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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 28, 2011

TT: Found painting

June 28, 2011 by ldemanski

The view from our window in Cape May, New Jersey, is Hopperesque:
0628111624.jpg

TT: Travels with Mrs. T (I)

June 28, 2011 by ldemanski

deadline_usa_copy.jpgFRIDAY Up at eight to pack for an afternoon flight out of Hartford, whose airport is an hour’s drive from our place in the Connecticut woods. Mrs. T is a sleep-late-then-pack-fast kind of gal, whereas I have obsessive travel-related tendencies reinforced by years and years of making deadlines. Whenever two such folk set up house together, it necessarily leads to a certain amount of tension, albeit of a productive kind: Mrs. T and I get everywhere on time, then relax and enjoy ourselves. The only friction occurs in the frenzied hour just before we hit the road, during which glares and harsh words are exchanged, followed by an on-time departure (though never a minute early!) and profuse apologies.

It took us well over an hour to drive from Pittsburgh International Airport to our downtown hotel. Nobody told us that President Obama was giving a speech in Pittsburgh that day, or that the Secret Service was planning to seal off the main road into town. Miranda, our trusty GPS, got us to the hotel via a circuitous alternate route, but a whole lot of other people must have decided to take the same route, since it, too, was jammed. Fortunately, Richard Strauss’ seraphically genial oboe concerto was playing on the radio and the University Center Holiday Inn has superior room service, so no one got killed or maimed.

250px-TheDirtyOinOakland.jpgSATURDAY We slept in, then lunched at Essie’s Original Hot Dog Shop, popularly known as the Dirty O, which is famous for serving you what you think are more French fries than you can possibly eat–until you try one. Said Mrs. T: “These are the best fries I’ve ever had!” As for the main course, I can do no better than cite Paul Lukas’ 2002 survey of America’s top dogs:

While the Steel City’s dogs have no regional quirks, the Original’s griddle-grilled beauties have one thing going for them: flavor. The franks’ tight skins snap as you bite into them, resulting in an explosion of beefy goodness. This is not just a great hot dog; this is a great piece of meat. And happily, although I do not get to Pittsburgh as often as I would like, my standard order at the Original is one I have had lots of practice delivering elsewhere: “Gimme two, with mustard.”

He forgot the chili, but otherwise that’s a recipe for bliss. (Don’t forget to specify brown mustard–it’s the finishing touch.)

1015903_standard.jpgAfter lunch we went to the Carnegie Museum of Art, one of the country’s finest second-tier encyclopedic museums. While it can’t rival Fort Worth’s Kimbell or the old Cleveland Museum for sheer consistency, the Carnegie contains its share of show-stoppers. I think that Rocks at the Seashore, a breathtaking early Cézanne, was my favorite piece, with Joan Mitchell’s Low Water (Mrs. T’s pick) running it a close second. But there was plenty of competition, including a first-class Chardin still life and an astonishingly vivid portrait by Whistler of the great Spanish violinist Pablo de Sarasate.

thelenamartynikeh.jpgIn the evening we paid our first visit to Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre, a company that I’ve been meaning to check out for the past few seasons but was unable to shoehorn into my summer schedule until now. PICT is performing House & Garden, one of Alan Ayckbourn’s conceptual extravaganzas, two plays which, like The Norman Conquests, take place in different parts of the same house but are designed to be performed simultaneously in adjacent theaters, with the members of the cast racing from stage to stage as needed. PICT, whose two stages are connected by a spiral staircase, is ideally suited to such an undertaking, so I decided that the time had finally come to spend a couple of nights in Pittsburgh.

This, needless to say, is one of the signal advantages of being the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal, which encourages me to criss-cross America in search of noteworthy shows to review. Were it not for the Journal‘s unique commitment to regional theater, I’d probably never have gotten a chance to see House & Garden. It was done in Chicago, Manhattan, and Rochester shortly after its 1999 premiere at Ayckbourn’s own Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough, but since then the only professional staging of which I’ve heard was by Dallas’ Theatre Three in 2008.

(To be continued)

* * *
Pauline Oostenrijk, Neeme Järvi, and the Hague Philharmonic perform the first movement of Richard Strauss’ Oboe Concerto, composed in 1945:

TT: Almanac

June 28, 2011 by ldemanski

“How hard it is, in literary criticism, to find words of praise. There are infinite gradations of blame, a thousand fresh and pungent metaphors for detraction, the epithets of dissatisfaction seem never to stale (perhaps that is why contemporary writings, and particularly contemporary essays, are usually noticeable only when they are abusive), but the moment one finds a work which genuinely impresses and delights, there seems no article of expression other than the clichés that grin at one from every publisher’s advertisement.”
Evelyn Waugh, “Art from Anarchy” (Night and Day, Sept. 16, 1937)

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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