• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

You are here: Home / 2016 / May / Archives for 19th

Archives for May 19, 2016

A playwright, not a cartoonist

May 19, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I sift through The Blue Touch Paper, David Hare’s recently published memoir, for clues to his distinctive approach to political theater. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

David Hare is back—though not on Broadway. “The Judas Kiss,” his 1998 play about the travails of Oscar Wilde, is being revived at Brooklyn’s BAM Harvey Theater in a West End transfer starring Rupert Everett that seems likely to be, at the very least, a succès d’estime, if only because the Obama administration’s ukase on transgender bathrooms in public schools has just rung the media bell. No doubt Mr. Hare is thrilled by the coincidence, since he’s a political artist through and through. Witness “The Blue Touch Paper,” his recently published memoir, in which he declares himself to have been a playwright who “was always happiest when I had a cause.”

David-Hare-002Outside of a pair of favorable notices in the New York Times, “The Blue Touch Paper” received only modest attention when it came out in the U.S. in November. That stands to reason: Mr. Hare isn’t nearly as well known over here as he is in England. Several of his plays, most notably “The Judas Kiss,” “Plenty,” “Skylight” and “The Vertical Hour,” have been staged on Broadway, but none has been a hit. Yet his place in the annals of postwar drama is both secure and well deserved, not least because he is that rarity of rarities, a political playwright who is also a first-class artist.

To be sure, Mr. Hare occasionally lets his passions override his artistic judgment, as he did in 2006 with “Stuff Happens,” a coarse, smug documentary play about the Gulf War that shed no light on its subject. Far more often than not, though, he writes plays of ideas in which—like George Bernard Shaw, his eminent predecessor—he creates “villains” who are fully rounded creatures of flesh and blood….

“Using the theatre either to lecture or to parade your virtuous beliefs excludes the audience and leaves them with nothing to do,” he writes. “They hate you for it, because it insults their intelligence. Worse, it insults their experience of life. A good play is there not to close minds but to open them.”

Makes sense, right? Of course—to people who look to art to show them the world as it is. But to those for whom a play is not a potentially persuasive study of human character but a blunt instrument, Mr. Hare’s commonsense approach is anathema….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Laura Rook and Philip Earl Johnson in a scene from the Court Theatre’s 2013 Chicago revival of Skylight, directed by William Brown:

So you want to see a show?

May 19, 2016 by Terry Teachout

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:
• An American in Paris (musical, G, too complex for small children, reviewed here)
• The Color Purple (musical, PG-13, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Eclipsed (drama, PG-13, Broadway remounting of off-Broadway production, closes June 19, original production reviewed here)
• Fully Committed (comedy, PG-13, closes July 24, reviewed here)
• Fun Home (serious musical, PG-13, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• Hamilton (musical, PG-13, Broadway transfer of off-Broadway production, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)
• The King and I (musical, G, perfect for children with well-developed attention spans, reviewed here)
• Matilda (musical, G, closing Jan. 1, reviewed here)
• Les Misérables (musical, G, too long and complicated for young children, closes Sept. 4, reviewed here)
• On Your Feet! (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)
• She Loves Me (musical, G, suitable for bright children capable of enjoying a love story, many performances sold out last week, closes July 10, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:
• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

bs-bsh-bsh-bs-ae-arts-story-0415-p1-jpg-20160412IN BALTIMORE:
• Death of a Salesman (drama, PG-13, closes June 12, reviewed here)
• A Streetcar Named Desire (drama, PG-13, closes June 12, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN CHICAGO:
• Mary Page Marlowe (drama, PG-13, closes June 5, reviewed here)

Almanac: W.H. Auden on the nastiness of artists

May 19, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Real artists are not nice people; all their best feelings go into their work, and life has the residue.”

W.H. Auden, letter to his brother (1927, quoted in Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex, Death and Punishment)

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

May 2016
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Apr   Jun »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Just because: Victor Borge’s “phonetic punctuation” routine
  • Almanac: Philip Roth on the mental confusion of man
  • Choking on chaos
  • Replay: Edward R. Murrow interviews Tyrone Power in 1957
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on agnosticism

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in