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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 27, 2006

TT: Off-road vehicle

November 27, 2006 by Terry Teachout

After what seemed like an endless string of trips to everywhere imaginable, I find myself in New York City once more, a homecoming that reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s remark that “going right round the world is the shortest way to where you are already.” I don’t expect to see the inside of another airplane until I go home for the holidays, and that suits me fine.


When Harry Truman returned home to Missouri after a seven-year stint in the White House, a reporter asked him what he planned to do first. “Take the grips [i.e., suitcases] up to the attic,” he replied. Like Truman, I tossed my trusty rolling tote in the closet on Saturday afternoon, but then I headed straight back out the door. As I mentioned last week, I knew I’d have to fling myself into a marathon of plays and performances the moment I hit the city limits, and the only thing that made it possible for me to face that prospect with reasonable equanimity was the probable quality of the shows I’d be seeing.


On Saturday, for example, Maccers
and I caught a preview of Voyage, the first installment of the American premiere of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s trilogy of plays about the nineteenth-century Russian intellectuals who catapulted their country out of one tyranny and into another. The coming of The Coast of Utopia to the Vivian Beaumont Theater is by definition a major event, not only because we see so little of Stoppard’s work on Broadway (it’s been five-and-a-half years since a new Stoppard play was last performed there) but because this production is crawling with familiar faces (Billy Crudup, Jennifer Ehle, Ethan Hawke, Amy Irving, Br

TT: Almanac

November 27, 2006 by Terry Teachout

“The desk calendar was turned to a date weeks ago, evidence of her indifference. As for copybook maxims there was one printed on the calendar, ‘Thursday the 12th. Darkness Comes Before Daylight.’ She could not help smiling, leafing through the pad for further philosophic gems, but why smile when the Platitude was the staff of life, the solace for heartbreak, the answer to ‘Why’ even though the oracle spoke in the priest’s own hollow voice. Underneath the woes of the world ran the firm roots of the platitudes, the calendar slogans, the song cues, a safety net to catch the heart after its vain quest for private solutions.”


Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King

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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