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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 10, 2011

TT: Big muddy

June 10, 2011 by ldemanski

article-0-01AAF12C00000578-166_468x312_popup.jpgThe other day I took my mother for a drive through the flood-drenched lowlands of Illinois, east of the Mississippi River. It’s been years since I saw that part of the country under water, and the sight was alarming–as well as sobering.

Growing up in Smalltown, U.S.A., made me intensely aware of nature’s power to do damage. My home town has seen its share of tornadoes and earthquakes, and the mighty Mississippi is a half-hour’s drive from my mother’s front door. But people who spend their lives in close proximity to natural disaster tend not to waste a whole lot of time thinking about it. Tornado warnings sent my family clambering downstairs several times each year when I was a boy. After your first few trips to the basement, you start taking your own survival for granted.

Driving down a levee road is a good way to be reminded of what a river can do to you. It’s also a salutary lesson in modesty. Man’s ingenuity has its limits, and nature can swamp them whenever it pleases her to do so. Like everyone else who follows the news, I was shocked to hear of how a tornado destroyed a hospital in Joplin, Missouri–but one-man tornadoes sweep through every hospital in the world every day of the year. Sooner or later the sand is going to run out of your hourglass, and when it does, it won’t matter how smart your doctor is, or how thick the walls of your house are.

Cairo-Illinois-Mississippi-flooding.jpgI’m not a fatalist, much less a quietist. Cardinal Newman summed up my view of things in The Dream of Gerontius: And, ere afresh the ruin on thee fall,/Use well the interval. The fact that we all live under the aspect of eternity has always struck me not as a reason for passivity but as a goad to action. That said, it was no less instructive that Mrs. T and I had to rush my mother to a hospital in Cape Girardeau for emergency surgery not two days after our visit to the floodlands.

She’s doing reasonably well, as much so as can be expected, and we’re feeling cautiously hopeful today. But sometimes you find yourself driving to the emergency room at ninety miles an hour mere minutes after pouring a cup of coffee that you’ll never get around to drinking–or looking out your window one summer afternoon and seeing fate roaring down the street in the form of a funnel cloud. Tornadoes and sunsets, lest we forget, both come out of the same beautiful, indifferent sky.

TT: Smile as the bomb goes off

June 10, 2011 by ldemanski

In today’s Wall Street Journal I report enthusiastically on a pair of shows in Chicagoland and Washington, D.C., Writers’ Theatre’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House and the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s revival of Harold Pinter’s Old Times. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
Shaw’s purpose in writing “Heartbreak House” was to suggest that World War I had brought the British ruling class to the end of its tether. But the complexity of his own world view (he opposed British involvement in the war but was himself a power-worshipper with a totalitarian itch who believed passionately in human perfectibility) charges what might have been a standard-issue Shavian sermon with the multi-layered ambiguity of high art. So, too, does Writers’ Theatre’s new production, directed with extreme sensitivity by William Brown, make a compelling case for ranking “Heartbreak House” alongside Jean Renoir’s “Rules of the Game” as one of the great fictional chronicles of how Europe’s upper classes lost their way–and their will.
heartbreak-house-writers-theatre-004.jpgNow that “Heartbreak House” is in the public domain, it can be performed with cuts, and Mr. Brown has tightened the script so shrewdly that you’ll have to look at the published version to see what got left out of his staging, which runs for about two hours and 45 minutes. He has also moved the action forward from 1914 to 1940 in order to give the play a more contemporary feel. It’s a clever touch, though my guess is that both of the world wars will seem equally alien to most of those who see this revival. Far more important is the skill with which Mr. Brown has balanced the play’s predominantly comic aspect with the sharp shock of the final scene, in which sirens wail and bombs descend on the country garden of the Shotovers, who respond with a horrific glee that symbolizes the death wish of their doomed class.
Mr. Brown has put together a knockout cast led by Karen Janes Woditsch as Hesione Hushabye, the sexiest of the Shotovers. Charismatic is far too mild a word for Ms. Woditsch…
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is doing excellent things with “Old Times,” Harold Pinter’s compact, creepy comedy (or is it?) about a smug husband, his seemingly naïve wife and a houseguest whose arrival has an effect on the couple not unlike pitching a hand grenade into their bedroom. While every aspect of this production is impressive, the best thing about it is Holly Twyford, who gives a stupendously good performance as Anna, the mysterious guest. The contrast between Ms. Twyford’s tightly crossed legs and the long arms that she flings about like the tentacles of a carnivorous octopus is both riotously funny and downright frightening….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.

TT: How I voted for the Tony Awards

June 10, 2011 by ldemanski

The first paragraph of my “Sightings” column in today’s Journal sums it up:

Drama critics who cover Broadway can vote for the Tony Awards, which will be announced on Sunday. (A complete list of the nominees is at tonyawards.com.) In the interests of transparency, I thought you might like to know which ones I picked.

Read the whole thing here. Some of my choices may surprise you!

TT: Almanac

June 10, 2011 by ldemanski

“Screenplays can’t be works of art unto themselves because they’re not unto themselves, they’re roadmaps to something else.”
Lem Dobbs, interview with Dan Schneider (Cosmoetica, January 25, 2009)

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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