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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 19, 2011

TT: It’s real

January 19, 2011 by ldemanski

Glaser%202.jpegFor the most part I’ve only talked about it in passing on this blog, but a year ago I started writing a one-man play about Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his longtime manager. (The same actor plays both parts.) The play, which grew out of the research I did for my recent biography of Armstrong, is called Satchmo at the Waldorf, and a couple of weeks from now it will become more than just a furtive gleam in the author’s eye.

As part of my current residency at Rollins College’s Winter Park Institute, where I wrote the first draft of Satchmo at the Waldorf last year, I’m going to be taking part in a public presentation of the play’s opening section, the first time that any part of the script has been performed, either in public or in private. I’m staging the scenes that we’re doing–it’ll be my directing debut–and Dennis Neal, a seasoned actor who lives in Orlando, not far from Winter Park, will be playing the double role of Armstrong and Glaser. He’s mainly a stage actor, but the chances are good that you’ve seen him on screen, since his list of credits includes Tim Robbins’ Dead Man Walking and John Sayles’ Sunshine State.

I met Dennis yesterday afternoon at our first rehearsal, and within minutes I was floored. Not only is he quick and brilliantly responsive, but he instinctively sensed what I was looking for, gave it to me, then made it better than I could ever have imagined myself. It’s not my place to talk about the quality of the play, much less my staging of it, but I can absolutely guarantee you that Dennis is going to be a knockout and a wow.

Glaser%201.jpegThe play itself is probably not what you’d expect. Most one-man shows about famous people are unchallenging, sweet-tempered exercises in hagiography. Not Satchmo at the Waldorf. I’ve tried to show Armstrong as he really was and make him speak the way he really spoke–this is absolutely not a show for kids, unless you’re the kind of parent who’d take your kids to see American Buffalo–and I’ve also tried to suggest the knotty complexity of his quasi-filial relationship with Glaser, an ex-gangster from Chicago who ran his career with an iron hand. To put it another way, I wanted to write a real play, not a piece of fawning fluff, and now that I’ve seen some of it in the rehearsal studio, I feel pretty good about the results.

I’m also enjoying my first shot at directing. Dennis says that I’m giving him what he needs in the way of guidance, and he doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d say a thing like that just to be polite. Be that as it may, directing a play seems to feel natural to me, at least so far, and I can’t wait for the two of us to roll up our sleeves and really get down to work next week.

And after February 1…what? That remains to be seen. For the moment I can’t say any more than that I’ve acquired a theatrical agent and that a number of people in the business have expressed interest in the script. But now that Dennis has showed me what Satchmo at the Waldorf looks and sounds like, I’m starting to feel as though something good may come of my maiden voyage into the deep waters of playwriting.

* * *

For more information about the first performance of scenes from Satchmo at the Waldorf, go here.

TT: Snapshot

January 19, 2011 by ldemanski

This week’s video: Louis Prima and Keely Smith sing “That Old Black Magic”:

(This is the latest in a weekly series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

January 19, 2011 by ldemanski

“A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, letter to Leopold Mozart, Sept. 11, 1778

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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