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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 16, 2017

The mastery of Amy Herzog

June 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a Massachusetts revival of Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles. Here’s an excerpt.

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Amy Herzog stepped into the spotlight of theatrical notoriety when “4000 Miles,” the best play by an up-and-coming author that I’ve ever reviewed in this space, transferred to Lincoln Center Theater in 2012 after a brief off-Broadway run. It should by all rights have moved from there to Broadway, but “4000 Miles” was successful enough as is: It was taken up by regional theaters throughout America, and Ms. Herzog went on to establish herself as this country’s most gifted under-40 playwright. Now, a month after “Mary Jane,” her latest play, was premiered by the Yale Repertory Theatre, “4000 Miles” has been revived by Shakespeare & Company in a production at least as fine as the one that I saw and admired five years ago in New York….

Like her other plays, “4000 Miles” is a small-scale character study reminiscent of Chekhov in its emphasis on personality over plot. At its center is Vera (Annette Miller), a crusty 91-year-old Jewish grandmother who is teetering on the near edge of senility (the most frequently used word in her shrinking vocabulary is “whaddayacallit”) but has no intention of giving up without a fight. When Leo (Gregory Boover), her spacy 21-year-old grandson, stops in for a visit after a cross-country bicycle trip from Seattle to New York, Vera puts him up for a couple of weeks. That’s pretty much all that happens, though we also meet Bec (Emma Geer), Leo’s earnest ex-girlfriend, and Amanda (Zoë Laiz), a drunken young Chinese-American woman whom he picks up at a bar and with whom he doesn’t quite manage to have sex. For the most part, though, “4000 Miles” is all about the relationship between Vera, an unrepentant Communist, and Leo, a child of the therapeutic generation who thinks “Marx is cool” and utters sentences like “And I was like, first of all, who knows.” Separated by a yawning gulf of age and experience, they manage to meet somewhere in the middle…

This revival, staged with poignant, self-effacing delicacy by Nicole Ricciardi, is an ideal showcase for the talents of Ms. Miller, a Shakespeare & Company veteran who gives the kind of performance you’ll be talking about days after you see it. Her Vera is tough and unselfconsciously gallant, a woman whose mental powers are failing fast but who stares into the abyss with something not unlike glee. I’ve never seen a more vividly detailed stage portrayal of extreme old age—merely to see her get up from a couch is to receive an acting lesson…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

A scene from the 2012 Lincoln Center Theater production of “4000 Miles,” starring Mary Louise Wilson and Gabriel Ebert:

Replay: a 1978 TV commercial for Steely Dan’s Aja

June 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAA 1978 TV commercial for Aja, an album by Steely Dan. The voiceover is by Eartha Kitt:

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

Almanac: Randall Jarrell on great criticism

June 16, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“Taking the chance of making a complete fool of himself—and, sometimes, doing so—is the first demand that is made upon any real critic: he must stick his neck out just as the artist does, if he is to be of any real use to art.”

Randall Jarrell, “The Age of Criticism”

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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