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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 23, 2011

TT: If it’s Monday, I don’t know where we are

May 23, 2011 by ldemanski

Depending on when you get around to reading these words, Mrs. T and I will either be in Chicago, in Washington, D.C., or somewhere in between. We’re flying to Washington this afternoon to see Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at the Kennedy Center on Tuesday and the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Harold Pinter’s Old Times on Thursday, and I plan to spend my afternoons rooting around in the Smithsonian Institution’s Duke Ellington Collection. I’ll also be knocking out a couple of columns in our hotel room when not otherwise occupied.
FRONT%20PAGE%20PHOTO.jpegThis is not, in other words, a vacation, though our travels very often have a carefree air, mainly because we spend so much time seeing plays and musicals. We saw, for instance, three shows in Chicago and its environs over the weekend, The Front Page, Porgy and Bess, and Heartbreak House, about which I’ll be saying my say in The Wall Street Journal starting on Friday. It happens that both The Front Page and Heartbreak House were performed in the round in tiny theaters, and the Court’s Porgy and Bess was a small-scale production (fifteen actors, six instrumentalists) mounted in a 250-seat house. I like a really big show as much as the next guy, but having just spent the past two months seeing virtually nothing but Broadway shows, with visits to Carnegie Hall and the New York State Theater thrown in for good measure, it was a pleasure–almost a relief–to spend the weekend in such intimate surroundings.
4349_761100.jpgIn addition, we finally visited the fancy new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, which was designed by Renzo Piano. It’s as gorgeous as you’ve heard, though I haven’t spent nearly enough time there to be able to say with confidence whether it’s a good place in which to look at art. (You have to live with a new museum building to get a clear sense of its strengths and weaknesses.) I gather that the new wing doesn’t provide the museum with a significant increase in display space, but I did encounter some paintings that were new to me on Friday, including a very late canvas by Edouard Vuillard called Vuillard’s Room at the Château des Clayes (it dates from 1932) that I can’t recall having seen hanging at the Art Institute or anywhere else.
UncommonGround.jpgOur Girl in Chicago, logically enough, joined us for our wanderings through Chicagoland, and it was a joy to be with her again after a too-long separation. The three of us ate splendidly well at a pair of favorite haunts, Wrigleyville’s Uncommon Ground and Glencoe’s Prairie Grass Café. I hope we do as well for ourselves in Washington!
Mrs. T departs on Thursday, I on Friday. I’ve got things to do in Manhattan over the weekend, but on Monday I’ll rejoin her at our place in Connecticut, which I haven’t seen since we flew down to Florida in January. It’ll be nice to be in the country again, both for its own sake and because I find it easier to write there than in hotel rooms or departure lounges. I have some revisions to do on Satchmo at the Waldorf, my Louis Armstrong play, and I long to resume work on my Ellington biography. (I blush to say that it’s been on ice ever since I returned to New York in March and embarked on the Great Broadway Marathon of 2011.) Come next Saturday, though, we’ll be off and running yet again.
Such is our summer routine, and most of the time, today included, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

TT: Almanac

May 23, 2011 by ldemanski

“If one simply wants to make a living by putting words on paper, then the BBC, the film companies and the like are reasonably helpful. But if one wants to be primarily a writer, then, in our society, one is an animal that is tolerated but not encouraged–something rather like a house sparrow–and one gets on better if one realises one’s position from the start.”
George Orwell, “The Cost of Letters” (Horizon, September 1946)

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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