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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for March 22, 2019

“Ride” of a lifetime

March 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review two premieres, John Guare’s Nantucket Sleigh Ride and Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. Here’s an excerpt.

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Now that Edward Albee and Horton Foote have left us, John Guare would seem to have emerged as the unofficial dean of the American stage. He certainly deserves the title, and not merely because of his seniority: Mr. Guare long ago established himself as one of the most important playwrights of the postwar era. Yet “dean” is an oddly formal-sounding word to apply to a man who may be old—81, to be exact—but is nonetheless best known for such theatrical roller-coaster rides as “The House of Blue Leaves” (1971), “Landscape of the Body” (1977) and “Six Degrees of Separation” (1990), which are as dark as it’s possible to be but whose essential energy is comic to the point of outright zaniness. 

“Nantucket Sleigh Ride,” Mr. Guare’s latest play, is all of a piece with its predecessors, a blackish farce about an aging playwright-turned-businessman who steps on a spiritual banana peel and finds himself flung back into the past. It’s the first full-scale play that Mr. Guare has written in some time, and in light of his protracted silence, it’s fair to wonder whether he still has his fast ball. Not to worry, though: “Nantucket Sleigh Ride” is as good as anything he’s given us. Indeed, it strikes me on first viewing that he might possibly have produced a bonafide old-age masterpiece…

“Ain’t Too Proud,” the new Temptations jukebox biomusical, is a Broadway musical for people who don’t like Broadway musicals—or maybe for people who like only jukebox biomusicals. The score, which includes such chart-topping hits of the Sixties and Seventies as “My Girl” and “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” is terrific, as are the singing and pit band, but Sergio Trujillo’s choreography is way too slick—the real-life Temptations moved like street-corner kids from Detroit, not glammed-up 42ndStreet gypsies—and the projection-heavy set design is ploddingly dull. As for Dominique Morisseau’s book, it sounds as though a roomful of ad executives wrote it.…

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To read my review of Nantucket Sleigh Ride, go here.

To read my review of Ain’t Too Proud, go here.

Replay: an interview with Laurence Olivier

March 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Laurence Olivier is interviewed by Michael Parkinson about his film career on Cinema. This program was originally telecast by Granada Television on November 19, 1970:

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

Almanac: George Saintsbury on connoisseurship

March 22, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“Here, as else- and every-where in criticism, not only the hardest thing but also the hardest thing to get recognized when attained, is the appreciation of difference without insisting on superiority.”

George Saintsbury, Notes on a Cellar-Book

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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