• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2014 / October / Archives for 2nd

Archives for October 2, 2014

A pair of heartfelt plugs

October 2, 2014 by Terry Teachout

londonwall2• Tonight WNET launches Theater Close-Up, a weekly series of plays taped in performance at off-Broadway theaters, with the Mint Theater Company’s revival of John Van Druten’s London Wall, about which I raved earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal:

This witty, glisteningly crafted tale of a quartet of working women and the benighted men for whom they work has a distinctly contemporary flavor, enough that you’ll come away wondering whether Van Druten might deserve credit for inventing the workplace comedy decades before it found favor on TV.

London Wall starts at nine p.m. on Channel 13, with a repeat broadcast on Sunday. Subsequent episodes will start at ten p.m. each Thursday. In addition, Channel 21 will air Theater Close-Up on Mondays at ten-thirty p.m.

No matter when you decide to tune in, I strongly recommend this show.

hilary-gardner-the-great-city-300x300• I had warm things to say about The Great City, Hilary Gardner’s debut album, when she released it independently last year:

Gardner has a cool, smooth-surfaced voice, one whose clarinet-like timbre is tinged with a quiet note of knowing wryness. She swings effortlessly without making a big deal of it, and she has a knack for hunting down off-center tunes like Tom Waits’ “Drunk on the Moon” and Nellie McKay’s “Manhattan Avenue.” Yet she’s just as adept at making something fresh and surprising out of an oft-heard chestnut like “Autumn in New York” (performed here, needless to say, with the rarely sung verse). The band is outstanding–I was much taken with the discreet but telling use of Jon Cowherd’s Hammond organ and Randy Napoleon’s guitar–and the uncredited charts set off Gardner’s vocals to lovely effect.

Now The Great City has been commercially released by Sunnyside Records, and if you didn’t buy it when I first wrote about Gardner a year ago, you should definitely do so now. Go here to order a copy.

So you want to see a show?

October 2, 2014 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:
• Cabaret (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Love Letters (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 1, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• Once (musical, G/PG-13, reviewed here)
• This Is Our Youth (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 4, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fatal Weakness (drama, PG-13, closes Oct. 26, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
Indian Ink Laura Pels Theatre• Indian Ink (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• When We Are Married (comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 26, reviewed here)

IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• American Buffalo (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• Arms and the Man (comedy, G/PG-13, closes Oct. 18, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• The Sea (black comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:
• The Wayside Motor Inn (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING FRIDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WIS.:
• The Doctor’s Dilemma (serious comedy, G/PG-13, reviewed here)
• Travesties (serious comedy, PG-13, reviewed here)

Almanac: Robertson Davies on irony

October 2, 2014 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit’s desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement.”

Robertson Davies, The Cunnng Man

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

October 2014
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Sep   Nov »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in