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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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A new home for a great company

April 8, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review two important out-of-town revivals, Writers Theatre’s Arcadia and Repstage’s Hunting and Gathering. Here’s an excerpt.

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Writers-Theatre-01The best regional drama company in America now has a home worthy of its shows—and is putting on a show worthy of its new home.

Writers Theatre, located in Glencoe, an affluent suburb of Chicago, has just moved into a two-stage complex designed by Jeanne Gang and Studio Gang Architects that is the finest piece of theatrical construction to be built in this country in the past decade. The main stage is housed in a three-quarter-round auditorium with arena-style seating that is similar in layout to its 108-seat predecessor but considerably larger. At the same time, Ms. Gang’s design preserves the up-close-and-personal intimacy that has long been the company’s trademark: You’ll never see a smaller-looking 250-seat theater….

arcadiaw2Such a theater deserves to be launched with supreme éclat, and Michael Halberstam, the company’s artistic director, has delivered the goods with a production of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” that is far superior to the ill-fated 2011 Broadway revival. “Arcadia” is, of course, one of the greatest English-language plays of the postwar era, a highbrow whodunit that starts out as a sparkling artificial comedy about extramarital lust, then gradually evolves into a poetic meditation on the philosophico-romantic implications of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Like all of Mr. Stoppard’s plays, it’s intellectually challenging, but Mr. Halberstam’s cast wafts the audience over the knottier stretches…

Mr. Halberstam and Collette Pollard, his set designer, have made imaginative use of the new stage, exploring its seemingly limitless resources with consummate skill….

HUNTING PHOTORarely have I been more impressed by a young playwright than when I saw Brooke Berman’s “Hunting and Gathering” performed by Primary Stages in 2008. A super-smart portrait of urban love in the age of craigslist, it left no doubt that Ms. Berman had talent to burn, a first impression that was subsequently confirmed by “No Place Like Home,” her 2010 memoir. Not having caught anything else by her since then and wondering how “Hunting and Gathering” would hold up on a second viewing, I paid a visit to the suburban belt that links Baltimore and Washington to see it done by Repstage, a professional company in residence at Howard Community College. I was struck all over again by the craftsmanship of this tightly wrought romcom (90 minutes, no intermission, not a dull moment) about four New Yorkers (Daniel Corey, Rex Daugherty, Alina Collins Maldonado and Kathryn Tkel) who are struggling with the rootless, marginal grab-and-go life of apartment-sitting and couch-surfing that today’s millennials know all too well….

* * *

To read my review of Arcadia, go here.

To read my review of Hunting and Gathering, go here.

A scene from Writers Theatre’s production of Arcadia:

An interview with Brooke Berman, the author of Hunting and Gathering:

Replay: Dave Dudley sings “Six Days on the Road”

April 8, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERADave Dudley sings “Six Days on the Road” on TV in 1970:

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

Almanac: Shakespeare on the big-lie technique

April 8, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“He will lie, sir, with such volubility, that you would think truth were a fool.”

William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

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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