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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Yet all shall be forgot

October 26, 2018 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the first Broadway production of Kenneth Lonergan’s The Waverly Gallery and the U.S. premiere of Jez Butterworth’s The Ferryman. Here’s an excerpt.

* * *

Broadway has caught up with Kenneth Lonergan, America’s greatest living dramatist, who has now had three of his six full-length plays produced there in the past four seasons, all of them masterly and all satisfyingly well-mounted. “The Waverly Gallery,” first performed in 1999, is an autobiographical memory play narrated by a young man whose grandmother suffers from dementia. It is a harrowingly honest group portrait of the havoc wrought by that disease, not only on those who have it but on those who love them, and this revival, directed with uncommon grace by Lila Neugebauer, is a close-to-ideal enactment of what might just be Mr. Lonergan’s most gripping stage play to date—which is saying something.

The family portrayed in “The Waverly Gallery” is a gaggle of what one of its members tartly describes as “liberal Upper West Side atheistic Jewish intellectuals.” Gladys (Elaine May), the matriarch, runs an art gallery that went to seed when her memory started to crumble. By now she is keeping it open just to have something to do all day, with her daughter (Joan Allen), son-in-law (David Cromer) and grandson (Lucas Hedges) doing all that they can to look after her, a task well on the way to becoming impossible…

Ms. May is not, of course, a stage actor—my guess is that she’s being miked—but her lack of experience in that specialized capacity doesn’t stop her from giving a performance that blends bewilderment with courage in a way that is beautifully, heartbreakingly right….

“The Ferryman,” Jez Butterworth’s new play, which has transferred to Broadway after a successful London run, is a kind of Irish counterpart of “August: Osage County,” a three-and-a-quarter-hour study of a close-knit rural family that is being pulled apart, in this case by the poisonous effects of political fanaticism. Largely devoid of the self-regarding pretentiousness that made his previous plays unwatchable, it builds to an explosively potent surprise ending whose force is diminished by the fact that it takes Mr. Butterworth most of the garrulous first act to finally get down to dramatic business….

* * *

To read my review of The Waverly Gallery, go here.

To read my review of The Ferryman, go here.

Scenes from the original 2000 off-Broadway production of The Waverly Gallery, starring Eileen Heckart and directed by Scott Ellis:

Scenes from the Broadway transfer of The Ferryman:

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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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