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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 2015

Moss Hart, on his own

May 29, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a Boston revival of Moss Hart’s Light Up the Sky and an off-Broadway remount of Annie Baker’s The Flick. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Moss Hart is so well remembered for his collaborations—he wrote comedies with George S. Kaufman and musicals with Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart and Kurt Weill—that few now recall his rare solo efforts. Yet Hart also wrote four plays of his own that got to Broadway, one of which, “Light Up the Sky,” was a medium-size hit that opened in 1948 and ran for 214 performances. While it hasn’t been seen in New York for a quarter-century, “Light Up the Sky” continues to be performed regionally, and it’s being done twice this year, first by Boston’s Lyric Stage Company and later on at Ontario’s Shaw Festival. Curious to see how it held up, I checked out the Boston version and found it to be fluffy, funny, and performed with limitless panache by a choice ensemble cast whose nimble members never let a punch line go unpunched….

McGarrahan,Plum,LeBow,Steinbach,O_Malley“Light Up the Sky” is a backstage farce about the Boston tryout (a neat coincidence!) of a way-too-earnest play called “The Time Is Now” whose cast, production team and naïve young author (Alejandro Simoes) are all in blissful ignorance of what will presumably be their fast-approaching doom….

A play full of plum parts demands canny and calculated staging, and Scott Edmiston, the director, makes trebly sure that nobody steps on anybody else’s laughs. The members of his cast, most of them Lyric Stage veterans, are gloriously good…

The original production of “The Flick,” Annie Baker’s Pulitzer-winning play about a grubby single-screen Massachusetts movie house and its sad-sack staff, is now being remounted at Barrow Street Theatre after a 2013 off-Broadway run at Playwrights Horizons. It’s a melancholy Kenneth Lonergan-style comedy in which Ms. Baker dramatizes the discontents of three young-to-youngish losers (exquisitely well played by Louisa Krause, Matthew Maher and Aaron Clifton Moten) who can’t figure out how to make their way in a success-oriented world and fear, with good reason, that “it’s never gonna get better.” So far, so good, but Ms. Baker has taken what should have been a delicate little play and blown it up to three hours and 15 minutes by inserting portentous pauses (their exact timing is painstakingly specified in the script) that illustrate her characters’ mutual alienation, and Sam Gold, the director, has aided and abetted her by throttling the tempo down to a glacial crawl….

* * *

To read my review of Light Up the Sky, go here.

To read my review of The Flick, go here.

The trailer for Light Up the Sky:

Louisa Krause talks about The Flick:

Almanac: Moss Hart on critics

May 29, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“What do I need with the theater—a cockamamie business where you get one roll of the dice from seven middle-aged men on the aisle who hated Mickey Mouse when they were kids.”

Moss Hart, Light Up the Sky

See me, hear me (cont’d)

May 28, 2015 by Terry Teachout

Radio-microphone-440x360“The Frame,” KPCC’s “daily report from the world of art, entertainment, and culture,” had me on as a guest today to talk about Louis Armstrong and the West Coast premiere of Satchmo at the Waldorf. The host, John Horn, had gone to see the first preview of Satchmo on Tuesday and was fabulously well prepared—something that just doesn’t always happen, even on public radio. He asked consistently smart and thoughtful questions, and I in turn did my very best to supply reasonably worthy answers.

KPCC broadcasts to the Los Angeles area, but no matter where you live, you can listen to the ten-minute segment, or download it as a podcast, by going here.

* * *

If you live in the New York area, CUNY-TV’s Theater Talk has a new episode in the pipeline in which Ben Brantley, Peter Marks, John Simon, and I chew over the Broadway season just past with co-hosts Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel. The fun starts on Sunday, June 7, at seven p.m. ET.

Face to face

May 28, 2015 by Terry Teachout

6a00e008dca1f0883401630514acb0970d-500wiWhenever you write a book or play in which a famous person of the relatively recent past is portrayed, it’s more than likely that you’ll sooner or later meet somebody who knew the person in question and is eager to tell you what they thought of what you wrote. I’m used to that by now, but I admit to having been a bit unnerved—more than a little bit, truth to tell—by the West Coast premiere of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my play about the relationship between Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his manager. No sooner did I take my seat last night at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts than I realized that I was sitting in the midst of people who had known Armstrong and Glaser. What’s more, I was introduced after the show to Van Alexander, a composer, arranger, and big-band leader who, like Armstrong, was managed by Glaser and thus had known him extremely well.

I’m relieved to say that all of these people (including Alexander, who is one hundred years old and as sharp as a stiletto) hastened to assure me that I portrayed Armstrong and Glaser accurately. And I’m downright delighted by something that happened at Tuesday night’s preview performance, when Gordon Edelstein, John Douglas Thompson, and I did a post-show “talkback” with members of the audience. After we were through, a black man came up to me and said, “I was really surprised when you came out on stage at the end of the show. I figured the guy who wrote that play had to be black!” I was reminded (though I didn’t have the nerve to say so) of something that Count Basie is supposed to have asked Peggy Lee: “Are you sure there’s not some spade in you?”

tn-500_satchmoatwaldorf069With two performances of Satchmo under our belts, I can report that Gordon’s staging of the play is in excellent shape after the eleven-month layoff that followed the end of the off-Broadway run. If anything, John’s interpretation of the triple role of Armstrong, Glaser, and Miles Davis has actually grown in richness and subtlety since then. It’s strange to think that he’s appeared in highly acclaimed revivals of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine in between productions of Satchmo. I’m keeping fast company these days.

The Wallis, as it’s known in these parts, is a brand-new theatrical complex (it opened less than two years ago) situated in the heart of Beverly Hills. The staff there has been wonderfully helpful, and the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater, in which we’re performing, couldn’t be better suited to an intimate one-man show like ours. I wish I could stick around a little longer and enjoy the fun, but I have to cover a Broadway matinee on Saturday afternoon, so I’ll be flying back to New York first thing tomorrow morning. I can’t even take this afternoon off—I’ve got to write a piece!

Satchmo closes on June 7, and tickets, I’m told, are selling briskly. If you live in the Los Angeles area, do come. I think you’ll like what you see.

So you want to see a show?

May 28, 2015 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:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hand to God (black comedy, X, absolutely not for children or prudish adults, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, many performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• On the Town (musical, G, contains double entendres that will not be intelligible to children, reviewed here)
• On the Twentieth Century (musical, G/PG-13, virtually all performances sold out, closes July 19, contains very mild sexual content, reviewed here)
• The Visit (serious musical, PG-13, far too dark and disturbing for children, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, ideal for bright children, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:
• Sense and Sensibility (musical, G, closes June 14, reviewed here)

permission8f-2-webCLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• Permission (comedy, PG-13, closes June 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:
• The Blood Quilt (drama, PG-13, closes June 7, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:
• It’s Only a Play (comedy, PG-13/R, closes June 7, reviewed here)

Almanac: Kingsley Amis on journalism

May 28, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.”

Kingsley Amis (quoted in Eric Felten, “Drinks Before Lunch with Kingsley Amis,” Weekly Standard, Nov. 5, 1995)

It never gets old

May 27, 2015 by Terry Teachout

CF9WmRvUgAAAL86-1I flew out to Los Angeles yesterday morning for Tuesday’s sold-out preview of Satchmo at the Waldorf, which officially opens tonight at Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. We rehearsed in the afternoon, and when we were finished, Gordon Edelstein, John Douglas Thompson, and I tried to figure out how many performances John had given to date of Satchmo. Since he’s done it in Lenox, New Haven, Philadelphia, and New York, where Satchmo ran off Broadway for eighteen previews and 136 performances, our best guess is somewhere around three hundred times.

That’s a modest number compared to the herculean efforts of the elite corps of actors who’ve appeared in long-running Broadway shows for more than ten years. Still, it’s a not-inconsiderable achievement for John. Satchmo, after all, is a ninety-minute-long solo show in which he plays three sharply contrasting characters, never leaving the stage until the final curtain. He speaks some twelve thousand words at each performance, all of them committed to memory. That’s roughly the same number of words spoken by the title character in an uncut performance of Hamlet. Small wonder, then, that John, who is best known to the world as the outstanding American classical actor of his generation, has no trouble staying interested in my far more modest effort. While Satchmo is, to put it very mildly, no Hamlet, it’s complicated enough to hold his attention night after night.

CF9WyDHVEAEhO08This is, by the way, the first time that I’ve seen Satchmo at the Waldorf, as well as the first time that I’ve taken part in a theatrical rehearsal of any kind, since the show closed off Broadway a year ago. Yet mere seconds after I walked into the theater, I felt as if I’d never been away, and I was as fascinated by the audience’s response to the play as I was when it was premiered by Dennis Neal in Orlando in 2011. The first nighters in Beverly Hills were quiet but attentive, bearing out something that hit me four years ago: some audiences experience Satchmo as a serious play with funny moments, others as a comedy that turns serious at the end. What’s more, I can always tell within a half-minute of the start of the show which kind of audience is in the theater—though not a second sooner.

This is also the first time in ages that I’ve been in Los Angeles, which I found utterly mystifying when I came here in 2007:

“I kissed him, but I never knew him,” Ingrid Bergman is supposed to have said about Humphrey Bogart. That’s sort of how I feel about my first visit to Los Angeles: I spent three days there, but I still don’t quite know what I saw.

Los Angelenos, I gather, are sensitive to stereotypes, especially the ones they come up with themselves. Now I understand why. I saw enough of their home town to know that it would take me a lifetime to see the rest of it, and though one cliché turned out to be painfully self-evident—the traffic is really, truly awful—I can’t say I found any of the others useful. I’ve never seen a city that was more resistant to generalization, not even the one in which I live.

primary_EB19750617PEOPLE506170301ARI still feel the same way, though I’d forgotten how completely alien Los Angeles seems to me—like another planet, really. You drive through a scruffy residential neighborhood, then suddenly there’s a movie studio on your immediate right. Alas, I won’t be here long enough to savor the strangeness, or even to see any of my friends. All I have time to do is rehearse the show, attend three performances, and make a couple of Satchmo-related appearances, after which I head straight back to New York to resume my day job, which always awaits me.

Two transcontinental flights in four days is well over my personal quota, which doubtless explains why I’m still feeling a bit fuzzy around the edges. I was awakened early today by a phone call from a polite but urgent-sounding young man who wanted to know whether I was on my way to an appointment of which I knew nothing whatsoever. I was still blurry from Tuesday’s travels, but within a few seconds I realized that someone had blundered, very possibly me. Finally my head cleared and I said, “Wait a minute. Who are you? Where are you? And who do you think I am?” It was, much to my relief, a wrong number. Even so, I was inches away from throwing on my clothes and running to the theater. That’s what too much travel in too little time does to me. Or maybe it’s just Los Angeles.

Ten things I’d like to do before I die

May 27, 2015 by Terry Teachout

Wile-E.-Coyote-holdign-signI’ve never had what it is now the custom to call a “bucket list.” I’m pretty sure this is because I’m not one to think in terms of long-range goals. Don’t be bored has always been my Prime Directive, and when you look at life that way, you tend not to plan very far ahead. I don’t know whether that’s a characteristic bias of the journalist, who jumps from story to story, or a point of view more specific to me. Whatever the reason, it’s the way I operate: I take things as they come.

After I wrote this posting, though, I asked myself whether there really were any particular things I wanted to do before I died, and pretty soon I had my very own bucket list. Here it is:

• Visit the Grand Canyon

• Make one last concerted attempt to read all of Charles Dickens’ major novels

Cary-Grant-Mt.-Rushmore-511x288• Visit Mount Rushmore

• Own an etching by Giorgio Morandi

• Go to England (amazingly, I never have)

• Direct a play by someone else

• Take a river cruise

• Review a completely satisfying revival of Joe Orton’s What the Butler Saw

• Drive from coast to coast without an itinerary, preferably in an RV

• Teach more

If that strikes you as a pretty modest list, I can only agree. But, then, my life until now has been so full of extraordinary occurrences—most of them utterly unexpected, at least by me—that I must confess to being, if not exactly content, then at least reasonably happy with the way things have gone so far. Small-town boys, after all, are raised to have realistic expectations, and while Mrs. T thinks that this attitude may have inhibited me in the past, my own feeling is that it’s served me well. Certainly it’s characteristic of me that all of the items on the above list are at least doable, and that most of them are in fact perfectly plausible…about which more, I hope, later!

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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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