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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 17, 2007

TT: Another prize gone wrong

April 17, 2007 by Terry Teachout

David Lindsay-Abaire’s Rabbit Hole won the Pulitzer Prize for drama yesterday. Here’s part of what I wrote about it in The Wall Street Journal last year:
“It’s a family drama with punch lines, a genre that at best runs to glibness, and Mr. Lindsay-Abaire sweetens the loaf of his characters’ suffering with a double spoonful of sugar. Not that their plight is less than deadly serious. Becca and Howie are a nice suburban couple whose son was killed when he darted in front of a car. Izzy, Becca’s kid sister, is a spunky ne’er-do-well who suddenly finds herself pregnant without benefit of clergy. Nat, their mother, is no stranger to sorrow: her third child, a heroin addict, hung himself. All this might have been the stuff of domestic tragedy, but Rabbit Hole fails to scratch the surface of Becca’s decorous middle-class grief. Instead, we spend too much time chortling at Izzy’s haplessness and Nat’s tactlessness–and we’re never surprised by anything anyone says or does.
“Such are the comfortable, comforting ways of post-Oprah TV drama, and the familiar presence of Cynthia Nixon and Tyne Daly in the cast serves still further to make Rabbit Hole the kind of show you can see any day of the week in your very own living room….”
Go figure.
UPDATE: For the scoop on how Rabbit Hole won the Pulitzer, go here.

TT: Almanac

April 17, 2007 by Terry Teachout

“The use of the guillotine becomes an addiction.”
C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

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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