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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 25, 2016

The things we do for money

March 25, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two New York shows, an off-Broadway revival of George Bernard Shaw’s Widowers’ Houses and the Broadway premiere of Bright Star. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

No playwright has ever made a more spectacularly self-assured debut than George Bernard Shaw, who blasted off the theatrical launching pad in 1892 with “Widowers’ Houses,” a refreshingly unpreachy comedy about the evils of capitalism that ought to be as popular as “Pygmalion.” Instead, it’s mostly forgotten save by Shaw scholars: “Widowers’ Houses” was last performed on Broadway in 1907, and until TACT/The Actors Company Theatre’s new production opened off Broadway, I’d seen it done only once, by Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre eight summers ago. Fortunately, TACT’s revival, directed by David Staller, is a winner, a small-scale staging that’s as full of Shavian sparkle as the play itself.

90Shaw ranked “Widowers’ Houses” among his “unpleasant” plays, since it deals with the grim subject of urban poverty. But he knew that the only way to get most people to think about unpleasant things is to make them laugh, and so he concocted a fizzy boulevard comedy à la Oscar Wilde whose anti-hero, Sartorius (Terry Layman), is a rich, self-consciously pompous fellow who is looking to marry off Blanche (Talene Monahon), his difficult daughter, to a well-bred gent in need of a fortune. Enter Harry (Jeremy Beck), a doctor from a suitable family that lives on its income. So what’s the problem? Just this: Sartorius is a notorious slumlord who makes his money by “screwing” rent (Shaw’s word) out of the impoverished occupants of the rundown tenements that he owns….

Brian Prather’s set is simple but suggestive, and the cast has been selected with the greatest of care: Mr. Layman is sumptuously rich-voiced, while Ms. Monahon plays Blanche as a startlingly predatory vampire whose ill-gotten fortune any prudent man would think twice about hunting….

Steve Martin is, among many other things, a good banjo player who writes not-so-great plays. Now he’s branched out by writing a really bad bluegrass-pop musical. In “Bright Star,” directed by Walter Bobbie, Mr. Martin and Edie Brickell, a singer-songwriter with whom he has made two albums, tell the story of a painfully earnest young writer from the hills of North Carolina (A.J. Shively) who comes home from World War II and sells a painfully earnest short story to a prestigious Asheville quarterly edited by an unhappy woman (Carmen Cusack) with a terrible secret—or, rather, a Terrible Secret, this being the kind of show that is constructed exclusively out of upper-case clichés….

* * *

To read my review of Widowers’ Houses, go here.

To read my review of Bright Star, go here.

The trailer for TACT’s Widowers’ Houses:

The TV commercial for Bright Star:

Replay: Kim Stanley plays Big Mama in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

March 25, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAA scene from the American Playhouse TV version of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Jack Hofsiss. Tommy Lee Jones plays Brick, Jessica Lange plays Maggie, Kim Stanley plays Big Mama, and Rip Torn plays Big Daddy. The performance was telecast on PBS in 1984:

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

Almanac: Emerson on partisanship

March 25, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry, June 20, 1831

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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