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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 2012

TT: Just in case you’re wondering

July 26, 2012 by Terry Teachout

120718-weather-315a.photoblog900.jpgI changed my travel plans early this afternoon after looking at the forecast for New York and its environs. Instead of trying to fly back on schedule, I opted to hole up in a Minneapolis airport hotel and spend the evening working on an essay for Commentary about Neil Simon, with frequent breaks to visit the whirlpool.
So far, so good–and I’m soooo glad that I’m not sitting on that plane right now. Or in that departure lounge. Now all I have to do is get back to New York in time to catch a Friday-afternoon train to Cold Spring, there to meet Mrs. T and see Romeo and Juliet at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival that night.
So what if it’s a horrifically long day? Better that than flying through the even more horrific alternative….

TT: So you want to see a show?

July 26, 2012 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:

• The Best Man (drama, PG-13, closes Sept. 9, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

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

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

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 6, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• Freud’s Last Session (drama, PG-13, restaging of off-Broadway production, closes Sept. 2, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:

• A Little Night Music (musical, PG-13, closes Aug. 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Aug. 5, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

July 26, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Martyrdom by pinpricks can be very painful.”
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

TT: Passing by

July 25, 2012 by Terry Teachout

0724121455.jpgI blew through New York last night, staying just long enough to pick up my mail, get caught in a traffic jam, sweat profusely, eat sushi, and update the right-hand column with fresh “Top Five” and “Out of the Past” picks.
Today I fly to Minneapolis for a Guthrie Theatre revival of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys. From there I head to the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in New York, followed by a quick trip to Connecticut to see Goodspeed Musicals’ Carousel. Come Tuesday I report to Shakespeare & Company, where I’ll be spending the next three weeks rehearsing Satchmo at the Waldorf with John Douglas Thompson and Gordon Edelstein.
Whew!
In lieu of anything more elaborate, allow me to pass on two interesting links:
• The mills of academe grind slowly, but the Journal of Jazz Studies has finally gotten around to reviewing Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. The reviewer is Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, and what he says about Pops is…well, see for yourself:

Terry Teachout’s Pops is the definitive, one-volume, narrative biography of Louis Armstrong….Teachout’s ability to place a whirlwind of events in context is masterful and is easy to overlook because it does not draw attention to itself.

I’ve never been so proud of a review.
Read the whole thing here.
• After you’ve finally gotten around to seeing Margaret, you might enjoy knowing what music Kenneth Lonergan listened to while making the film.

TT: Snapshot

July 25, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Leopold Stokowski conducts the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in the 1947 film Carnegie Hall, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer:

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

TT: Almanac

July 25, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Mind on mind kindles warmth.”
Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

BIOGRAPHY

July 24, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Miranda Carter, Anthony Blunt: His Lives. Originally published in 2001, this comprehensively informed, smartly written biography tells the believe-it-or-not tale of the Cambridge graduate, distinguished art scholar, royal courtier, and not-entirely-closeted gay who spied for the Russians, then was stripped of his knighthood when Margaret Thatcher blew the whistle on the deepest and darkest of his secret lives. Carter brings off the near-miracle of being just sympathetic enough–Blunt was a genuinely tortured soul–without falling into the fatal mistake of whitewashing the evil that he did. Engrossing, enthralling, horrifying (TT).

DVD/BLU-RAY

July 24, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Margaret (Fox Searchlight, two discs). Kenneth Lonergan’s masterpiece, the wrenching story of how a seventeen-year-old New Yorker (Anna Paquin) is brought face to face with the terrible fragility of life. Because Margaret nearly vanished without trace–it was only seen in a handful of theaters–the release of the film on home video is by definition a major event. Anyone who was moved by Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me will be shaken to the core by Margaret. The Blu-ray disc contains the shorter theatrical version, the DVD the full-length extended cut (TT).

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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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