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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 3, 2009

TT: Coast to coast to coast (VII)

February 3, 2009 by Terry Teachout

JANUARY 29 “Your life sounds like most people’s vacations,” a friend told me not long ago. Yeah, well, maybe, but most people don’t have to spend hours on end writing in hotel rooms. I hate writing on the road, especially when I’m alone, and today was a writing day in the Windy City.
For some reason I find it easier to write in hotel rooms when Mrs. T is with me, though she doesn’t like it any better than I do. “Can’t you come out and play?” she always asks, to which I always reply, “If it weren’t for the work, we wouldn’t be here.” Nor do I have any right to complain, since the shows we see are mostly good and we generally manage to work in various other cultural adventures between curtains and deadlines. Nevertheless, it sure would be nice if I were rich and jobless. Nobody ever believes me when I say so, but I wouldn’t write if I didn’t have to pay the rent.

JANUARY 30 From Chicago to New York, where I picked up a rental car, drove into Manhattan long enough to run by the apartment, pick up the snail mail, and back up my hard drive, after which I headed north to Connecticut and Mrs. T.

JANUARY 31 This was a dark day, as we theater types say, and I spent it at home doing absolutely nothing. To be exact, I slept late, ate three meals, read one-and-one-half Nero Wolfe novels, and watched two old movies on TV.

BadDatesSCO09KSPRA_198.sized.jpgFEBRUARY 1 To Lenox, Massachusetts, for the last leg of the Great Theater Marathon of 2009. Shakespeare & Company’s winter show is Theresa Rebeck’s Bad Dates, a one-woman play starring Elizabeth Aspenlieder, a Shakespeare & Co. regular with a knack for comedy who reminds me of the young Lucille Ball, another pretty woman who liked to make demented-looking faces. I wrote about Aspenlieder in last summer’s Wall Street Journal review of The Ladies’ Man:

Ms. Aspenlieder is one of the funniest actresses on the East Coast, and I can say no better of her performance as Mme. Suzanne Aubin, a loosely married lady with a widely roving eye, than that it reminded me of my favorite punch line in Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw”: “You were born with your legs apart. They’ll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin.” I can’t recall the last time I laughed so hard as I did at the look of glee that lit up her improbably mobile features when she warned the hapless Mr. Croy that “I zink my hass-boont sus-pecttts!“

FEBRUARY 3 That’s all, folks! The marathon is over: Mrs. T and I pack our bags this morning, check out of our beloved Gateways Inn, and return to New York by way of Connecticut. Two shows await us, William H. Macy in Speed-the-Plow and the Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of Brian Friel’s Aristocrats, followed by Mary Foster Conklin‘s two-night stand at the Metropolitan Room, which conveniently coincides with my fifty-third birthday. No more out-of-town shows until March, and about time, too.

(Last of seven parts)

TT: Almanac

February 3, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“Our civilization has achieved a distinction of sorts. It will be remembered not for its technology nor even its wars but for its novel ethos. Others have been corrupt, but leave it to us to invent the most undistinguished of corruptions. No orgies, no blood running in the street, no babies thrown off cliffs. No, we’re sentimental people and we horrify easily. True, our moral fiber is rotten. Our national character stinks to high heaven. But we are kinder than ever. No prostitute ever responded with a quicker spasm of sentiment when our hearts are touched. Nor is there anything new about thievery, lewdness, lying, adultery. What is new is that in our time liars and thieves and whores and adulterers wish also to be congratulated and are congratulated by the great public, if their confession is sufficiently psychological or strikes a sufficiently heartfelt and authentic note of sincerity.”
Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

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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