• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2009 / September / Archives for 11th

Archives for September 11, 2009

TT: I remember…

September 11, 2009 by Terry Teachout

…and always will.

TT: Little house in the big woods

September 11, 2009 by Terry Teachout

In this week’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on a production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night at American Players Theatre’s new Touchstone Theatre, plus a revival by Arlington’s Signature Theatre of Claudia Shear’s Dirty Blonde. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

The recession has swept through America’s regional theaters like swine flu through a kindergarten. A handful of prominent troupes, including Wisconsin’s Madison Repertory Theatre and Massachusetts’ North Shore Music Theatre, have closed up shop altogether, while others are working overtime to stay in business. You can see the fear in their safety-first programming (more musicals, familiar classics like “A Streetcar Named Desire” and small-cast comedies like “Private Lives”) and slimmed-down schedules (I can’t begin to list the companies that are putting on fewer shows this season).

m_a9865687b2004889957d44a87b4da869.jpgSo it’s big news when a leading American company bucks the trend by opening a new theater. Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre, which already presents five plays each summer in its 1,150-seat hilltop amphitheater, is now putting on a second series of productions in its new Touchstone Theatre, a handsome 200-seat indoor house whose prairie-flavored modern architecture and woodsy surroundings pay graceful homage to Frank Lloyd Wright (Taliesin, his home, is a mile or so away). In contrast to the Shakespeare-Shaw-Coward classical repertory performed in the Up-the-Hill Theater, the Touchstone plans to specialize in contemporary fare, and its initial group of offerings includes two major postwar plays, Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night” and Harold Pinter’s “Old Times.”…

TouchstoneTheatre600x325_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85.jpgI found APT’s production to be more convincing than the 2003 Broadway revival, though I suspect the fact that it was being presented in a 200-seat thrust-stage house instead of an 1,100-seat proscenium-stage Broadway theater had something to do with its effectiveness. “Long Day’s Journey” is, after all, a five-character, one-set play, and even though four of the characters are members of a theatrical family, their intramural sniping is easier to take–and to sympathize with–when presented on the unexaggerated scale enabled by the Touchstone Theatre and encouraged by John Langs, the director of this production. This is the first time I’ve seen “Long Day’s Journey” in a small house, and I’m inclined to think that it should always be done that way….

Claudia Shear rang the bell in 2000 with “Dirty Blonde,” which ran for 352 performances on Broadway. Now it’s being revived by Signature Theatre, the Washington, D.C.-area company that won this year’s regional-theater Tony Award. With “Restoration,” Ms. Shear’s latest play, set to move from the La Jolla Playhouse to Off Broadway this spring, I thought it would be interesting to see how “Dirty Blonde” had held up–and I’m pleased to report that it’s still a gem….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

September 11, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“After all, one knows one’s weak points so well, that it’s rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don’t exist–or exist in a less measure.”
Edith Wharton, letter to Robert Grant (Nov. 19, 1907)

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

September 2009
M T W T F S S
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
282930  
« Aug   Oct »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in