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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Imaginary reunion

June 26, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review an Original Theater Company/59E59 Theaters webcast of Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

Except for “The History Boys,” which had a solid run on Broadway in 2006 followed by several regional stagings, Alan Bennett’s plays aren’t widely performed in the U.S. He’s best known over here for “The Madness of George III,” the 1991 play whose 1994 film version, “The Madness of King George,” was a box-office hit. The play, however, never made it to Broadway, and neither did “The Habit of Art,” a dual theatrical portrait of W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten that was first produced in 2009 by London’s National Theatre, then received its U.S. premiere at Washington’s Studio Theatre. I saw it there in 2011 and was surprised that it had no further success in this country: While not without flaw, “The Habit of Art” is both challenging and entertaining, and I assumed that someone in New York would get around to staging it sooner or later.

Hence my excitement when 59E59 Theaters announced that Original Theatre Company, a highly regarded English touring troupe, would be performing “The Habit of Art” as part of “Brits Off Broadway,” a summer festival of new plays that always has fine things to offer (in recent years, most of Alan Ayckbourn’s U.S. premieres have taken place there). No such luck—the pandemic put paid to this year’s festival—but the good news is that Original Theatre Company and 59E59 Theatres are streaming a previously taped version of “The Habit of Art” that is outstanding in every way….

Lovely though it would have been to see a live performance, I’m struck by how fully this webcast version of “The Habit of Art” conveys the total effect of a play that deserves to be staged in New York when such things become possible again….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for The Habit of Art:

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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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