• 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 / October / Archives for 7th

Archives for October 7, 2016

Too late, too late!

October 7, 2016 by Terry Teachout

220px-walter_bagehot_npg_cropped“The gentlemanliness of our statesmen is no secondary excellence. It was said by Burke of a great nobleman of the last century that ‘His virtues were his means’; that he accomplished by a gentle and high-minded honour what it would have been impossible to effect by coarse ability or impetuous disputation. If this great quality should die out from our political life, if it should be greatly diminished and permitted to sink gradually into decay, our political life will have lost a principal redeeming feature—our freedom will have lost one of its best securities—our statement will have lost the surest and best means of managing men.”

Walter Bagehot, “The Manners of Statesmen” (originally published in 1862 in The Economist)

See me, hear me…in Manhattan

October 7, 2016 by Terry Teachout

552355_10151297741432193_569149423_nA quick reminder: John Douglas Thompson and I are coming to the Drama Book Shop next Wednesday. We’ll be discussing, taking questions about, and signing copies of the published version of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man-three-character play about the life of Louis Armstrong, in which John has starred to spectacular effect off Broadway and from coast to coast.

The Drama Book Shop is at 250 W. 40th St. in New York. The event starts at five p.m. sharp. For more information, go here.

Wonderful Wonderful Town

October 7, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a Chicago revival of Leonard Bernstein’s Wonderful Town and the Broadway premiere of a new stage version of Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Why isn’t “Wonderful Town” more popular? It’s a fizzy, festive champagne cocktail of a musical about a pair of small-town girls who come to New York to chase their dreams. The music is by Leonard Bernstein, the lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, a triple-barreled guarantee of quality. The original 1953 Broadway production ran for 559 performances, and the 2003 revival, in which Donna Murphy took over the starring role created a half-century earlier by Rosalind Russell, was similarly successful. So why doesn’t it get done as often as “West Side Story”? What’s not to like? Judging by Mary Zimmerman’s glorious new Goodman Theatre production, the only possible answer is: not a damn thing. Flawlessly cast, wittily staged and delightfully designed, this “Wonderful Town” is good enough to hop a plane to see—and once it closes in Chicago, it deserves a Broadway run of its own.

unknown“Wonderful Town” is all about Ruth and Eileen Sherwood (Bri Sudia and Lauren Molina), two not-a-bit-alike sisters from Ohio who rent a grimy basement apartment in Greenwich Village and discover the magic of Manhattan. Ruth is a sharp-witted fledgling writer whose brains scare off men: “Just throw your knowledge in his face,/He’ll never try for second base.” Not so the unselfconsciously dizzy Eileen, whose charms are so potent that no one gives Ruth a second glance. That’s the conflict, such as it is, and just because you know from the start that they’ll both live happily ever after doesn’t mean you won’t love finding out how it comes to pass.

Ms. Zimmerman has directed “Wonderful Town” in the manner of her pared-down 2015 Oregon Shakespeare Festival revival of “Guys and Dolls.” While the funny parts are really funny, she’s fully alive to the hopeful sweetness that keeps “Wonderful Town” perpetually fresh, and her stars are on the same wavelength….

“Holiday Inn, the New Irving Berlin Musical” (that’s the official title, which tells you all you need to know) is less a show than a cash machine, a cynical repurposing of the beloved 1942 Bing Crosby-Fred Astaire film that exists solely to make as much money as possible for the Roundabout Theatre Company. It’s slick, synthetic and soulless, a musical full of robotic jokes and devoid of genuine romance…

* * *

To read my review of Wonderful Town, go here.

To read my review of Holiday Inn, go here.

Replay: Rosalind Russell stars in the TV version of Wonderful Town

October 7, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAA rare kinescope of a complete TV performance of Wonderful Town, originally broadcast live by CBS on November 30, 1958. Rosalind Russell stars as Ruth Sherwood, the role she created in the 1953 Broadway production. The cast also includes Jackie McKeever as Eileen Sherwood and Sydney Chaplin as Bob Baker. The music is by Leonard Bernstein and the lyrics are by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. The production was directed by Mel Ferber and Herbert Ross and choreographed by Ralph Beaumont:

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

Almanac: V.S. Pritchett on the meaning of life

October 7, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Life is an illness we must enjoy.”

V.S. Pritchett, “Boswell’s London”

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

October 2016
M T W T F S S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Sep   Nov »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Just because: Flannery O’Connor appears in a 1932 newsreel
  • Almanac: Flannery O’Connor on writers and their childhood
  • Simply splendid Sondheim
  • Almanac: Tennessee Williams on theatrical characters
  • What Patricia Highsmith wrought

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