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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Kitten into queen

September 27, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review an off-Broadway revival of Caesar and Cleopatra and the Broadway transfer of The Height of the Storm. Here’s an excerpt.

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It used to be that the major plays of George Bernard Shaw all got revived on Broadway with fair frequency—but no more. “Caesar and Cleopatra,” for instance, was last seen there in a poorly reviewed 1977 version starring Rex Harrison and Elizabeth Ashley that closed in ignominy after just 12 performances. Since then, no fully staged “Caesar and Cleopatra” has been produced in New York, which is all the more reason to cheer David Staller’s splendid new adaptation of one of Shaw’s most glittering, least Shakespearean conversation pieces, in which the worldly Caesar (Robert Cuccioli) teaches the kittenish Cleopatra (Teresa Avia Lim) how to be a hard-headed political realist.

Sexy “Caesar and Cleopatra” isn’t, nor did Shaw mean for it to be. He published it in “Three Plays for Puritans,” the 1901 trilogy in which he took the stock genres of Victorian theater, turned them upside down and transformed them into incomparably ingenious plays of ideas, and at one point in the ’30s, he even seems to have given serious thought to asking Shirley Temple to play the hot-blooded Queen of the Nile, which gives you a clearer idea of what he was up to….

As always, Mr. Staller, who knows more about Shaw than anyone else in America, gets it right, situating the action of the play in a modern-day archaeological dig and keeping the costumes simple and the diction crisp and clear….

Old actors never die, they just start appearing in old-actor plays, of which there are two kinds: feel-good old-age-isn’t-for-sissies weepers like “On Golden Pond” and harsh old-age-is-a-shipwreck dramas like “The Waverly Gallery.” Florian Zeller’s “The Height of the Storm,” which has transferred to Broadway after a successful West End run, is a play of the first kind dressed up to look like a play of the second kind. 

Stripped of its over-elaborately Pinteresque mystifications, “The Height of the Storm” appears to be about a famous writer suffering from dementia (Jonathan Pryce) who hasn’t done right by his loyal, long-suffering wife (Eileen Atkins). Will she stick with him to the bitter end? (Yes, other interpretations of the play are absolutely possible, but this one strikes me as the most believable of the lot.) I give Mr. Zeller credit for not being obvious about the denouement, but beyond that, “The Height of the Storm” has little to offer save the opportunity to see two great actors in the finest possible form….

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To read my review of Caesar and Cleopatra, go here.

To read my review of The Height of the Storm, go here.

The trailer for Caesar and Cleopatra:

The trailer for the original British production of The Height of the Storm:

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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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