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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: The middle of the journey

December 29, 2006 by Terry Teachout

I return to business as usual in this week’s Wall Street Journal, reviewing the second part of Tom Stoppard’s The Coast of Utopia and the Broadway transfer of Spring Awakening:

Here’s a how-de-do: “The Coast of Utopia,” Tom Stoppard’s triptych of heavyweight history plays about the 19th-century Russian revolutionaries who struck the match that set the modern world on fire, has become fashionable Manhattan’s must-see show. The second installment, “Shipwreck,” is now alternating in repertory with “Voyage” at Lincoln Center (“Salvage” opens Feb. 15). These plays are the inverse of light entertainment: they’re long, structurally complex and bristling with ideas. Yet the combined weekly box-office gross for “The Coast of Utopia” is right up there alongside “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King.” As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste–not even the good kind.


If anything I just said causes you to suspect that “The Coast of Utopia” is the theatrical equivalent of “A Brief History of Time,” that least read of best sellers, let me correct this misapprehension at once: “Voyage” and “Shipwreck” are pure theater, fueled by ideas but propelled by the combined force of high drama and resplendent language. Even if you know nothing of the historical figures on whom Mr. Stoppard’s characters are based, you’ll be pulled irresistibly into the maelstrom of their crowded lives–and riveted by the tale of how their idealism bore bitter fruit….


“Spring Awakening,” the trendiest show of the 2006-07 season, has transferred to Broadway from the Atlantic Theater, slightly revised but otherwise intact. Most of my critical colleagues shrieked with joy when it opened, but I didn’t agree with them in June and don’t after a second viewing: I still think this glammed-up rock ‘n’ roll version of Frank Wedekind’s once-shocking 1891 play about puberty in Wilhelmine Germany is all wrapping and no present….

No free link, so get thee to a newsstand and buy a copy of this morning’s paper, or go thee hence to subscribe to the Online Journal, which will give you then-and-there access to my review, plus the rest of the Journal‘s weekend arts report, which is (A) extensive and (B) not for rich people only. (If you’re already a subscriber, the column is here.)

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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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