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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 2006

TT: Go south, young woman

March 31, 2006 by Terry Teachout

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is an off-Broadway triple-header: A Safe Harbor for Elizabeth Bishop, Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, and Grey Gardens. Two I liked, one I didn’t:

I’ve never understood why Amy Irving’s film career failed to pan out. All I know is that she made some good movies in the ’80s, married and divorced Steven Spielberg, moved to Brazil and pretty much dropped off the scope. Now she’s back in Manhattan, giving a dynamite performance Off Broadway in a one-woman play about an American artist who, like Ms. Irving, changed course and went south.


Marta G

TT: The devil made them do it

March 31, 2006 by Terry Teachout

Here’s a little taste of my next “Sightings” column, which appears biweekly in the “Pursuits” section of the Saturday Wall Street Journal:

A Colorado teacher was put on leave by her superintendent last month after showing a video of excerpts from “Faust” to one of her classes. Some parents, it seems, didn’t want their kids to see an opera about a devil. Around the same time, a principal in Fulton, Mo., cancelled a student production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” when he learned that the play was about witches.


You probably read these stories–then forgot about them. Such skirmishes, after all, are commonplace in postmodern America, where long-simmering cultural resentments can boil over without warning. But what happened to Tresa Waggoner, who got in red-hot water for introducing her students to an opera she calls “a great part of our civilization and Western culture,” is more than just another black-and-white tale of blue-nosed intolerance in Red America….

As always, there’s lots more where that came from. See for yourself–buy a copy of tomorrow’s Journal and look me up.

TT: Almanac

March 31, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at one’s own absurdity.”


W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

TT: So you want to see a show?

March 30, 2006 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows, updated weekly. 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, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

– Bridge & Tunnel* (solo show, PG-13, some adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes July 9)

– Chicago* (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content)

– Doubt (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter and implicit sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Light in the Piazza* (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter and a brief bedroom scene, closes July 2, reviewed here)

– Sweeney Todd* (musical, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, PG-13, mostly family-friendly but contains a smattering of strong language and a production number about an unwanted erection, reviewed here)


OFF BROADWAY:

– Defiance (drama, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes May 7)

– I Love You Because (musical, R, sexual content, reviewed here)

– The Lieutenant of Inishmore (black comedy, R, adult subject matter and extremely graphic violence, reviewed here, closes April 9 and moves to Broadway April 18)

– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, G, child-friendly, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON:

– Abigail’s Party (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here, closes April 8)

– Bernarda Alba (musical, R, adult subject matter and sexual content, reviewed here, closes April 9)

TT: Almanac

March 30, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“Like most people who cultivate an interest in the arts, Hayward was extremely anxious to be right. He was dogmatic with those who did not venture to assert themselves, but with the self-assertive he was very modest.”


W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

TT: Almanac

March 29, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“He knew that an enormous proportion of mankind feels, weirdly but indisputably, a stronger awe for the theatre than almost any other art or activity on earth. He knew that to get in on the inside, to be

TT: Almanac

March 28, 2006 by Terry Teachout

I came here looking for something

I couldn’t find anywhere else.

Hey, I’m not trying to be nobody,

Just want a chance to be myself.

I’ve done a thousand miles of thumbin’,

I’ve worn holes in both my heels

Trying to find me something better

Here on the streets of Bakersfield.


Spent some time in San Francisco,

I spent a night there in the can.

They threw this drunk man in my jail cell,

I took fifteen dollars from that man.

Left him my watch and my old house key,

Don’t want folks thinkin’ that I’d steal.

Then I thanked him as I was leaving,

And I headed out for Bakersfield.


You don’t know me, but you don’t like me.

You say you care less how I feel.

But how many of you that sit and judge me

Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?


Homer Joy, “Streets of Bakersfield” (in memory of Buck Owens)


P.S. For a good obit of a great country singer, go here.

TT: Almanac

March 27, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“‘But Piers, why did you choose him of all people? I shouldn’t have thought you had anything in common.’


“‘This having things in common,’ said Piers impatiently, ‘how overrated it is! Long dreary intellectual conversations, capping each other’s obscure quotations–it’s so exhausting. It’s much more agreeable to come home to some different remarks from the ones one’s been hearing all day.'”


Barbara Pym, A Glass of Blessings

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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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