers

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

It’s Friday, and I’ve got another triple-barreled drama column in today’s Wall Street Journal.


First out of the box is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which looks to me like a major contender for the title of Biggest Musical Hit of the Season, even though it has a familiar ring to it:

“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which opened last night at the Imperial, resembles “The Producers” so closely that Mel Brooks ought to ask for a half-point on the gross. Not only is it about a pair of unscrupulous buffoons who slip on their own banana peels, but Jeffrey Lane and David Yasbek, like Mr. Brooks before them, have turned every trick in the how-to-write-a-hit-show instruction manual, hiding their old-fashioned ways behind a thick veneer of comic songs lightly sprinkled with words you couldn’t even say on a Broadway stage 50 years ago, much less sing. Mr. Lane’s book is a fast-moving assembly line of pa-rum-pum jokes (“Do you think I should use an umlaut?” “No, you smell great”). Mr. Yazbek’s tunes are so utilitarian that they’ll have slipped your mind a good half-hour before the second-act reprises roll around. Sound familiar?


Original, in other words, “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” isn’t–but it’s wonderfully, almost arrogantly entertaining all the same. John Lithgow (the suavely oily senior partner) and Norbert Leo Butz (his scene-stealing low-life sidekick) are the Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane of 2005…

I also flipped over David Mamet’s Romance:

Though it pretends to be a Marx Brothers-style courtroom farce, “Romance” is actually an Ionesco-like verbal fantasia whose subject is language itself. The seven characters, all of them nameless, are empty shells of clich

TT: Just take my word for it

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Go here and listen. Joy awaits you.

TT: Almanac

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

“A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.”


Marcel Proust, Le temps retrouv

TT: In case you didn’t notice

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

The right-hand column has been extensively freshened in recent days, with an all-new set of Top Fives and updated links in the “Teachout in Commentary” and “Second City” modules.


Explore. Enjoy.

TT: One more once

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

This is your last warning: I’m giving two lectures next week in Washington, D.C., and you’re cordially invited to attend either or both.


– On Monday, March 7, at 5:30, I’ll be delivering a Bradley Lecture at the American Enterprise Institute. The topic is “The Problem of Political Art.” (C-SPAN will be videotaping this lecture for broadcast on a later date.) For more information, go here.


– On Wednesday, March 9, at 6:30, I’ll be delivering a Duncan Phillips Lecture under the auspices of the Phillips Collection at the Women’s National Democratic Club. The topic is “Multiple Modernisms: What a Novice Collector Learned from Duncan Phillips,” and five prints from the Teachout Museum (by Milton Avery, Jane Freilicher, John Marin, Fairfield Porter, and Neil Welliver) will be on display. Advance reservations are required. For more information, go here.


Come up and see me some time!


P.S. I won’t be toting my iBook to and from Washington, so my presence on the blog next week is likely to be sketchy at best.

OGIC: Quotetastic

March 4, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Whee–I have been inundated with five-packs of movie quotes. From readers, from bloggers, from commenters on other blogs. It’s fun! It’s fantastic! It’s full of stars!* Aw…I love you guys. I love my gay dead son.**


I can’t resist–I’m busily compiling a master list alphabetized by movie title, the better to form some impressionistic observations on the exercise. It’s fascinating to see which lines are cited most frequently, which movies are cited most variously, and simply to rediscover many, many killer lines I had completely forgotten about. More Monday. In the meantime, keep ’em coming.


*Close Encounters of the Third Kind, cited by Rasputin.***

**Heathers, cited by nobody.

***No, 2010. You know what I look forward to in life? Being able to read.

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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