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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for May 8, 2020

No problem with Cymbeline

May 8, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a webcast of Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’ “TourCo” production of Cymbeline. Here’s an excerpt.

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Earlier this season, Shakespeare Festival St. Louis put together a small-scale 90-minute touring production of “Cymbeline” adapted and directed by Tom Ridgely, the company’s producing artistic director, that was intended for performance in schools and communities where Shakespeare’s plays are not regularly seen. Acted by six young women in casual modern dress who collectively enact more than two dozen roles on an all-but-bare stage, the production gets under way with a “living study guide” that walks viewers of all ages through the proliferating complexities of “Cymbeline” in an uncondescending way. It’s the sort of Shakespeare staging that rarely gets seen, much less reviewed, by big-city critics, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, SFSTL, unable to take its “Cymbeline” on the road, instead taped it with a single video camera in front of a tiny audience of staffers and crew and has made the results available for free on the company’s Facebook page…

Having been repeatedly impressed by the artistic results of such on-the-fly webcasting ventures, I decided to take a look at SFSTL’s “Cymbeline,” and I loved what I saw. This is American-style Shakespearean acting, cheerfully colloquial rather than resonantly poetic, with Hannah Geisz and Mary Heyl especially likable as Innogen, the king’s daughter, and Posthumus, the unhappy lover. Mr. Ridgely’s uncomplicated staging and cut-to-the-chase adaptation of the text frame the play so lucidly that even the newest of Shakespeare novices will have no trouble orienting themselves amid its myriad complexities….

The company does its own a cappella choral singing, of which there is plenty, all of which warms the flavor of the show to fetching effect. Tre’von “Tre G” Griffith, the music director, is an R&B-pop singer-songwriter from St. Louis, and he deserves generous credit for the user-friendly tone of the proceedings….

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Shakespeare Festival St. Louis’ online production of Cymbeline:

Replay: Jackie Gleason and Art Carney on Studio One

May 8, 2020 by Terry Teachout

Jackie Gleason, Art Carney, and Marian Seldes appear in “The Laugh Maker,” a drama by A.J. Russell, directed by Paul Nickell and originally telecast live by CBS on Studio One in 1953:

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

Almanac: James Russell Lowell on solitude

May 8, 2020 by Terry Teachout

“Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for the character.”

James Russell Lowell, “Dryden”

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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