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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for October 30, 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.

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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

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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