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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 25, 2005

TT: Here be lizards

November 25, 2005 by Terry Teachout

It’s Friday, and I’m a drama critic again! Today’s Wall Street Journal contains my reviews of the Broadway revival of Seascape and a Baltimore production of Hay Fever:

Edward Albee is back on Broadway. “Seascape” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 but flopped at the box office (it ran for only 63 performances). Now Lincoln Center Theater is putting on a revival directed by Mark Lamos and playing for six weeks at the Booth Theatre, Broadway, “The Light in the Piazza” having tied up the company’s own Vivian Beaumont Theater for an unexpectedly long run. Though “Seascape” is no masterpiece, it’s being performed in a masterly way, and you could do a lot worse than to spend an evening watching Frances Sternhagen and George Grizzard make magic out of it.


Ms. Sternhagen and Mr. Grizzard play Nancy and Charlie, a married couple on the far side of middle age who can’t agree on what to do with the rest of their lives (she longs to comb the beaches of the world, he wants to settle down in one place and take it easy). As they sit on an unidentified beach and bicker about their future, they are unexpectedly accosted by Sarah and Leslie (Elizabeth Marvel and Frederick Weller), a pair of giant talking lizards who, feeling a vaguely uneasy sense of “not belonging anymore,” have crawled out of the ocean to see how the other half lives….


What do you think of when you think of Baltimore? My list would include H.L. Mencken, crab cakes, Camden Yards, John Waters, “The Wire” and the Matisses at the Baltimore Museum of Art–but not live theater. At least not until last Saturday, when I paid my very first visit to Centerstage and saw a performance of No

TT: Art, American style

November 25, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Here’s a sneak preview of my next “Sightings” column, which will be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal:

What do the music of Aaron Copland, the dances of Paul Taylor, the paintings of Stuart Davis and the novels of Willa Cather have in common? They’re all American–and all-American. You can’t listen to five bars of “Appalachian Spring,” or read a paragraph of “My

TT: Briefly noted

November 25, 2005 by Terry Teachout

– My brother just filed for re-election to the city council of Smalltown, U.S.A. He’s running unopposed. I don’t know what you think, but I think that’s just about as cool as it gets.


– National Review Online asked several of the magazine’s longtime contributors, myself included, to recommend books, both new and old, for Christmas gifts. Go here and scroll down to see my suggestions.

TT: Rerun

November 25, 2005 by Terry Teachout

Thanksgiving 2004:

To be sure, the one thing a new friend can never do for you is say I knew you when, and I find it rather sad that there are so few people in my life who can speak those words. None of my closest friends in Manhattan knew me when: we didn’t meet until after I’d figured out who I was and what I wanted to become. On the other hand, the friends of our youth present their own problems. They are part of the train of memories that we all pull behind us, the one that grows longer with each passing day, and for that reason harder to pull….

(If it’s new to you, read the whole thing here.)

TT: Number, please

November 25, 2005 by Terry Teachout

– Eugene O’Neill’s total earnings in 1922, the year in which The Hairy Ape and Anna Christie were both running on Broadway: $44,000


– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $455,461.84


(Source: Library of America, Eugene O’Neill: Complete Plays)

TT: Almanac

November 25, 2005 by Terry Teachout

“Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of habit.”


W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up

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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