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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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TT: A masterpiece made manifest

March 26, 2010 by Terry Teachout

I’m one for three in today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, but the one, Roundabout’s new off-Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie, is a knockout and a wow. Also present and accounted for–though not very enthusiastically–are Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away and Suzan-Lori Parks’ The Book of Grace. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Gordon Edelstein, whose past productions at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre include the best “Uncle Vanya” I’ve ever seen, has brought his version of Tennessee Williams’ masterpiece from Connecticut to the Laura Pels Theatre, the Roundabout Theatre Company’s Off-Broadway house. It should have gone to Broadway instead, and perhaps it will someday. In the meantime, though, you must see this show at once. No matter how well you know “The Glass Menagerie,” you’ll feel as though you’re watching it for the first time. Every line, every pause, every gesture is as fresh as a shaft of sunlight.
Mr. Edelstein has added a surprise of his own to the oft-told tale of the Wingfield family, who come north to St. Louis in search of a new life and find themselves trapped in the quicksand of shabby gentility and fading hope. Since “The Glass Menagerie” is an autobiographical memory play narrated by Tom Wingfield, Williams’ alter ego, Mr. Edelstein sets the action in a single playing space designed with penny-plain restraint by Michael Yeargan that doubles as the tenement apartment of the Wingfields and–here’s the surprise–a grubby New Orleans hotel room to which Tom has fled in order to write the very play that we are seeing. Needless to say, that’s not what Williams had in mind, and on paper it may sound like an over-ingenious directorial conceit, but in performance it heightens to a breathtaking degree the immediacy of Tom’s recollections.
In addition to rethinking the play in so innovative a way, Mr. Edelstein has assembled a masterly cast whose members perform without the faintest hint of sentimentality….
Twyla Tharp racked up a major disaster three seasons ago with “The Times They Are A-Changin,'” one of the lamest jukebox musicals ever to stagger onto Broadway. Not surprisingly, she’s playing it very, very safe this time around: “Come Fly Away” is a love-in-a-nightclub fantasy set to the ever-popular music of Frank Sinatra, whose recordings have previously accompanied three of Ms. Tharp’s ballets. The songs are familiar, the dancers are pretty, the set is fancy and the band is hot. All that’s missing from this recipe for success are a star and a few memorable onstage events….
If you feel the need for a stiff dose of fatuity, head straight down to the Public Theater to see Suzan-Lori Parks’ “The Book of Grace.” The setting is Texas, which is–naturally–a desert full of bigots. The villain of the piece is an ultra-conservative border-patrol officer (John Doman) whose long-estranged biracial son (Amari Cheatom) has come home for a visit, in the course of which he beds his Pollyannish stepmother (Elizabeth Marvel, who is, as always, astonishingly good). We are, I think, invited to suppose that the father molested the son once upon a time, or maybe vice versa….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

March 26, 2010 by Terry Teachout

“It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.”
Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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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