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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 2, 2012

TT: Twice in a lifetime

November 2, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Mrs. T and I returned to our place in Connecticut yesterday, turned on the TV, and saw what was happening in New York City, my other adopted hometown. Friends of mine who live there have been plunged into a daily misery that is shockingly new to them, and for the most part they’re unable to spread the word about their situation because they have no electricity. I grieve to behold their plight.
ap_sandy_lower_manhattan_ll_121029_wg.jpgTrain service from Connecticut to New York is limited and erratic. Even if we could get to our apartment in upper Manhattan, we’d be stuck there, since our subway stop is out of service. So here we sit, watching the news and marveling anew at the harshness of life–from a distance.
It happens that I was in Smalltown, U.S.A., on 9/11, and wasn’t able to fly back to New York for five agonizing days. Much the same thing is happening to me now. The experience, as I wrote not long afterward, was deeply unsettling:

I awoke to find myself a stranded man, unable to return to New York to share whatever its fate might be. Of course I had it easy, far more so than most of the thousands of other Americans who had been caught short on that bright Tuesday morning. Some of them were in the air, others in strange hotel rooms, but I was holed up with my mother in the small town where I had spent the first eighteen years of my life. My brother and his family lived just three blocks away. As exiles go, mine was to be both comforting and comfortable–and brief. But it was an exile all the same, and with every passing minute it grew harder to endure….

No doubt Dr. Johnson, that most cold-eyed and hard-headed of sages, would dismiss what I wrote back then as cant. None but a fool longs to share suffering needlessly, there being more than enough of it in one man’s lifetime to go around. That said, it still feels strange–and sad–to be exiled from a suffering New York City yet again.

TT: The jilter jilted

November 2, 2012 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the new Broadway revival of The Heiress. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
“The Heiress,” adapted by Ruth and Augustus Goetz from “Washington Square,” Henry James’ 1880 novella about a plain young woman of means who is courted and jilted by a gold-digging suitor, ran for a year in New York, after which William Wyler turned it into one of the finest screen versions of a classic ever to be made in Hollywood. The original play has since been revived several times on Broadway, most recently in the unforgettable 1995 Lincoln Center Theater production that made Cherry Jones a star. Now it’s receiving a big-name revival featuring Jessica Chastain. Though I wish I could be more enthusiastic about the results, this production, which is uneven but not unrewarding, will at least serve to introduce those who don’t know “The Heiress” to its manifold excellences.
1580_custom-5192c39b8cb54ec2ebb2df0c8f527b1db85bb65a-s4.jpg It’s remarkable that the Goetzes were able to transform so elegantly turned a book as “Washington Square” into a fully stageworthy play, and even more remarkable that they contrived to do so without compromising its essence. Not only did they incorporate much of James’ dialogue into the script, but they also stuck close to his plot, adding only two neat and very effective touches of climactic melodrama. What disappeared along the way was the sardonic narrative voice in which James tells the tragic tale of how Catherine Sloper (Ms. Chastain) avenges herself on Morris Townsend (Dan Stevens) for dashing her romantic hopes–and on her well-meaning but cold-hearted father (David Strathairn) for always having treated her like a homely dullard. Fortunately, Dr. Sloper’s part contains more than enough “light remnants and snippets of irony” (James’ phrase) to make up for what has been lost in translation, especially when it’s played with the blandly stealthy malice that Ralph Richardson brought to the role on screen in 1949.
Mr. Richardson was, of course, one of the foremost classical stage actors of the 20th century, but Mr. Strathairn is a formidably accomplished artist in his own right, and so it surprised me that he has chosen to play Dr. Sloper not with sly urbanity but as a querulous, near-provincial gent who seems at times almost to be soliciting the audience’s sympathy….
Ms. Chastain’s performance, certain affecting moments notwithstanding, is too often vocally flat and dramatically unsubtle in a way that you wouldn’t expect from a classically trained actor with a fair amount of stage experience. She lacks the adamantine toughness without which the final scene of “The Heiress” cannot make its proper impact…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
An excerpt from William Wyler’s 1949 film version of The Heiress, starring Olivia de Havilland and Ralph Richardson. The score is by Aaron Copland:

Cherry Jones talks about the 1995 revival of The Heiress:

TT: Found poem

November 2, 2012 by Terry Teachout

Vito

Psychic

Proprietor

Guest

Used car dealer

Big Louie

The Maharajah

Delivery man

Croupier

Mysterious figure in Linz’s office

Indian chief

Mr. Atkins

Sal Nichols (The Pig)

Wealthy Syrian

East Indian potentate

Mr. Muckerji

Capt. M. Renard

Piano Player Harry (uncredited)

Native guard

TT: Almanac

November 2, 2012 by Terry Teachout

“‘It seems to make you very happy that your daughter’s affections have been trifled with.’
“‘It does,’ said the Doctor; ‘for I had foretold it! It’s a great pleasure to be in the right.’
“‘Your pleasures make one shudder!’ his sister exclaimed.”
Henry James, Washington Square

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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