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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 2015

Old dog, new tricks

October 30, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the belated Broadway premiere of A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia and the U.S. premiere of a new stage version of Thérèse Raquin. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Some first-class playwrights just can’t catch a break on Broadway. “Sylvia,” originally produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club in 1995, is A.R. Gurney’s fifth try, and for all its success in previous incarnations off Broadway and across the country, the play is only now receiving its Broadway premiere. Will it finally lift Mr. Gurney’s jinx? Straight plays rarely draw crowds without a screen-certified cash magnet, and Annaleigh Ashford and Matthew Broderick don’t quite qualify. On the other hand, “Sylvia” is one of the very best small-cast comedies of the past quarter-century, and this revival, directed by Daniel Sullivan, is so funny that I can’t see how it could fail to ring the box-office gong.

xtn-500_sylvia0181r2.jpg.pagespeed.ic.Md5XPWuIgnThe conceit of “Sylvia” is that the title character (Ms. Ashford) is a dog, a stray poodle-Labrador mix who talks, but only to Greg and Kate (Mr. Broderick and Julie White), her master and mistress, both of whom are middle-aged and feeling it. To us, of course, Sylvia looks like a sexy girl—the only giveaway is the nametag that she wears around her neck—but she acts like a dog and, insofar as it’s possible for a playwright to know, thinks like one, too. (Sylvia to Greg: “I love you. I really do. Even when you hit me, I love you. I think you’re God, if you want to know.”) This being a comedy and Greg being athwart the male menopause, he falls, sort of, for Sylvia, thereby triggering a five-alarm inter-species crisis.

I didn’t see Sarah Jessica Parker, who created the role of Sylvia in 1995, but I did catch the Florida Repertory Theatre’s superb 2011 revival, directed by Maureen Heffernan, in which Michelle Damato played the poodle perfectly. Unlike Ms. Heffernan, who saw that “Sylvia” is a serious comedy about marriage that is even funnier when played straight, Mr. Sullivan bangs on the punch lines: Ms. Ashford, who won a Tony last year for overacting in “You Can’t Take It With You,” nails the crotch-sniffing canine slapstick but is self-consciously cute…

Here we go again: Émile Zola’s “Thérèse Raquin,” which by my admittedly approximate count has been turned into seven plays, five films, five TV movies, three mini-series, two musicals and two operas, is back on Broadway, this time as a sexed-up vehicle for Keira Knightley, the latest aging screen idol (for a female movie star, 30 is old) to succumb to the wiles of the Roundabout Theatre Company.

It stands to reason that the erstwhile heroine of “Pirates of the Caribbean” should be making her American stage debut as Zola’s desire-crazed murderess, since his 1867 novel, stripped of its police-report prose, plays like a Bette Davis movie, with Young Bette as Thérèse and Old Bette (Judith Light) as her mother-in-law. Any way you gnaw it, though, “Thérèse Raquin” is a dreary hambone that once was shocking but is now quaint, and Helen Edmundson, whose sole previous Broadway credit was the inept 2007 stage version of “Coram Boy,” has done no better by Zola. The pacing is arthritic—it takes a good 40 minutes for the plot to get rolling—and the dialogue is…well, like this: “Sometimes I think the water is a creature. A silent animal that pretends it doesn’t see me.” As for Ms. Knightley, she gives the kind of flat, underprojected performance you’d expect from an untrained Broadway debutante with limited stage experience…

* * *

To read my review of Sylvia, go here.

To read my review of Thérèse Raquin, go here.

Replay: Arthur Miller talks about his work

October 30, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAAn excerpt from an interview with Arthur Miller originally telecast by the CBC in 1971:

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

Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on great expectations

October 30, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness.”

Flannery O’Connor, letter to Cecil Dawkins, Dec. 9, 1958

So you want to see a show?

October 29, 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, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Fool for Love (drama, R, most performances sold out last week, closes Dec. 13, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, virtually all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder (musical, PG-13, many performances sold out last week, closes Jan. 17, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hand to God (black comedy, X, absolutely not for children or prudish adults, closes Jan. 3, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, reviewed here)
• Spring Awakening (musical, PG-13/R, closes Jan. 24, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, ideal for bright children, remounting of Broadway production, original production reviewed here)
• Eclipsed (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 29, reviewed here)
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)
• The Flick (serious comedy, PG-13, too long for young people with limited attention spans, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:
• The Price (drama, PG-13, closes Nov. 22, reviewed here)

BN-KS891_NYFIRS_P_20151013132641CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:
• First Daughter Suite (serious musical, PG-13, extended through Nov. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:
• The Tempest (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Nov. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:
• Sweet Charity (musical, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND IN ASHLAND, OREGON:
• Sweat (drama, PG-13, closes Saturday, reviewed here)
• Guys and Dolls (musical, G, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

CLOSING THIS WEEKEND OFF BROADWAY:
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare, PG-13, remounting of Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival production, closes Saturday, original production reviewed here)
• Unseamly (serious comedy, R, closes Sunday, reviewed here)

Almanac: Colette on solitude

October 29, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Only, well…There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.”

Colette, The Vagabond (trans. Enid McLeod)

Snapshot: Sviatoslav Richter plays Prokofiev

October 28, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERASviatoslav Richter plays excerpts from Prokofiev’s Visions fugitives, Op. 22, in an undated film of a concert performance. He plays Nos. 14, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 15, and 18:

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

Almanac: Bertrand Russell on Lenin’s sense of humor

October 28, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“When I met Lenin, I had much less impression of a great man than I had expected; my most vivid impressions were of Mongolian cruelty and bigotry. When I put a question to him about socialism in agriculture, he explained with glee how he had incited the poorer peasants against the richer ones, ‘and they soon hanged them from the nearest tree—ha! ha! ha!’ His guffaw at the thought of those massacred made my blood run cold.”

Bertrand Russell, “Eminent Men I Have Known” (courtesy of Richard Brookhiser)

Lookback: could Victor Borge really play piano?

October 27, 2015 by Terry Teachout

LOOKBACKFrom 2005:

Borge’s act resembled a straight piano recital gone wrong. He’d start to play a familiar piece like Clair de lune or the “Moonlight” Sonata, then swerve off in some improbable-sounding direction, never getting around to finishing what he started. Yet he was clearly an accomplished pianist, though few of his latter-day fans had any idea how good he’d been (he studied with Egon Petri, Busoni’s greatest pupil). He usually made a point of playing a piece from start to finish toward the end of every concert, and I remember how delighted I was each time I heard him ripple through one of Ignaz Friedman’s bittersweet Viennese-waltz arrangements, which he played with a deceptively nonchalant old-world panache that never failed to leave me longing for an encore. Alas, he never obliged, and in later years I found myself wondering whether he’d really been quite so fine as my memory told me.

This story has a happy ending….

Read the whole thing here.

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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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