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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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A world made by madmen

October 16, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the off-Broadway transfer of Eclipsed, a new Broadway revival of The Gin Game, and the New York premiere of Unseamly. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

6.214538“Eclipsed,” Danai Gurira’s 2009 play about how a group of African women struggled to survive the Second Liberian Civil War, just moved from the Yale Repertory Theater to the Public Theater. It has reached New York largely—perhaps entirely—because of the fortuitous addition to the cast of Lupita Nyong’o, lately and famously of “12 Years a Slave.” Whatever the reason, you must not miss it.

To be sure, “Eclipsed” is oddly undramatic. Indeed, it feels less like a play than a fictionalized documentary—but one of genius, a deceptively bald piece of storytelling in which the everyday details of life during wartime are charged with overwhelming emotional import. At its heart are three “wives” (Saycon Sengbloh, Pascale Armand and Ms. Nyong’o) of a never-seen warlord who live in a bullet-pocked hut near the front lines, huddled together in the hope of escaping the insensate violence of a world made by hate-driven madmen…

Broadway has itself a surefire hit: “The Gin Game,” D.L. Coburn’s Pulitzer-winning two-character “tragi-comedy” (his word) about nursing-home life, is now being revived on Broadway for the second time, with James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson playing the roles created in 1977 by Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy….

635798225272575144-Gin-Game-Jones-TysonUnfortunately, Leonard Foglia, the director, seems not to understand that there’s more to “The Gin Game” than jokes. Mr. Cronyn, who had the signal advantage of being directed by Mike Nichols, crackled with the touch-me-not rage of a once-independent man who now lives on welfare and plays cards all day in a crumbling old-age home. When he said “I guess we just lived too long” to Ms. Tandy, you knew he wasn’t kidding. When Mr. Jones says it, you want to hug him and go “Aaaww.”…

Oren Safdie, whose “Private Jokes, Public Places,” a coruscatingly witty play of ideas about starchitecture, was one of the highlights of 2003, is back in town. This time his target, though just as contemporary, is of potentially wider interest: “Unseamly” is a three-hander about a sexual-harassment case in which the harasser bears a distinct resemblance to Dov Charney, the ex-CEO of American Apparel, who got canned by his board last year for much the same kind of behavior and who, er, just happens to be Mr. Safdie’s cousin….

“Unseamly” is smart, fast, filthy and funny….

* * *

To read my review of Eclipsed, go here.

To read my review of The Gin Game, go here.

To read my review of Unseamly, go here.

The trailer for the Yale Repertory Theatre production of Eclipsed:

A live stage performance of the original production of The Gin Game, starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and directed by Mike Nichols. It was taped in London in 1980 and telecast on PBS the following year:

Replay: Benedict Cumberbatch plays Tom Stoppard

October 16, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERABenedict Cumberbatch and Kobna Holdbrook-Smit perform an excerpt from Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This performance, which took place at London’s Olivier Theatre, was part of a 2013 celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the National Theatre, which gave the play its London premiere in 1967:

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

Almanac: Lewis Thomas on living too long

October 16, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“We hanker to go on, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time.”

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

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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