Archives for 2005

If you came here by way of Instapundit, welcome to “About Last Night,” a 24/5-to-7 blog (we come and go on weekends) on which Terry Teachout writes about the arts in New York City and elsewhere, assisted by Laura Demanski, who writes from Chicago under the no-longer-a-pseudonym of “Our Girl in Chicago.”

In case you’re wondering, this blog has two URLs, the one you’re seeing at the top of your screen right now and the easier-to-remember www.terryteachout.com. Either one will bring you here.

All our postings from the past week are visible in reverse chronological order on this page. Terry’s start with “TT,” Laura’s with “OGIC.” In addition, the entire contents of this site are archived chronologically and can be accessed by clicking “ALN Archives” at the top of the right-hand column.

You can read more about us, and about “About Last Night,” by going to the right-hand column and clicking in the appropriate places. You’ll also find various other toothsome features there, including our regularly updated Top Five list of things to see, hear, read, and otherwise do, links to Terry’s most recent newspaper and magazine articles, and “Sites to See,” a list of links to other blogs and Web sites with art-related content. If you’re curious about the arty part of the blogosphere, you’ve come to the right site: “Sites to See” will point you in all sorts of interesting directions, and all roads lead back to “About Last Night.”

As if all that weren’t enough, you can write to us by clicking either one of the “Write Us” buttons. We read our mail, and answer it, too, so long as you’re minimally polite. (Be patient, though. We get a lot of it.)

The only other thing you need to know is that “About Last Night” is about all the arts, high, medium, and low: film, drama, painting, dance, fiction, TV, music of all kinds, whatever. Our interests are wide-ranging, and we think there are plenty of other people like us out there in cyberspace, plus still more who long to wander off their beaten paths but aren’t sure which way to turn.

If you’re one of the above, we’re glad you came. Enjoy. Peruse. Tell all your friends about www.terryteachout.com. And come back tomorrow.

Not surprisingly, people in and out of town are always asking me what plays they should see. For this reason, I’ve decided to start running on Thursdays a regularly updated list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:
– Avenue Q* (musical)
– Chicago (musical)
– Doubt (drama)
– Fiddler on the Roof (musical, family-friendly)
– The Light in the Piazza (musical)
– Sweet Charity (musical)
– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, family-friendly)

OFF BROADWAY:
– Orson’s Shadow (drama)
– Philadelphia, Here I Come! (drama, closes 9/25)
– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, child-friendly)

CLOSING SOON:
– Glengarry Glen Ross (drama, Broadway, closes 8/28)
– Primo (one-man show, Broadway, closes Sunday)
– The Skin Game (drama, off Broadway, closes Sunday)

REOPENING SOON:
– Sides: The Fear Is Real… (sketch comedy, off Broadway, previews start 8/18)

Not surprisingly, people in and out of town are always asking me what plays they should see. For this reason, I’ve decided to start running on Thursdays a regularly updated list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:
– Avenue Q* (musical)
– Chicago (musical)
– Doubt (drama)
– Fiddler on the Roof (musical, family-friendly)
– The Light in the Piazza (musical)
– Sweet Charity (musical)
– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, family-friendly)

OFF BROADWAY:
– Orson’s Shadow (drama)
– Philadelphia, Here I Come! (drama, closes 9/25)
– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, child-friendly)

CLOSING SOON:
– Glengarry Glen Ross (drama, Broadway, closes 8/28)
– Primo (one-man show, Broadway, closes Sunday)
– The Skin Game (drama, off Broadway, closes Sunday)

REOPENING SOON:
– Sides: The Fear Is Real… (sketch comedy, off Broadway, previews start 8/18)

A well-placed little bird tells me you can still get tickets to the second and third performances of L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Mark Morris’ full-evening modern-dance staging of the Handel oratorio, next Friday, August 19, and Saturday, August 20, at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. (Thursday’s opening is about to sell out.)

If you know anything about Morris, you don’t need to hear more than that, but if you’re unlucky enough never to have seen L’Allegro, it might be worth my quoting what I wrote about this extraordinary work four years ago in the Washington Post:

“L’Allegro” is a whole world of dance in a single evening, everything from childlike pantomime to knockabout comedy to complex groupings reminiscent of George Balanchine in their control and clarity. I wish Morris’ dancers did “L’Allegro” in New York each spring, just like New York City Ballet does Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” so that we could all revel in it as often as we want….

Since then the Mark Morris Dance Group has taken to performing L’Allegro fairly regularly at Mostly Mozart, though never often enough to suit me. Needless to say, I’ll be there–you come, too.

All performances are at eight p.m. at the New York State Theater. For more information, go here.

A well-placed little bird tells me you can still get tickets to the second and third performances of L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Mark Morris’ full-evening modern-dance staging of the Handel oratorio, next Friday, August 19, and Saturday, August 20, at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. (Thursday’s opening is about to sell out.)

If you know anything about Morris, you don’t need to hear more than that, but if you’re unlucky enough never to have seen L’Allegro, it might be worth my quoting what I wrote about this extraordinary work four years ago in the Washington Post:

“L’Allegro” is a whole world of dance in a single evening, everything from childlike pantomime to knockabout comedy to complex groupings reminiscent of George Balanchine in their control and clarity. I wish Morris’ dancers did “L’Allegro” in New York each spring, just like New York City Ballet does Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” so that we could all revel in it as often as we want….

Since then the Mark Morris Dance Group has taken to performing L’Allegro fairly regularly at Mostly Mozart, though never often enough to suit me. Needless to say, I’ll be there–you come, too.

All performances are at eight p.m. at the New York State Theater. For more information, go here.

“Well, I read a lot. I’m no intellectual, you understand, but I like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, John P. Marquand, Louis Auchincloss, and Georges Simenon. He really understands character.”

Bing Crosby (in conversation with Nat Hentoff, 1976)

“Well, I read a lot. I’m no intellectual, you understand, but I like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, John P. Marquand, Louis Auchincloss, and Georges Simenon. He really understands character.”

Bing Crosby (in conversation with Nat Hentoff, 1976)

No, I haven’t answered my blogmail, either. But I will. Soon.