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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 19, 2015

Beauty under a night sky

June 19, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review two very different plays about the supernatural, the Public Theater’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park production of The Tempest and a Baltimore revival of Blithe Spirit. Here’s an excerpt.

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tn-500_tempest012rrTo see “The Tempest” acted under a night sky is like hearing “The Messiah” sung in a cathedral. Whatever the flaws of the production, the sheer rightness of the setting usually makes them forgettable, or at least ignorable, and you come away thinking only of the work. That’s how I felt about Michael Greif’s Central Park production of Shakespeare’s sublime dramatic study of the redemptive power of forgiveness. I didn’t agree with all of Mr. Greif’s choices, but I was glad to go along with them, and by evening’s end my cavils felt picayune: Nothing mattered but the truth and beauty of the play itself.

What is best about Mr. Greif’s “Tempest” is its easy legibility—every line registers—and clear-eyed concentration on Shakespeare’s theme. Sam Waterston’s Prospero, for instance, suggests a comical Lear who has lived to profit from his hard-won moral understanding. Querulously, even petulantly angry at having been cast away on a deserted island and determined at first to exact his revenge, he chooses instead to let love have its way with his soul. Suddenly his sorcery turns inward and he becomes a new man, so fully transformed that he even learns to treat Caliban (Louis Cancelmi) not as a monster but as a pitiably wayward son—a masterly directorial touch that is well realized by Messrs. Waterston and Cancelmi. As his 2011 Public Theater “King Lear” revealed, Mr. Waterston cannot rise to the rhetorical occasions of Shakespeare’s verse, but his sincerity does much to make up for this deficit…

bal-a-stylish-revival-of-blithe-spirit-from-ev-001Noël Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” that most shapely and cunning of farces, is so well made that it’s impossible to do badly—but hard to do memorably. Witness Michael Blakemore’s 2009 Broadway revival, in which Angela Lansbury’s delightfully dotty Madame Arcati failed to make a sufficiently strong impression because of the uninspired efficiency of the rest of the production. Not so the far superior version now playing at Baltimore’s Everyman Theatre. A starless production staged by Vincent M. Lancisi, the company’s artistic director, this “Blithe Spirit” is an all-cylinders romp in which Nancy Robinette plays Coward’s daft medium in a fluttery manner that immediately put me in mind of Elsa Lanchester—high praise indeed. Comparable kudos go to Beth Hylton, the ghost inadvertently summoned by Madame Arcati at a cocktail party, who plays Elvira as a sexy, dangerously willful woman-child. You’ll have no trouble whatsoever supposing that she’d be capable of scheming to bring about her earthly husband’s premature demise.

The Everyman performs in a 250-seat vaudeville theater built in 1911, then gutted and transformed into an up-to-date house whose neoclassical façade conceals a contemporary lobby and auditorium. The company is as impressive as its home…

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To read my review of The Tempest, go here.

To read my review of Blithe Spirit, go here.

A montage of scenes from The Tempest:

Tom Stoppard expects more of you

June 19, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I discuss Jonathan Pryce’s charge that Tom Stoppard is a snob—and put it in a wider cultural context. Here’s an excerpt.

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The-Hard-Problem-194x300Tom Stoppard, the English-speaking world’s brainiest playwright, thinks that British audiences have grown too dumb to understand his plays. In a February interview with the Telegraph that was occasioned by the National Theatre’s London premiere of “The Hard Problem,” his latest play, Mr. Stoppard complained that he now has to water down his punch lines: “It’s very rare to connect an audience except on a level which is lower than you would want to connect them on….You could raise it a notch and you might lose an eighth of them….I really resent it.” By way of illustration, he mentioned a scene in “Travesties,” one of his earlier plays, that contains a joke which hinges on knowing the name of Goneril, King Lear’s oldest daughter. “In 1974,” he said, “everybody in the audience knew who Goneril was and laughed. In about 1990 when the play was revived, maybe half knew.”

This isn’t the first time that Mr. Stoppard has made that complaint—or used that example. He said the same thing to a reporter for the Financial Times in 1998. This time, though, he got a brisk bit of blowback from the Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce, best known to American TV viewers as the High Sparrow in “Game of Thrones.” “I think Tom Stoppard’s gotten snobbier,” Mr. Pryce told Country Life magazine. “I thought it was an extraordinary thing to say. Just because people didn’t get his esoteric piece of writing at the National Theatre….Write something more comprehensible.”

Not having seen “The Hard Problem” and not knowing Mr. Stoppard personally, I have no opinion on the play’s comprehensibility, much less its author’s alleged snobbishness. But I feel quite confident that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are growing “dumber,” if what you really mean to say is “less culturally literate.” It’s certainly no secret that American students are taught less and less about the canonical literary masterpieces of the past, and there is no shortage of people who believe that what little they’re required to learn in school is still too much.

Just the other day, the Washington Post published a rant by Dana Dusbiber, who teaches English at an inner-city school in Sacramento, California. Not only does Ms. Dusbiber happily admit to “disliking” Shakespeare, but she wants to “leave Shakespeare out of the English curriculum entirely.” Her preferred replacement is “the oral tradition out of Africa, which includes an equally relevant commentary on human behavior.” She believes that Shakespeare’s plays are no longer relevant to the lives of the “students of color” whom she teaches…

I doubt that Ms. Dusbiber is entirely representative of America’s public-school English teachers—at least not yet. On the other hand, I also doubt that her views are remotely close to unique….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the National Theatre’s HD simulcast of The Hard Problem:

Replay: Johnny Mercer and Jane Fonda on What’s My Line?

June 19, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAJohnny Mercer stumps the panel as a “special” mystery guest on an episode of What’s My Line? originally telecast on February 9, 1964. The regular mystery guest, who is seen at the end of the program, is Jane Fonda. John Daly is the host and the panelists are Bennett Cerf, Bobby Darin, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen:

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

See me, hear me (cont’d)

June 19, 2015 by Terry Teachout

THEATER TALK STILLThe latest episode of Theater Talk, in which Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel discuss the Broadway season just past with Ben Brantley of the New York Times, Peter Marks of the Washington Post, John Simon of the Westchester Guardian, and yours truly of The Wall Street Journal, will be replayed on CUNY-TV four times in the next four days. I think you’ll find it amusing—the back-and-forth got quite lively!

Here’s the schedule:

• Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

• Sunday at 12:30 p.m.

• Monday at 7:30 a.m., 1:30 p.m., and 7:30 p.m.

For more information, go here.

This episode will also be posted on YouTube. I’ll let you know when it goes up.

Almanac: George Bernard Shaw on liberty

June 19, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

George Bernard Shaw, “Maxims for Revolutionists”

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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