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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Pinterland West

April 19, 2013 by Terry Teachout

In the third of this week’s Wall Street Journal drama columns, I review the Broadway premiere of Orphans and a revival of (eeuuww) Jekyll & Hyde. Here’s an excerpt.
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Alec Baldwin’s self-transformation into a character actor is one of the most sensible and honorable things that a fading movie star has ever done. It’s also made him available for occasional stage appearances in New York, most recently in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s well-meaning but unsatisfactory 2006 revival of Joe Orton’s “Entertaining Mr. Sloane.” Now Mr. Baldwin is back in town with a better show. “Orphans,” Lyle Kessler’s 1983 play about a shady businessman who takes two down-at-heel brothers under his wing, has finally made it to Broadway after being mounted by just about every regional theater in America. It’s become a dismayingly rare pleasure to see a serious play on Broadway, and though this revival, like “Orphans” itself, is far from perfect, it’s still very much worth seeing.
orphprod3.jpg“Orphans” is the kind of show in which you’re not supposed to be completely clear about what’s happening onstage, or at least about what it means. Treat (Ben Foster) and Phillip (Tom Sturridge) live together in a crumbling row house in Philadelphia. Treat is a knife-wielding, near-psychopathic thug, Phillip a mentally disturbed child-man who never leaves the house and is wholly dependent on his brother. Treat runs into Harold (Mr. Baldwin) in a bar, gets him drunk, and lures him back to the house in order to hold him for ransom. Instead the smooth-tongued Harold turns the tables by hiring the brothers as his bodyguard-assistants and setting himself up as their father figure…
For all the fluency of its craftsmanship, “Orphans” gives the impression of having been knocked together out of spare theatrical parts. Not only is its premise self-evidently derived from Harold Pinter’s “The Caretaker,” but Mr. Kessler has pinched other elements of the play from sources as diverse as “The Glass Menagerie,” “Our Town” and Sam Shepard’s “True West.” But it’s still an exceptionally effective vehicle for three strong actors, and Mr. Baldwin is both strong and moving…
Even as the gods themselves are said to inveigh in vain against stupidity, so do drama critics the world over inveigh no less vainly against “Jekyll & Hyde,” the wretched 1990 Leslie Bricusse-Frank Wildhorn musical that ran on Broadway for four years, after which it triumphantly toured the known universe, proving yet again that you can fool some of the people all of the time. Now it’s back on Broadway again, this time in a new roadshow revival that has paused in its travels for a two-month run at the Marquis Theatre.
No matter who’s doing it or where it’s being done, “Jekyll & Hyde” is still tuneless and tiresome, a musical for those who prefer power ballads to show tunes but find “The Phantom of the Opera” too challenging….
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Read the whole thing here.
Kevin Anderson and Matthew Modine in an excerpt from the 1987 film version of Orphans, directed by Alan J. Pakula:

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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...]

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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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