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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for August 2, 2010

TT: Mitch(ell) Miller, R.I.P.

August 2, 2010 by Terry Teachout

Long before he metamorphosed into the smiling maestro of Sing Along With Mitch and the producer of such preposterous pop novelties as Frank Sinatra’s “Mama Will Bark” and Rosemary Clooney’s “Come on-a My House,” Mitch Miller, who died over the weekend at the august age of ninety-nine, was a classical oboist who cut a fair number of solo records for which he will always be remembered by connoisseurs of great wind playing. Here’s one of the very best ones:

TT: Don’t believe everything you read

August 2, 2010 by Terry Teachout

KellsoSPond.jpgAmazingly enough, I’m not even close to finished with Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. Among other things, I’ll be talking about the book at New York’s Bryant Park at 12:30 on Wednesday, August 11, accompanied by the fabulous jazz trumpeter Jon-Erik Kellso, who’ll play before I speak and supply some relevant musical examples during the speech itself.
Alas, the New Yorker, which used to check its facts, got the date of my appearance wrong in its Goings On About Town section. If you show up on August 4, I won’t be there–I’ll be up in New Hampshire, seeing the Peterborough Players’ production of Tartuffe. So kindly ignore the New Yorker and come hear Jon-Erik and me and me do our thing next Wednesday!

TT: Home team strikes out

August 2, 2010 by Terry Teachout

In the Greater New York section of this morning’s Wall Street Journal, I re-review the Broadway revival of A Little Night Music, in which Elaine Stritch and Bernadette Peters have replaced Angela Lansbury and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Sad to say, the production is as disappointing now as it was when it opened last year. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Curtain%20call.jpegBroadway feeds off Hollywood like a thirsty vampire. It was the presence of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury in the first Broadway revival of “A Little Night Music,” not the production’s dubious artistic merits, that kept it running for six months. Now that they’ve moved on, the producers have decided to take a very big chance and replace them not with a second pair of certified screen stars but with Elaine Stritch and Bernadette Peters, two deservedly beloved Broadway performers whose names are not generally known to the public at large (though Ms. Peters teetered on the edge of full-scale celebrity in the ’70s and ’80s and Ms. Stritch’s guest appearances on “30 Rock” have made her a somewhat more familiar face). Will they be able to keep the show open for another six months? I doubt it–and not just because they lack the name recognition necessary to galvanize the tourist trade. Much as I esteem both women, neither one of them is well cast….
Ms. Stritch’s cackling spunky-grandma demeanor is infinitely removed from the haughty disillusion of the worldly-wise Madame Armfeldt…
Ms. Peters, who was last seen on Broadway six years ago in Sam Mendes’ revival of “Gypsy,” is even more closely identified with the musicals of Stephen Sondheim than Ms. Stritch, having previously created starring roles in “Sunday in the Park with George” and “Into the Woods.” I don’t blame her in the least for wanting to try her hand at playing Desirée Armfeldt, the aging actress who longs to put the hurly-burly of the chaise-longue behind her and settle down with a more-or-less suitable man. It’s one of the richest and most emotionally complex female roles in a Sondheim musical, and Ms. Peters, who looks half her age, brings it to persuasive life in the heart-wrenching scene in which she sings “Send in the Clowns” to Alexander Hanson. Elsewhere, though, her mile-wide performance is too coarse for comfort…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

August 2, 2010 by Terry Teachout

“Who is to say what is normal in a king? Deferred to, agreed with, acquiesced in. Who could flourish on such a daily diet of compliance? To be curbed, stood up to, in a word thwarted, exercises the character, elasticates the spirit, makes it pliant. It is the want of such exercise that makes rulers rigid.”
Alan Bennett, The Madness of George III

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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