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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 19, 2019

An act of perfect faith

July 19, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review an important regional revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth. Here’s an excerpt.

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The recent return of Thornton Wilder’s “The Skin of Our Teeth” to America’s professional stages is long overdue—though it’s easy to see why it went missing for so long. First mounted on Broadway in a 1942 production directed by Elia Kazan and starring Fredric March, Tallulah Bankhead and Montgomery Clift, “The Skin of Our Teeth” ran for 359 performances, won Wilder the third of his three Pulitzer Prizes, and was widely and rightly taken at the time to be comparable in quality to “Our Town.” But while it was soon taken up by schools and amateur troupes, the play’s large cast (30 actors) and longish running time (two hours and 40 minutes) made it too unwieldy for most professional companies to consider, and it hasn’t been seen on Broadway since 1975, when a revival directed by José Quintero closed in less than a week. 

Not until Arin Arbus’ warmly received 2017 Brooklyn staging did a new generation of playgoers rediscover and embrace the quirky beauties of “The Skin of Our Teeth.” The Berkshire Theatre Group’s new production, directed with total understanding by David Auburn, is the third version that I’ve reviewed in the past two years, and I’ll now be surprised if it doesn’t come back to Broadway sooner rather than later.

Why the collective change of heart? Because Wilder’s “fantastick comedy” (his spelling) about the history of humankind, which received its premiere when the United States was fighting a war whose outcome was as yet far from sure, was written to give hope to its viewers at a moment of high national anxiety….

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Read the whole thing here.

Replay: Stephen Sondheim rehearses “Getting Married Today”

July 19, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Stephen Sondheim gives a master class in which he rehearses a group of students from London’s Guildhall School in “Getting Married Today,” a song from Company:

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

Almanac: Sidney Lumet on tragedy in drama

July 19, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“Tragedy, when it works, leaves no room for tears.”

Sidney Lumet, Making Movies

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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