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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 26, 2009

TT: Two landmarks

February 26, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Yesterday Andrea Schulz, my editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, e-mailed me three possible dust-jacket designs for Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. “I am thrilled by these amazing designs, truly exuberant in a way I almost never am when sending this sort of thing,” she wrote. “I think they’re fabulous, in that way that good designers take you to places you don’t expect.” I agree–and I very much look forward to posting the finished product.
This morning I’ll be sending the copyedited manuscript back to Harcourt, complete with my final changes and next-to-last corrections. I still have to read the page proofs, but the hard editorial work is over: Pops is now officially finished. After that I’ll catch a cab to LaGuardia, followed in short order by a plane to Raleigh, North Carolina.
More as it happens….

TT: So you want to see a show?

February 26, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.


Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.


BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps * (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q * (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid * (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Aristocrats (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, closes Mar. 29, reviewed here)

• Enter Laughing (musical, PG-13, extended through Mar. 20, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

LOVE%3ASTORIES%202.jpg• Love/Stories (or But You Will Get Used to It) (one-act plays, PG-13, vastly too complicated for children, extended through Mar. 30, reviewed here)

• Ruined (drama, PG-13/R, sexual content and suggestions of extreme violence, closes Apr. 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (black comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 15, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cherry Orchard (elegiac comedy, G, not suitable for children or immature adults, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• The Little Foxes (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

• Macbeth (tragedy, PG-13/R, nudity and graphic violence, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN LENOX, MASS:

• Bad Dates (comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

TT: Conundrum

February 26, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Outside of their all being mysteries of one sort of another, what do these books have in common?
Blood on the Bannisters
Excuse My Gat! Gore by the Gallon
The Man with the Missing Toe
Severed Throats
Three Dead on Tuesday
The answer is below the fold.

[Read more…]

TT: Almanac

February 26, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“It has been well said that an author who expects results from a first novel is in a position similar to that of a man who drops a rose petal down the Grand Canyon of Arizona and listens for the echo.”
P.G. Wodehouse, Cocktail Time

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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