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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 29, 2009

TT: Eugene O’Neill, master of mirth

April 29, 2009 by Terry Teachout

Because so many shows are opening on Broadway in the final week of the current season, I’m filing two separate drama columns for this week’s Wall Street Journal. Today I write about Desire Under the Elms and The Philanthropist, the first of which is horrible and the second lackluster. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Was Eugene O’Neill really a great playwright? Nobody was asking that question when he died in 1953, but nowadays his greatness tends to be asserted by critics rather than demonstrated by actors: O’Neill’s work is no longer seen on Broadway with any regularity, and most of the plays that made him famous in the ’20s are rarely done elsewhere. Robert Falls’ revival of “Desire Under the Elms,” O’Neill’s 1924 tragedy about an aging farmer (Brian Dennehy) whose nubile young wife (Carla Gugino) lusts after her angry young stepson (Pablo Schreiber), marks the first time that this once-shocking, now-dated play has been performed on Broadway since 1952. I wish I could say it was worth the wait, but the play is silly and the staging comprehensively ludicrous, Ms. Gugino’s steam-heated performance notwithstanding.
Connoisseurs of unintentional comedy, on the other hand, will find much to like about Mr. Falls’ production, which has just transferred to Broadway after an inexplicably successful run at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. Imagine “Tobacco Road” set in a rock quarry and you’ll get the idea. The evening begins with a tableau in which two knuckle-dragging idiots (Boris McGiver and Daniel Stewart Sherman) slaughter a jumbo rubber hog and extract its internal organs one by one, accompanied by thunderous electronic music. The idiots in question turn out to be Mr. Schreiber’s half-brothers, who live with him and their father in a two-story house that flies into the air at random intervals. Other pieces of furniture, including a stove, a kitchen table and a brass bed, appear and disappear no less randomly through trap doors….
Ms. Gugino, a vibrant and compelling TV and film actress who has had the misfortune to appear in two bad plays in a row, “After the Fall” and “Suddenly Last Summer,” is now three for three. Here as before, she manages to slice through the surrounding stupidity and give a performance that leaves no doubt of her exceptional gifts, but everything she does is wasted by Mr. Falls, who seems more interested in simulating sexual intercourse onstage than in making the best possible use of a major talent….
Christopher Hampton’s “The Philanthropist,” written in 1969 and last seen in New York a quarter-century ago, has now been revived by the Roundabout Theatre Company as a vehicle for Matthew Broderick. A postmodern inversion of Molière’s “The Misanthrope,” it revolves around an unworldly, anagram-spouting professor of philology (Mr. Broderick) whose inability to say a bad word about anybody or anything enrages everyone he meets. At once clever and aimless, “The Philanthropist” can’t decide whether to be funny or serious, and never quite manages to be either….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Snapshot

April 29, 2009 by Terry Teachout

An excerpt from Sidney Lumet’s 1962 film of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, starring Ralph Richardson and Jason Robards:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

April 29, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.”
Eugene V. Debs, speech, Sept. 11, 1918

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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