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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for August 6, 2012

TT: The place to be

August 6, 2012 by Terry Teachout

SATCHMO%20MAQUETTE.jpgJohn Douglas Thompson, Gordon Edelstein, and I have a week’s worth of rehearsals for Satchmo at the Waldorf under our belts. We’re very pleased with our progress to date. Not only is most of the script now staged, but Lee Savage’s set (the model for which is pictured above) and Ilona Somogyi’s costumes are under construction at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, and I’ve written three new speeches since we went to work on Tuesday.

Mrs. T and I celebrated last night by watching Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy, the greatest backstage movie ever made. Now that I’ve collaborated on two operas and a play, I understand better than ever before exactly how good it is. As I wrote in a 2011 “Sightings” column about Gilbert and Sullivan, Topsy-Turvy is

a deeply knowing fictional study of how a theatrical production takes shape….We visit the office of Richard D’Oyly Carte and notice with surprise that he has a phone on his desk; we dine in Victorian restaurants, sit in Victorian parlors, go backstage at the Savoy Theatre and watch a prop man shake a piece of sheet metal to simulate the sound of thunder. Detail is piled on imaginatively re-created detail, and by film’s end you feel as though you’ve taken a stroll through a vanished world.

030topsy.jpgWhenever I watch Topsy-Turvy, I’m reminded of how much I love being immersed in the endlessly complex process of rehearsing a show. You feel as though you’ve slipped through a hidden door and vanished into a secret world, a parallel universe populated by variously eccentric geniuses who are totally devoted to lifting your script off the page and bringing it to life. I treasure every minute I spend in their company, and I learn a hundred priceless things each time we assemble in the rehearsal room.

Tonight I’ll be watching a preview of Into the Woods in Central Park, but I plan to drive back to Massachusetts as soon as it’s over. I’ve got an eleven o’clock call in Lenox tomorrow morning, and I can’t wait to rejoin my new friends and resume the ecstatically hard work of putting Satchmo at the Waldorf on stage.

TT: Just because

August 6, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Dizzy Gillespie and his big band play “Salt Peanuts” in the 1946 film Jivin’ in Be-Bop:

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

TT: Almanac

August 6, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

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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