Archives for May 2, 2005

Wonderful news from playbill.com:

Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’ new musical The Light in the Piazza has extended its run at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre through the summer.

The show, which opened on April 18 after a month of previews, will now play until Sept. 4. It was to have closed on June 12.

Though it opened to mixed reviews, Piazza has since become a favorite of New York’s awards organizations. It led the Outer Critics Circle Awards nominations with 11 nods, while the Drama Desk organization also nominated it in 11 categories.

In case you missed it, here’s part of my Wall Street Journal rave.

What are you waiting for?

I got out of Sweet Charity late Sunday afternoon, caught a cab going north, went straight home, threw off my clothes, and made ready to climb into the loft and grab a little shut-eye preliminary to spending the evening at my desk, working on all the stuff I’ve got to write and deliver to various editors between now and Thursday, when I fly the coop to read a Shakespeare sonnet at an upstate wedding (about which more next week).

Fortunately, I decided to check my e-mailbox before crashing, and the first piece of mail I opened was from a friend who wrote, “Are we still on for tonight?” I uttered a well-known monosyllable three or four times in a row, having remembered in a sudden flash of prospective horror that I was supposed to be at the Jazz Standard in forty-five minutes to hear Dena DeRose. I threw my clothes back on, ran downstairs, and caught yet another cab, this one headed south. Somewhat to my surprise, I got to the club on time, and even managed to remain upright and conscious throughout the whole set. (Dena was hot, of course–it was my fault, not hers, that I was a little fuzzy.)

I’m still somewhat shaken by the closeness of my shave. It’s true that my itinerary for the week is pretty alarming, but it’s been at least a decade since I’ve flat-out forgotten a show I was scheduled to see. That’s the critic’s nightmare–especially when his schedule is so tightly packed that he can’t work in a repeat performance before filing his review.

I’m not going to try to tell you I’ve learned my lesson, but I do think it might possibly be a smart idea for me to take my phone off the hook, go straight to bed, and remain horizontal for an absolute minimum of eight hours.

You can wait to hear about the rest of my weekend, right? Good.

P.S. If you still long for fresh copy, I’ve updated the “Teachout in Commentary,” “Second City,” and “Teachout Elsewhere” modules in the right-hand column with links to my latest print-media pieces. Read ’em and weep. Or whatever.

As regular readers of “About Last Night” know, I’m hopelessly addicted to the What’s My Line reruns that can be seen early each morning on the Game Show Network. But even if you’re not especially interested in the early days of network TV, I absolutely guarantee that you’ll be fascinated by the episode scheduled to air early Tuesday morning (it was originally seen on June 3, 1956). Why? Because the first guest is none other than Frank Lloyd Wright.

Set your VCR for 3:30 A.M. Eastern time this Tuesday. This one’s a must.

“I think that to be an American is an excellent preparation for culture. We have exquisite qualities as a race, and it seems to me that we are ahead of the European races in the fact that more than either of them we can deal freely with forms of civilisation not our own, can pick and choose and assimilate and in short (aesthetically &c) claim our property wherever we find it. To have no national stamp has hitherto been a defect & a drawback; but I think it not unlikely that American writers may yet indicate that a vast intellectual fusion and synthesis of the various National tendencies of the world is the condition of more important achievements than any we have seen. We must of course have something of our own–something distinctive & homogeneous–& I take it that we shall find it in our ‘moral consciousness,’ our unprecedented spiritual lightness and vigour. In this sense at least we shall have a national cachet.–I expect nothing great during your lifetime or mine perhaps: but my instincts quite agree with yours in looking to see something original and beautiful disengage itself from our ceaseless fermentation and turmoil.”

Henry James, letter to Thomas Sergeant Perry (Sept. 20, 1867)