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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 6, 2011

TT: Flying couplets and flying canapés

May 6, 2011 by ldemanski

David Ives and the Classic Stage Company have a hit on their hands with The School for Lies, which I review in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
When not writing plays of his own, David Ives writes plays based on the works of other men. Sometimes, as in his English-language version of Georges Feydeau’s “A Flea in Her Ear” or the many musical-comedy books that he has freshened up for City Center’s “Encores!” series, these are more or less straightforward adaptations meant to make the works on which they are based more accessible to modern audiences. “The School for Lies” is something else again, an uncategorizable rewrite of Molière’s “The Misanthrope” in which Mr. Ives has done the seemingly impossible: He has taken a beloved masterpiece of Western theater and created a parallel version which, though unmistakably based on the original, is both wholly personal in tone and similarly dazzling in effect.
The-School-of-Lies_240.jpgAt the center of both plays is a disillusioned curmudgeon (called Alceste by Molière and Frank–a nice touch–by Mr. Ives) who has resolved to tell the truth to everyone he meets, no matter how disconcerting or offensive they may find it. This being a comedy, Frank (Hamish Linklater) is diverted from his high-minded path by his love for Celimene (Mamie Gummer), an aristocrat with an equally sharp tongue. In “The School for Lies,” though, Mr. Ives transplants into “The Misanthrope” the fully articulated plot that Molière eschewed, showing how Frank and Celimene fell for one another in the first place, in the process transforming what began life as a high comedy of bad manners into a slapstick-laden farce whose flavor is more Anglo-Saxon than French.
All this is far more than clever enough–one expects no less from so accomplished a farceur–but what makes “The School for Lies” so memorable is its author’s virtuosic use of language. Like “The Misanthrope,” “The School for Lies” is written in rhyming couplets, and Mr. Ives, an amateur poet of no mean accomplishment, has got a million of ’em. What’s more, it was his ingenious conceit to write his play not in a pastiche of pseudo-French circa 1666 (the year in which “The Misanthrope” was written and “The School for Lies” is set) but in a completely contemporary English that derives much of its sparkling charm from being pressed into the incongruously tight mold of iambic pentameter….
Brilliant though “The School of Lies” is, it’s Walter Bobbie’s apply-foot-A-to-banana-peel-B staging that makes the play take wing. Mr. Bobbie, who speaks Mr. Ives’ idiosyncratic theatrical language fluently, is very much in tune with the high-low contrasts that drive “The School of Lies,” and has put together a cast that pushes every comic button at all the right moments. Mr. Linklater froths with the violent hauteur of a man who does nothing but suffer fools all day long…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: Almanac

May 6, 2011 by ldemanski

“Writers are idolized not because they love their fellow men, which is never a recommendation and in extreme instances leads to crucifixion, but because their self-love is in tune with current fears and desires, and in giving it expression they are speaking for an inarticulate multitude.”
Hugh Kingsmill, The Progress of a Biographer

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...]

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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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