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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 14, 2008

CAAF: Huzzahs

March 14, 2008 by cfrye

Terry, OGIC, and I are all big fans of Kate Christensen’s work, so it was thrilling to hear that her most recent novel, The Great Man, has received a well-deserved honor, taking home the 2008 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
I was also pleased to learn from Galleycat that Sonya Hartnett, author of the phenomenal Thursday’s Child and other novels, has received the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children’s literature. Yay yay!

TT: The slickest show in New York

March 14, 2008 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two very different shows, In the Heights and The Seagull. Here’s a sample.
* * *
intheheights.jpgThe hit of the year is here. “In the Heights,” the Latino musical that tore up Off Broadway last season, has transferred to Broadway in a revised version that is without doubt the slickest show in town. This high-stepping tale of immigrant life in the Upper Manhattan barrio throbs with self-confidence, and its theatrical craftsmanship is gleamingly immaculate. If it’s originality you want, go elsewhere on the double, but if all you require of a musical is an evening of ultra-familiar plot devices buffed to the highest possible gloss and revved up to hypersonic speed, you’re in luck and then some….
If life were fair, Classic Stage Company’s version of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” would move uptown, settle into one of Broadway’s smaller houses, and run for a year. Instead, you have a month to catch it, so don’t wait. It’s been a long time since New York has seen a classical revival comparable in quality or immediacy.
Much of the strength of this engrossing production lies in the fact that it was staged by Viacheslav Dolgachev, who spent a decade as the leading director of the Moscow Art Theatre, the company with which Chekhov’s plays are most closely identified. Yet except for Alan Cumming, who plays Trigorin, everyone in the cast is more or less American, and the play is performed in Paul Schmidt’s clean, colloquial English-language version, which Mr. Schmidt aptly describes as “an American translation, not simply another ‘English’ translation.” The blending of Russian emotionalism with American directness is what gives this “Seagull” its distinctive quality: It sounds American, yet feels Russian….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

March 14, 2008 by Terry Teachout

“I once won one of Mary Ann Madden’s ‘Competitions’ in New York magazine. The task was to name or create a ’10’ of anything, and mine was the World’s Perfect Theatrical Review. It went like this: ‘I never understood the theater until last night. Please forgive everything I’ve ever written. When you read this I’ll be dead.’ That, of course, is the only review anybody in the theater ever wants to get.”
David Mamet, “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal'” (Village Voice, Mar. 11, 2008)

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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