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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Below the surface, a man’s world

November 3, 2017 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Lincoln Center Theater premieres of two new plays, Zoe Kazan’s After the Blast and Ayad Akhtar’s Junk. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Zoe Kazan, one of New York’s finest under-40 actors, is also a playwright and screenwriter of uncommon talent. “Ruby Sparks,” her first screenplay, was a romcom with a feminist edge that had something exceedingly thoughtful to say about the tendency of men to idealize women instead of accepting them as they really are. “After the Blast,” Ms. Kazan’s fourth stage play, is as thoughtful and well-made as “Ruby Sparks,” and it pulls off the bedazzling feat of taking a hyper-politicized topic—climate change—and using it as the occasion for a taut, sermon-free drama whose true subject is, once again, the inability of men and women to see each other plain.

“After the Blast” is a science-fiction play, a dystopian fantasy set in “the near future” whose eight characters include a robot. The premise, which Ms. Kazan leaves suggestively vague, is that the surface of the earth has been laid waste by a nuclear exchange that punched more holes in the ozone layer, thus forcing a saving remnant of highly intelligent men and women to move underground while everyone else is left to starve. The male survivors, most of whom are scientists, then devote themselves to fixing the environment, while the women mostly look after them and bear their children—but only if the Council, a deceptively soft technological tyranny, decides that they should be allowed to reproduce….

Ms. Kazan introduces us to her principal characters, a married couple named Anna (Cristin Milioti) and Oliver (William Jackson Harper) who are, as he explains in the first scene, “still waiting to receive Fertility.” They have only one chance left to pass the test and become parents, for Anna suffers from a potentially disqualifying case of depression caused by her inability to cope with the stresses of underground life.

In order to coax Anna back to emotional health, Oliver brings home a “Helper,” a home-assistance robot that must, he tells her, be trained to interact with humans so that it can be placed in the homes of older people who are no longer capable of living alone. In the process of teaching the robot how to talk, Anna bonds with it…

Ayad Akhtar’s “Junk” is a parable of late capitalism whose villain-in-chief is a junk-bond salesman named, none too discreetly, “Robert Merkin” (Steven Pasquale). It’s performed at breakneck speed by a budget-busting cast of 23 actors, an ensemble so huge that it would have taken a Tom Stoppard—or a Shakespeare—to portray the individual characters as anything other than stick figures. Mr. Akhtar is talented, but not that talented…

* * *

To read my review of After the Blast, go here.

To read my review of Junk, go here.

A montage of scenes from After the Blast:

A montage of scenes from Junk:

Replay: Herman Wouk appears on What’s My Line?

November 3, 2017 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAHerman Wouk, the author of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar, appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Fred Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on October 23, 1955:

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

Almanac: Thomas Beecham on the purpose of music

November 3, 2017 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.”

Thomas Beecham (quoted in Harold Atkins and Archie Newman, Beecham Stories: Anecdotes, Sayings and Impressions of Sir Thomas Beecham)

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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