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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for January 15, 2016

Nine doors to delight

January 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review the Broadway revival of Noises Off. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Classic farce—the kind in which doors get slammed at metronomically regular intervals—is hard to write and harder to stage. Not only does it require timing of immaculately finicky exactitude to ensure that the doors slam on time without decapitating anybody, but it works only when the actors conduct themselves with poker-faced seriousness, behaving as though they’re unaware that the audience is convulsed by their humiliating plight. Nothing kills farce faster than aren’t-we-silliness….

For all these reasons, the classic fin-de-siècle farces of Georges Feydeau and their neo-classical progeny, the dark-to-black comedies of Alan Ayckbourn and Joe Orton and the “translaptations” of David Ives, are scarcely ever seen on Broadway, which favors less comedically challenging fare. But Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off,” which is widely thought (by me among others) to be the funniest play ever written, give or take Mr. Ives’ “The Liar,” is a happy exception to that gloomy rule. First seen on Broadway in 1983 and revived there in 2001, it is now being done again, this time by the Roundabout Theatre Company in a production directed by Jeremy Herrin, who made his New York debut last season with the transfer of “Wolf Hall.” This revival is as glorious as “Wolf Hall” was dull…

NO8_605x329As befits a farce, “Noises Off” is spectacularly complex, consisting as it does of a chaotic rehearsal and two even more chaotic performances of the first act of “Nothing On,” a third-rate British sex comedy that is being mounted (so to speak) by a second-rate touring troupe. It is, to put it academically, a metafarce—a farce about farce—into which Mr. Frayn has inserted a near-literal turn of the dramatic screw whose ingenuity borders on genius: The two-story set is turned around during intermission, thus allowing us to witness the calamitous events from the point of view of the hapless actors and crew….

Most theatrical rehearsals aren’t remotely as lunatic as this, of course. When things do go wrong, though, they can go really, really wrong, and every disaster portrayed in “Noises Off” has actually happened somewhere or other. What makes the play so funny is that all of them, from the first memory lapse to the last life-threatening pratfall, happen in the same show at the same time. It’s Murphy’s Law run amuck. The second act in particular is a whirligig of slapstick choreography for whose pristine execution Mr. Herrin deserves the highest possible marks.

The secret ingredient of his production is that Mr. Herrin has gone to similar lengths to ensure that every member of the cast plays for truth, not laughs—which, of course, makes you laugh twice as hard….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Highlights from the Roundabout Theatre Company’s revival of Noises Off:

Replay: Leonard Bernstein conducts his Second Symphony

January 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERA
Leonard Bernstein talks about and leads the London Symphony in a performance of his Second Symphony, “The Age of Anxiety,” inspired by W.H. Auden’s book-length poem of the same name. The piano soloist is Krystian Zimerman:

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

Once again…this is it

January 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

10672289_10153640361127193_2943054283534934845_nThe Court Theatre’s production of Satchmo at the Waldorf, starring Barry Shabaka Henley and directed by Charles Newell, opens tomorrow night in Chicago. After eight public previews, we’ll be as ready as we’re going to be.

As for me, this is my seventh opening night for Satchmo, and I’m just as excited as I was in Orlando, Lenox, New Haven, Philadelphia, New York, and Beverly Hills. It doesn’t get old.

In preparation for the great moment, I present—as I always do before my opening nights—the following clip, which I first saw on TV as a child and which in recent years has become ever more relevant to my life.

Break a leg, everybody:

Almanac: James Gould Cozzens on virtue and happiness

January 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Never believe that afflictions improve character, enlarge the understanding, or teach you charitable thoughts! The man not afflicted, the easy, open fortunate man is the likable man, the kindly man, the considerate man—in short, the man who may have time and inclination to think of someone besides himself. Be virtuous, and you’ll be happy? Nonsense! Be happy and you’ll begin to be virtuous.”

James Gould Cozzens, By Love Possessed

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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