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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for November 27, 2015

Girls’ night off

November 27, 2015 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on an all-male revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Here’s an excerpt.

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How do you make the funniest musical ever written even funnier? Jessica Stone has answered that question by staging “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” with an all-male cast at Two River Theater. This new wrinkle is so appropriate that merely to hear it makes you smack your forehead and cry, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, you didn’t: The idea belongs to Ms. Stone, a fresh face who first came to my attention when she directed a frisky, poignant revival of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” in August at Pennsylvania’s Bucks County Playhouse. Most of the 12 cast members in Two River’s scaled-down production of “Funny Thing,” an earlier version of which was seen in 2010 at the Williamstown Theater Festival, double as men and women (the original 1962 Broadway production called for 10 men and 8 women). Nor is her innovation a trendy gimmick: It is, instead, central to the success of this ingenious staging, which amps up the comic effect of every punch line so high that you’ll be out of breath at intermission. If laughter really is the best medicine, then Ms. Stone’s “Funny Thing” will lengthen your life span by at least a decade.

108739One reason why it works so well is that Ms. Stone has followed to the letter Stephen Sondheim’s shrewd advice not to stage the musical as “mere camp.” Accordingly, her “women” are men dressed in Milton Berle-style drag. They act like women—sort of—but don’t look like them in the least. Philia (David Turner), the Roman courtesan with whom Hero (Bobby Conte Thornton) falls hopelessly in love, isn’t even pretty and wears a wig that could have come from a dime store. cMs. Stone’s purpose is to present the well-worn dumb-blonde stereotypes utilized by Mr. Sondheim, Larry Gelbart and Burt Shevelove, the authors of “Funny Thing” (as well as Plautus, the third-century Roman playwright on whose farces it is freely based), in a new light. “It feels like an all-male show already because these female roles are male constructs,” she explained in a recent interview. If, then, they are played by male actors whose maleness is immediately obvious to the audience, the absurdity of the stereotypes will become just as obvious.

When I first read Ms. Stone’s explanation of what she sought to do, I feared that I’d let myself in for a two-and-a-half-hour lecture on the Evils of the Male Gaze. Nothing doing: Not only does she appreciate how head-bangingly funny “A Funny Thing” is, but she’s a top-class farceuse who has mastered the complex art of making sure that every door in a stage farce slams at exactly the right split-second….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum:

Zero Mostel sings “Comedy Tonight” (from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) on the 1971 Tony Awards telecast:

Replay: Mark Morris dances “Dido’s Lament”

November 27, 2015 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAAn excerpt from Mark Morris’ dance version of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas, performed by the Mark Morris Dance Group and originally telecast in 1995. Morris dances the role of Dido, which is sung by Jennifer Lane. The film was directed by Barbara Willis Sweete:

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

Almanac: Rebecca West on censorship

November 27, 2015 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.”

Rebecca West, “The Tosh Horse”

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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