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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 12, 2010

TT: Hamlet & Co.

February 12, 2010 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I report on three shows that I saw in Florida while the snow was falling up north: Orlando Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Mad Cow Theatre’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Florida Rep’s You Can’t Take It With You. All are excellent. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
0910_Hamlet03.jpgThe Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s “Hamlet” looks on paper like a standard-issue high-concept production, transplanted from ancient Denmark to Victorian England. But Richard Width and Bob Phillips, the director and set designer, have stirred in a cupful of spooky horror-show populism, pumping the stage full of mist and making eye-catching use of a stategically positioned trap door. One might almost be watching an unusually literate vampire flick aimed at a youthful audience, an impression reinforced by Avery Clark’s flamboyantly physical performance of the title role….
All this makes for one of the most theatrically potent “Hamlets” I’ve seen in a good many seasons, far fresher than last year’s Jude Law-powered Broadway production and, I suspect, more accessible to boot….
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” is being performed to similarly fine effect across town by Mad Cow Theater, a small but ambitious company that specializes in contemporary fare (Tracy Letts’ “Superior Donuts” opens there next month). Performed in a black-box theater on a set consisting of seven doors in a curved white wall, this production discreetly underlines the debt owed by Mr. Stoppard to the Samuel Beckett of “Waiting for Godot.” Michael Marinaccio and Timothy Williams play the title characters like a cross between Vladimir-and-Estragon and Abbott-and-Costello, which is just right…
The Pulitzer Prize for drama, like the best-picture Oscar, rarely goes to uncomplicatedly funny plays, but in 1937 the judges made a welcome exception and gave it to “You Can’t Take it With You,” the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy about an extended family whose variously eccentric members have all chosen to renounce worldly ambition and (as the saying goes) follow their bliss. A year later Frank Capra’s film version knocked down a best-picture Oscar, thereby sealing the original play’s long-standing reputation as a classic of American comedy.
Alas, the last Broadway revival of “You Can’t Take It With You” opened more than a quarter-century ago, and professional productions have become comparatively rare. This is mainly because the play calls for a cast of 19, thus putting it out of the reach of cost-conscious regional companies, though the fact that Capra’s film was so portentously windy doesn’t help. Not so the Florida Repertory Theatre’s festive new staging, which is as light and sweet as fresh-spun cotton candy….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

February 12, 2010 by Terry Teachout

“There are no child actors. There are child performers.”
Charles Laughton (quoted in Preston Neal Jones, Heaven and Hell to Play With: The Filming of The Night of the Hunter)

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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