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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for April 13, 2015

When you say that, smile

April 13, 2015 by Terry Teachout

CCPL6HlUEAE4eNRMrs. T and I missed the worst of the horrific winter just past, but we were intensely aware at all times of its viciousness. No sooner did we return from Florida at the beginning of March than our noses were rubbed in it, since we had to drive through what amounted to a tunnel of snow to get to our little farmhouse in rural Connecticut. Even now, six weeks later, a substantial patch of not-quite-white snow continues to cling insolently to the ground, and when we drove up to Connecticut last Sunday and saw snowflakes on the windshield of our car as we passed through Hartford, I briefly felt like crying.

The very next morning, though, I saw a crocus poking through the blanket of long-dead leaves that cover our front lawn. I had to forcibly restrain myself from waking Mrs. T up to tell her about it. I didn’t know about crocuses other than in theory before I met my wife, and even then it’s been rare for me to see the ones that she gleefully spies on our lawn each April. It’s customary for me to spend the whole of that month not in Connecticut but New York, covering the overwhelming crush of plays and musicals that open at the very end of the theater season. Hence I usually learn of the arrival of the crocuses of spring not at first hand but on the phone.

CB79i0VUEAAJ3W6To actually see one for myself was not merely a treat but downright therapeutic. Never before have I survived a winter that tested my equanimity so severely. By the end of it, I was wondering whether I had finally reached the time of life when I might need to give serious thought to living somewhere other than New York, not just for a month or two each year but permanently. I was downright desperate for sunlight and warmth.

While the latter has not yet come, there was a fair amount of sunshine to be seen this weekend, and I feel confident that the last bits of snow in our yard will have melted away by the time I go back to Connecticut. No doubt I’ll be complaining shortly thereafter about the cruelty of summer—but when I do, I hope I’ll remember to laugh.

Few human beings, even those who are, like me, inclined to a comfortable evenness of temperament, are capable of enjoying things as they are for very long. We are, it seems, destined to be dissatisfied, and I share as fully as the rest of us in the common dilemma. Indeed, our inability to remember past suffering with any degree of specificity is very likely the only thing that keeps us going. I shall, however, try to recall the winter of 2015 at best as I can for as long as I can, and cling to at least a few shreds of the abject gratitude that I felt when I caught sight of the first crocus of spring.

* * *

The opening of Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony, performed by the chorus and orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, conducted by the composer:

Satchmo at the Waldorf comes to Colorado

April 13, 2015 by Terry Teachout

cavanaugh_19satchmo3_artsI’m pleased to announce yet another staging of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, in the upcoming 2015-16 season. Immediately after the show concludes its run at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater next February, the production, a remount of the 2014 off-Broadway staging directed by Gordon Edelstein and starring John Douglas Thompson, will transfer directly to Theatreworks, located on the campus of the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. It will open there on February 18 and run through March 6.

For more information, go here.

To read about other upcoming productions of Satchmo at the Waldorf, go here.

Just because: Willis Conover appears on To Tell the Truth

April 13, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAWillis Conover, the Voice of America’s legendary jazz disc jockey, attempts to stump the panel on an episode of To Tell the Truth originally cast on CBS on April 8, 1963. The Voice of America Jazz Hour, Conover’s daily program, was broadcast worldwide via shortwave but was no heard in the United States, for which reason he was largely unknown in this country:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

Almanac: John P. Marquand on middle age and its discontents

April 13, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“I was just thinking that life makes almost everyone into something that he never exactly wanted to be, and then the time comes when he can’t very well be anything else.”

John P. Marquand, Melville Goodwin, USA

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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