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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for August 18, 2006

TT: Conduct unbecoming

August 18, 2006 by Terry Teachout

Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column contains good news (about the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey) and bad news (about Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me). In reverse order:

Make way for the first train wreck of the season. “Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me” is that most embarrassing of disasters, a toothless spoof of a tired subject. It isn’t exactly stop-press news that we live in a celebrity-obsessed culture, and though I suppose the phenomenon is still absurd enough to be milked for fresh laughs, Mr. Short and his collaborators have none to offer. Instead, they spend a squirm-making, intermission-free hour and a half shooting dead fish in a tiny barrel.


“Fame Becomes Me” is a parody of such confessional shows as “Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life” and “Elaine Stritch at Liberty” (“Another curtain goes up/On a one-man show/Another chance for an ego/To say hello”) in which Mr. Short purports to tell his own tale, hotting up the humdrum facts with a gaudy collection of spurious crises. No, he didn’t toot cocaine and humiliate himself on network TV in the middle of the Oscars, then seek absolution at the Betty Ford Clinic. His target is our prurient interest in the famous folk who do such things, but the satirical lance he wields is so blunt that it never draws blood….


Instead of blowing your hard-earned entertainment dollar on “Fame Becomes Me,” why not see something really good? If you live in New York, you won’t have to go very far to catch the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey’s exuberant production of “The Rivals,” which is comparable in quality to the splendid revival of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s classic 1775 comedy that Lincoln Center Theater put on two seasons ago….

No link. Buy a paper, or go here and get smart.

TT: Dirty laundry (a user’s guide)

August 18, 2006 by Terry Teachout

In my next “Sightings” column, to be published in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, I consider the case of G

TT: Almanac

August 18, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“When I was a child, art seemed like a tunnel to me. At the end of that tunnel I could see light where the world opened up, waiting.”


Jerome Robbins, interview with Robert Kotlowitz (Show, December 1964)

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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