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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 14, 2017

My back pages

July 14, 2017 by Terry Teachout

This blog is my diary, the only one I’ve ever managed to keep for more than a couple of months. It is, to be sure, a specifically public diary: there are any number of important aspects of my life about which I’ve chosen to say nothing here. On the other hand, I’ve posted more than 12,000 entries since I opened up shop fourteen years ago today, and among them are a fair number of miniature essays that I think have been passably revealing, including some of the entries to which I linked when “About Last Night” turned ten in 2003.

On occasion—not often, but once in a while—I flip randomly through the “pages” of my electronic diary, and whenever I do, I’m often reminded of things about which I’d either forgotten or hadn’t recalled for ages. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, I stumbled across this 2009 account of my improvised climb to the summit of Oregon’s 7,533-foot-high Mount Ashland, and marveled at the wonderful foolhardiness that inspired me to walk to the top alone and without preparation of any kind. (Yes, I’m glad I did it. No, I wouldn’t do it again.)

The great thing about keeping a diary, be it public or private, is the way in which it reminds you of such adventures, which have a way of slipping through the cracks of a crowded life, especially if you’re the kind of person who, like me, tends as a matter of course to look forward rather than backward.

Whenever I do have occasion to think about my life, I’m struck by how it’s been a succession of surprises, never more so than in the decade and a half that I’ve been chronicling it day by day. Among many other things, I never expected to become a drama critic, to live in a sunlit Upper Manhattan apartment full of modern art, to fall in love at first sight and marry, to write biographies of George Balanchine, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, to win a Guggenheim Fellowship and go to the MacDowell Colony, or to become an opera librettist and playwright and, most recently, a stage director.

That most of these surprises came after my fiftieth birthday is very probably the biggest surprise of all. Most fifty-year-olds are content to play the hand that life has dealt them. That was what my parents did, and I always assumed that I’d do the same. Instead, I ended up drawing a handful of new cards, and writing in this space about how I played them. I won’t say that I regret nothing—no honest person, not even a saint, regrets nothing—but truth to tell, there’s damned little that I do regret.

If the past fourteen years have taught me anything, it’s not to try to predict what will happen in the next fourteen minutes, much less the next fourteen years. Perhaps I’ve run out my string of surprises. I suspect not. I still have several unsatisfied ambitions, and I’m determined to make at least a few of them come true. But if it’s my destiny to coast downhill from here to the dark encounter that awaits us all, then my plan is to enjoy the rest of the trip insofar as possible, and to revel in my blog-enriched memories of all the wonderful things that I’ve gotten to do so far.

I can’t say it often enough: I’m a lucky guy.

* * *

Louis Armstrong and the All Stars perform “What a Wonderful World” on the BBC in 1967:

Too young to go steady

July 14, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Public Theater’s new production of Hamlet. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Sam Gold is a top contender for the title of America’s Hottest Stage Director. A still-new face who made his professional debut less than a decade ago, everything he does these days attracts attention. Nor is he any kind of phony: I’ve been quite impressed by some of his shows, “Fun Home” in particular. On the other hand, certain of Mr. Gold’s other productions have showed signs of an ostentatious, self-regarding austerity that is the mark of a director who cares more for his interpretations than the plays that he’s interpreting. It’s suggestive that his revivals tend to be less sure-footed than his productions of new plays…

All of which brings us to Mr. Gold’s new Public Theater production of “Hamlet.” Like his “Othello,” in which Daniel Craig played Iago, it’s a vehicle for a movie star, in this case Oscar Isaac, lately of “X-Men: Apocalypse,” whose mere presence in the cast ensured that tickets to “Hamlet” would be as scarce as orchestra seats for “Hamilton.” Nevertheless, this Hamlet is no stunt: Mr. Isaac, like Mr. Craig, is an accomplished actor with classical training and extensive stage experience, and there’s a good reason why Mr. Gold should have chosen to work with a man who looks much younger than his 38 years. His “Hamlet” is all about youth—youth and the intimacy made possible by the fact that the Public is presenting the play in its 275-seat Anspacher Theater, where everyone in the audience is no farther from the playing area than a pebble’s toss….

It’s a conversational “Hamlet,” one well suited to the tastes of theatrical novices who’ve never seen a Shakespeare play and might well be discomfited by the space-filling rhetoric of classical acting. But it’s no less serious in purpose for its modesty of scale, and if it isn’t exactly my kind of “Hamlet,” it’s still exciting in its own up-close-and-personal way….

Mr. Isaac’s performance would make little sense in a large theater, for his throaty, colorless tenor doesn’t have anything like the range and rainbow-like vocal variety of a true classicist. Nevertheless, his interpretation is singularly intelligent—every line reading is fresh and spontaneous…

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

Replay: The Mills Brothers sing “Lazy River”

July 14, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAThe Mills Brothers sing Hoagy Carmichael’s “Lazy River,” Sidney Arodin and Hoagy Carmichael. This “soundie,” which was originally filmed to be played on video jukeboxes, was released in 1944:

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

Almanac: G.K. Chesterton on the accumulation of wealth

July 14, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.”

G.K. Chesterton, “The Paradise of Thieves”

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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