The last few days of my cross-country reviewing trip were typically hectic. I traveled from Smalltown, U.S.A., to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, a twelve-hour-long journey that seemed to last for at least a fortnight. That night I met a friend for dinner and a show, the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s revival of Design for Living, one of Noël Coward’s most interesting and, in my opinion, inadequately appreciated plays. On Thursday I returned to New York–this time, thank God, by train. I dragged two bags of snail mail home from the post office, took a suitcase full of dirty clothes to the laundry, went to the gym, and spent the evening on the couch, watching TV and doing as little as possible.
Today I’ll be back at work with a vengeance. If you should happen to be in town for BookExpo America, you can catch me at the Javits Center: I’ll be signing bound galleys of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong at Table 19 from 12:30 to one p.m., then appearing on the Uptown Stage at 2:30, where Ben Moser will be interviewing me about Pops. Tonight I’m seeing a press preview of Coraline at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, and tomorrow I’m catching Norman Corwin’s The Rivalry, a play about the Lincoln-Douglas debates, at the Irish Repertory Theatre.
Sunday marks the start of a new theater-related adventure: Mrs. T and I will be flying north to Toronto to spend four days at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, where we’ll be seeing Three Sisters, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Macbeth. You can’t get much eggheadier than that! Watch this space for details, though I don’t expect to do a whole lot of blogging from Stratford.
And so ends my first theater-related marathon trip of the summer of 2009. It’s been one hell of a sprint–I wouldn’t care to know how many miles I traveled–but I enjoyed nearly every minute of it, not counting the time I spent sitting on planes or in departure lounges. I only wish I could take a week off to pull myself together, but The Letter and ten more summer festivals await my presence, and I have miles and miles and miles to go before I sleep.
(Last of six parts)
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
