• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2011 / Archives for December 2011

Archives for December 2011

TT: Almanac

December 23, 2011 by Terry Teachout

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

TT: They don’t make Christmas specials like they used to (II)

December 22, 2011 by Terry Teachout

An extremely rare kinescope of the opening of Mr. Charles Laughton, a Christmas-eve special originally telecast on NBC in 1951 and based on Laughton’s one-man stage shows:

TT: So you want to see a show?

December 22, 2011 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.


BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Apr. 29, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Chinglish (comedy, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 29, reviewed here)

• Follies (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Jan. 22, reviewed here)

• Godspell (musical, G, suitable for children, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren’t actively prudish, reviewed here)

• Other Desert Cities (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Seminar (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 4, reviewed here)

• Stick Fly (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• Dancing at Lughnasa (drama, G/PG-13, extended through Jan. 29, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cherry Orchard (drama, G, too serious for children, extended through Jan. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• Neighbourhood Watch (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 1, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

December 22, 2011 by Terry Teachout

“I was almost killed once in a car accident. I was drunk and I ran off the side of the road and I turned over four times. They took me out of that car for dead, but I lived. And I prayed last night to know why I lived and she died, but I got no answer to my prayers. I still don’t know why she died and I lived. I don’t know the answer to nothing. Not a blessed thing. I don’t know why I wandered out to this part of Texas drunk and you took me in and pitied me and helped me to straighten out and married me. Why, why did this happen? Is there a reason that happened? And Sonny’s father died in the war. My daughter killed in an automobile accident. Why? You see, I don’t trust happiness. I never did, I never will.”
Horton Foote, screenplay for Tender Mercies

TT: Snapshot

December 21, 2011 by Terry Teachout

The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, sings Peter Warlock’s “Bethlehem Down”:

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

TT: Almanac

December 21, 2011 by Terry Teachout

“A comedy is the form in which the unsayable is said and that, thus, for a moment, breaks the corrosive cycle of repression.”

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business

TT: From my mailbox

December 20, 2011 by Terry Teachout

A reader writes:

O.K., so you didn’t like Christopher Hitchens. And you’re certainly entitled to your views about speaking frankly about the recently departed. (And you’re right–Hitchens would have agreed with you on this.)
But did you have to be so self-aggrandizing, as usual? Who cares whether you liked him or not? For you, of all people, to call him “vain” is absurd. You write about yourself far more often than Hitchens wrote about himself.

This is clearly not a fellow who should be reading blogs!

TT: They don’t make Christmas specials like they used to (I)

December 20, 2011 by Terry Teachout

“.22 Rifle for Christmas,” an episode of Dragnet originally telecast on Dec. 18, 1952:

« Previous Page
Next Page »

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

December 2011
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Nov   Jan »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Stumbling down memory lane
  • Replay: Ginette Neveu plays Chausson’s Poème
  • Almanac: Mary Renault on love and hate
  • Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on mixed feelings
  • Snapshot: Rudyard Kipling speaks about writing and truth

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in