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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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TT: Small-town dreams

March 22, 2013 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal column I review the Broadway transfer of Hands on a Hardbody, an important off-Broadway revival of Anita Loos’ Happy Birthday, and the premiere of Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The first two are first-rate, the third a belly-up disaster. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
handsprod2.jpgBroadway has been sorely in need of a new musical that touches the heart without insulting the intelligence. Now it’s got one. “Hands on a Hardbody,” in which 10 cash-strapped Texans take part in an endurance contest whose winner will drive home a brand-new pickup truck, is a deeply felt, emotionally true portrait of recession-era American life. The show’s unlikely-sounding premise–each of the contestants must keep one hand on the truck until they either give up or collapse–ends up being the occasion for an evening that is by turns festive and thought-provokingly dark. Think “Once,” only with a much better score.
A fictionalized stage version of S.R. Bindler’s 1997 film documentary of the same name, “Hands on a Hardbody” never makes the mistake of sneering at its characters and their unpretentious hopes and dreams. Instead, Doug Wright (“I Am My Own Wife”) has written a book in which they are portrayed with the kind of clear-eyed sympathy you’d expect to find in a play by Horton Foote. The tuneful Americana-style songs, by Amanda Green (“Bring It On,” “High Fidelity”) and Trey Anastasio, Phish’s guitarist, are no less impressive in their understanding of the ups and downs of small-town life…
HappyBirthday1.jpgTACT/The Actors Company Theatre, which mounted flawless Off-Broadway revivals of Brian Friel’s “Lovers” and Neil Simon’s “Lost in Yonkers” last year, has done it again with “Happy Birthday,” a smart little comedy by Anita Loos, the once-celebrated author of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” “Happy Birthday,” in which a prim spinster (Mary Bacon) takes refuge from a storm in the Jersey Mecca Cocktail Bar, downs a few drinks and suddenly metamorphoses into a party girl, was a huge hit on Broadway in 1946–it ran for 563 performances–but has since been forgotten, mainly because it calls for a budget-busting cast of 17. (Two of the roles have been doubled, but you won’t notice.) Scott Alan Evans has staged this revival with exceptional skill, getting all of the laughs without obscuring the melancholy that is never far from the shiny surface of Ms. Loos’ script….
Nothing about “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” the new theatrical version of Truman Capote’s 1958 novella about Holly Golightly (Emilia Clarke), a fey little semi-whore with a weakness for gangsters, is any good at all. Richard Greenberg’s clumsy script seeks without success to lift the book’s coolly wrought first-person narration off the page and move it to the stage. Ms. Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) gives a performance that is as flat and textureless as a piece of painted cardboard…
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
Trey Anastasio and Amanda Green talk about the original La Jolla production of Hands on a Hardbody:

Truman Capote reads from Breakfast at Tiffany’s at New York’s 92nd Street Y in 1963:

TT: Almanac

March 22, 2013 by Terry Teachout

“Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.”
George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day

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, ran earlier this season at New Orleans’ Le Petit Theatre. It previously closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, … [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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