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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 6, 2009

TT: All the way home

November 6, 2009 by Terry Teachout

I review two off-Broadway shows, The Understudy and Nightingale, in today’s Wall Street Journal drama column. The first is great fun, the second so-so. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
tn-500_u2.jpgI’ve been having trouble figuring out Theresa Rebeck–and I’ve had a lot of opportunities to try. She writes a new script (or two) every year, and most of her plays make it to New York sooner or later, which means that somebody out there must like them. Yet time and again Ms. Rebeck has served up the same disappointing dish, a smart, glib confection that starts off fresh, then goes flat at the halfway mark. So it’s both a delight and a relief to report that “The Understudy” is a raucously funny farce that makes it all the way to the finish line, though the two halves of the play, each of which is effective in its own right, don’t fit together, at least not neatly.
As the title suggests, Ms. Rebeck’s new play is a backstage comedy about a frustrated actor with highbrow tendencies (Justin Kirk) whose inability to get work leaves him with no choice but to take a job as understudy to Jake (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), a second-tier action-movie hero who is diversifying his resumé by appearing on Broadway in a previously unpublished play by Franz Kafka. (The “Kafka” play is actually by Ms. Rebeck, and it’s a hoot.) This being a farce, there’s a king-sized catch: Roxanne (Julie White), the stage manager, is also the ex-fianceé of Harry, the understudy, who left her at the altar six years before without warning, explanation or good reason….
Farce is the trickiest of theatrical genres, but the first half of “The Understudy” is a little masterpiece of comic clockwork in which the craziness mounts steadily from scene to scene….
Lynn Redgrave needs no endorsements from critics, least of all me. She is one of the greatest actors of her generation, and it is always a blessing to see her on stage, whatever the circumstances. They aren’t exactly propitious in “Nightingale,” her new one-woman play, a part-true, part-imagined portrait of her maternal grandmother into which Ms. Redgrave has also woven a strand of personal reminiscence….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

November 6, 2009 by Terry Teachout

“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

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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