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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 12, 2017

Ordinary heroine

May 12, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the world premiere in New Haven of Amy Herzog’s Mary Jane. Here’s an excerpt.

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Plays whose subjects can be summed up in one word—abortion, divorce, Trump—are prone to be preachy. They needn’t be, though, and Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane,” a play about caregiving, steers clear of every potentially fatal trap that lies in wait for an issue-driven playwright. Not only is it devoid of sermonizing, but Ms. Herzog has taken a topic that lends itself to six-hanky sentimentality and written about it in a plain-spoken, unmanipulative way. The result, exceptionally well directed by Anne Kauffman, is the best new play so far this year, one that will surely make a stir when it transfers from the Yale Repertory Theatre to the New York Theatre Workshop this fall.

The first act of “Mary Jane” takes place in the shabby little Queens apartment that the title character (Emily Donohoe), a preternaturally good-humored working woman and single mother, shares with Alex, her two-and-a-half-year-old child, who suffers from cerebral palsy. We never see Alex, who sleeps in the next room and cannot speak (he has a paralyzed vocal chord). Instead, we watch Mary Jane interact with a varied group of other women—a doctor, a nurse, the superintendent of her building, a Buddhist nun whom she meets in the hospital—who help her carry her cruel load….

Nothing much happens in “Mary Jane,” which is part conversation piece and part character study. Yet Ms. Herzog tells her tale so skillfully that it is as tense and enthralling as a mystery, while Ms. Donahoe is completely convincing in a role that in less accomplished hands could quite easily seem too good to be true, that of an ordinary woman who copes with a brutally stressful situation in a manner for which the only possible word is heroic….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The cast of Mary Jane talks about the play:

Replay: Bill Monroe plays “Blue Grass Breakdown”

May 12, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERABill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys perform his “Blue Grass Breakdown” on a 1965 episode of National Life Grand Ole Opry. In addition to Monroe on mandolin, the members of the band are Gene Lowinger on fiddle, Don Lineburger on banjo, Pete Rowan on guitar, and James Monroe on bass:

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

Almanac: David Gelernter on artificial intelligence

May 12, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Artificial Intelligence is going nowhere until we have mastered Artificial Emotion. AI will continue to solve particular, set problems brilliantly, as it has been doing with slowly-increasing prowess since the 1950s, but AI software won’t show a glimmer of originality or creativity, which are essential to the very idea of thought, until it can simulate emotion as accurately as it does other mental phenomena.”

David Gelernter, interviewed by Conor Friedersdorf (The Atlantic, Feb. 23, 2017)

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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