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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 4, 2013

TT: Oh, say, can you dig it?

July 4, 2013 by Terry Teachout

Louis Armstrong plays “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 1960:

TT: Even Horowitz might be impressed

July 4, 2013 by Terry Teachout

Chet Atkins plays “The Stars and Stripes Forever”:

TT: The French, they are a funny race

July 4, 2013 by Terry Teachout

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal drama column (which is already available on line) I review a pair of Chicago-area productions of classical French comedies, Writers’ Theatre’s The Liar and the Court Theatre’s Tartuffe. Both are must-see shows. Here’s an excerpt.
* * *
dt.common.streams.StreamServer.cls.jpegWhat’s the funniest play ever written? I used to think it was “Noises Off,” but now that I’ve seen “The Liar,” I’m not so sure. David Ives’ English-language adaptation of Pierre Corneille’s 1643 comedy about a compulsive liar, was commissioned by Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company and premiered there three years ago to universal acclaim. Since then it’s been making the regional rounds, and I finally caught up with it in the suburbs of Chicago, where Writers’ Theatre is giving “The Liar” a frenziedly farcical production at which I laughed so hard that I was sore the next day.
Unlike Richard Wilbur, whose 2009 translation of “The Liar” is miraculously faithful to both the spirit and the letter of the original play, Mr. Ives has given us a free “translaptation” (his word) whose comic effects arise in part from his use of contemporary language squeezed into the tight mold of rhyming couplets: “I? Wed some shrew? Obscene, oblong, obese?/And not the fair, the fine, divine Lucrece?” By wedding his verbal prestidigitation to Corneille’s mistaken-identity plot–to which he’s added the additional complication of a pair of identical twins–Mr. Ives has come up with a play in which the laughs flow freely and joyously.
William Brown, one of Chicago’s best directors, deserves much credit for ensuring that “The Liar” flies down the tracks at the speed of lunacy….
Improbable as it may sound, two very different productions of 17th-century French comedies are simultaneously playing in Chicago, and both of them are memorable. The Court Theatre, which led off its two-play Molière Festival last month with “The Misanthrope,” has now upped the ante with a modern-dress “Tartuffe” that is–amazingly–even better than its splendid predecessor.
1045213_627780647246938_1163326005_n.jpgLike “The Misanthrope,” this “Tartuffe” is being performed by a mostly black cast, and Charles Newell, the company’s artistic director, has chosen again to use Richard Wilbur’s supremely elegant verse translation of Molière’s ever-relevant tale of a monstrously hypocritical preacher (Philip Earl Johnson) who cozens his way into the family circle of Orgon (A.C. Smith), a gullible gent whose wife and fortune he covets with like intensity. As always, Mr. Wilbur favors dry wit over knock-down comedy, but his version of “Tartuffe” is more than funny enough to lend itself to the raucous touches of physical comedy with which Mr. Newell has salted his staging.
Yes, there’s a racial angle–Tartuffe is white, Orgon and his family black–but Mr. Newell doesn’t stress it. The focus is on class, not race, and though you’re free to interpret Tartuffe’s motives as you please, this production is not political in any crudely obvious way….
* * *
Read the whole thing here.
A trailer for The Liar:

TT: Picture this

July 4, 2013 by Terry Teachout

Childe Hassam’s “Allied Flags, Union League Club,” painted in 1917:
hassam24.jpg

TT: So you want to see a show?

July 4, 2013 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:

• Annie (musical, G, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Nance (play with music, PG-13, closes Aug. 11, reviewed here)

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

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, closes Sept. 1, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes Aug. 25, nearly all performances sold out last week, original production 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)

• A Picture of Autumn (drama, G, too serious for children, closes July 27, reviewed here)

• The Weir (drama, PG-13, closes Aug. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN PITTSFIELD, MASS.:

• On the Town (musical, G/PG-13, closes July 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WASHINGTON, D.C:

• The Real Thing (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• Far From Heaven (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

July 4, 2013 by Terry Teachout

“If you want to discover just what there is in a man–give him power.”
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Portrait Life of Lincoln

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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