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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: What do you know?

January 17, 2014 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I hold forth on the problems faced by the drama critic who is called upon to review stage adaptations of familiar source material. Here’s an excerpt.

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MV5BNzQ5ODE4NTcxNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwNjkyNDQ0MDE%40._V1_SX214_.jpgAfter the film version of Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County” came out last month, it soon emerged that most of the critics who reviewed it hadn’t seen the play. (Not so my esteemed colleague Joe Morgenstern, who saw it on Broadway and made good use of the experience in writing his piece.) The result was a Twitter spat in which exasperated theater people argued that it wasn’t responsible to review a screen adaptation of so important a play without having seen the original version.

I haven’t seen the film version yet, though I will as soon as I can. For now, though, I don’t have a horse in that particular race. Instead, I’d like to approach the question from the opposite direction. What about drama critics who find themselves called on, as is often the case, to review a show adapted from a pre-existing piece of source material–a novel or, in the case of musicals, a movie–or based on a true story? How much, if anything, must they know to do the job right? It’s tempting to say that it depends on how serious the show is. I’m not at all sure that my review of “Legally Blonde: The Musical” was any better because I’d seen the movie. But even in the case of a commodity musical, it’s not quite as simple as that….

160px-Amadeus_Playbill.jpgFor me, Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus,” a play about the rivalry between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that was first staged in 1979 and later turned into a popular film by Milos Forman, is the ideal test case. You don’t have to see the play to appreciate the movie, which was skillfully adapted by Mr. Shaffer himself. Nor is it necessary to know anything about Mozart or Salieri to enjoy either version of “Amadeus.” The script tells you all you need to know (though quite a bit of the “information” in “Amadeus” is untrue, which definitely makes the reviewer’s job more interesting). But a drama critic who reviews a revival of “Amadeus” must know something about Mozart’s life and work in order to properly appreciate the play, which is a gripping parable of the terrible mystery of human inequality as seen in the complex relationship between Mozart and Salieri. What’s more, he really ought to have seen the film, too, since nearly everybody knows it far better than the play…

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Read the whole thing here.

Paul Scofield plays Salieri in a scene from the original stage production of Amadeus:

F. Murray Abraham plays Salieri in the corresponding scene from the film version of Amadeus:

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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...]

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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