• 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 / 2010 / January / Archives for 7th

Archives for January 7, 2010

TT: The road goes on forever

January 7, 2010 by Terry Teachout

armstrong-close-up.jpgI am, or was, in Winter Park, Florida, preparing to take up my duties as a visiting scholar-in-residence at the Winter Park Institute and part-time teacher of criticism at Rollins College. But the ongoing saga of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong is still going strong, so by the time most of you read these words, I’ll be flying north to Washington, D.C., where I’m speaking at Politics and Prose at seven p.m. tonight and making a string of radio and TV appearances later today and tomorrow morning. Among other things, I’m taping an interview with Brian Lamb of C-SPAN, about which more as soon as I know the air date.
I’ll be taking the train to New York after finishing up my last taping on Friday, and my plan is to spend the evening doing nothing whatsoever. On Saturday afternoon I’ll be speaking about Pops at the Louis Armstrong House Museum, about which more here. (Alas, you can’t come if you don’t already have a ticket–the event is sold out.) I fly back to Orlando that night, then scoop up Mrs. T and drive to Tampa on Sunday to see Jobsite Theatre‘s production of Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw, one of my favorite plays. On Monday we return to Winter Park, where I teach my first class on Tuesday morning.
As if all that weren’t enough for one long weekend:
• Pops has just been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, about which more here.
• Pops debuts at #32 on the New York Times‘ nonfiction best-seller list for January 17.
Yeah, I know, I buried the lead. Sue me.

TT: So you want to see a show?

January 7, 2010 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:

• Fela! * (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• God of Carnage (serious comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, 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:

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

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

• The Orphans’ Home Cycle, Parts 1 and 2 (drama, G/PG-13, too complicated for children, will be performed in rotating repertory with third part of cycle starting on Jan. 7, closes Mar. 28, reviewed here and here)

• Our Town (drama, G, suitable for mature children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Emperor Jones (drama, PG-13, contains racially sensitive language, closes Jan. 31, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Understudy (farce, PG-13, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)

• Finian’s Rainbow (musical, G, suitable for children, dramatically inert but musically sumptuous, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

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

TT: Almanac

January 7, 2010 by Terry Teachout

“Address to younger writers, who think older writers like me are so famous and so different. We are no different at all, we are just the same as other writers, only we work harder.”
Patricia Highsmith, notebook entry, Sept. 10, 1962

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

January 2010
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Dec   Feb »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Just because: the video for Donald Fagen’s “New Frontier”
  • Almanac: Aristotle on probability
  • Stumbling down memory lane
  • Replay: Ginette Neveu plays Chausson’s Poème
  • Almanac: Mary Renault on love and hate

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in