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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 16, 2018

Black as sin

February 16, 2018 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the U.S. premiere of Hangmen, Martin McDonagh’s most recent play. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Talk about lucky: “Hangmen,” Martin McDonagh’s latest play, has opened off Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company at the same moment that “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” his latest film, is stirring up heated Oscar talk. But unlike “Three Billboards,” which is peppered with grotesque humor but whose tone is not essentially comic, “Hangmen” is a galvanizingly black farce about a subject—capital punishment—that few view as a laughing matter. Such is Mr. McDonagh’s way: He is never more serious than when playing the clown, and “Hangmen” is a deadly serious play that is also (forgive me) chokingly funny. In this respect it recalls Joe Orton’s “Entertaining Mr. Sloane,” the difference being that Mr. Orton’s first audiences were far more shockable. Back in 1965, “Sloane” closed on Broadway after just 13 performances. “Hangmen,” by contrast, is selling out every show, and I expect it would continue to do so were this glitteringly well-staged version, a remount of the play’s 2015 London premiere, to move uptown to a Broadway house—as it absolutely should.

Like much of Mr. McDonagh’s other work, “Three Billboards” very much included, “Hangmen” is both a snapshot of provincial life at its most claustrophobic and a secular parable about the corrupting effects of vengefulness on the human soul….

“Hangmen,” like “Three Billboards,” scrupulously avoids in-your-face point-making, demanding instead that the audience connect the dots without prompting and insisting on a moral ambiguity that will doubtless discomfit viewers who prefer always to know exactly who’s wearing the black hat and who the white. That’s the idea: Mr. McDonagh wants you to think, and it is his genius to do so by first making you laugh yourself silly….

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for the HD theatrical telecast of the original London production of Hangmen:

Replay: Igor Stravinsky conducts his Firebird Suite

February 16, 2018 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAIgor Stravinsky leads the NHK Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the 1945 version of his Firebird Suite, performed at the Osaka International Festival on May 1, 1959:

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

Almanac: Nero Wolfe on coincidence

February 16, 2018 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.”

Rex Stout, Champagne for One

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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