• 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 / 2012 / January / Archives for 8th

Archives for January 8, 2012

CD

January 8, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Louis Jordan 1938-1950 (Fremeaux & Associés, two CDs). Imported from France, a near-perfect selection of thirty-six 78 sides by the singer-saxophonist and his Tympany Five, the jumping combo whose hard-swinging brand of populist jazz helped to set the musical agenda for rhythm and blues and early rock and roll. Not to worry–most of the big hits are here (“Choo-Choo Ch’Boogie,” “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby,” “Saturday Night Fish Fry”). If Jordan’s joyous music doesn’t make you smile and/or pat your foot, you need an intervention, or maybe a lobotomy (TT).

CD

January 8, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Follies (P.S. Classics, two CDs). The original-cast album of Eric Schaeffer’s standard-setting Kennedy Center revival of Stephen Sondheim’s great 1971 musical, which transferred to Broadway in the fall of 2011 and is now approaching the end of its run there (it will move to Los Angeles in May). More fully representative of the show than any previous recorded version, it preserves the magnificent performances of Danny Burstein and Jan Maxwell, and is essential listening for anyone who believes, as I do, that Follies is one of the permanent landmarks of postwar musical comedy (TT).

PLAY

January 8, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Our Town (Broad Stage, Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center, 1310 11th St., Santa Monica, closes Feb. 12). David Cromer’s celebrated staging of Thornton Wilder’s masterpiece, remounted in Los Angeles with Helen Hunt as the stage manager. Arrestingly and incisively unsentimental, Cromer’s Our Town cuts to the heart of Wilder’s familiar tale of a small New England town and makes it as fresh as a news flash. I’m not normally fond of surprise endings, but Cromer has tucked one into this production, and it packs the punch of a bolt of lightning. Do not miss this show for any reason whatsoever (TT).

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

January 2012
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Dec   Feb »

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