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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for 2021

Just because: Victor Borge’s “phonetic punctuation” routine

April 19, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Victor Borge does his “phonetic punctuation” routine on The Ed Sullivan Show. This episode was telecast live by CBS on June 12, 1960:

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

Almanac: Philip Roth on the mental confusion of man

April 19, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Is an intelligent human being likely to be much more than a large-scale manufacturer of misunderstanding?”

Philip Roth, The Counterlife

Choking on chaos

April 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review webcasts of David Rabe’s Suffocation Theory and Samuel D. Hunter’s Lewiston/Clarkston. Here’s an excerpt.

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Dallas’ Undermain Theatre offered one of the most spectacular examples of how webcasting can put a regional drama company on the national map when it presented a flawless virtual production of Conor McPherson’s “St. Nicholas” in October. Now it’s returned to the well with David Rabe’s “Suffocation Theory,” a dramatized version of a short story originally published in the New Yorker in 2020. Like “St. Nicholas,” “Suffocation Theory” is a chillingly dark monologue performed by Bruce DuBose, the company’s producing artistic director, who is also a gifted actor. But this production is even more technically ambitious than its predecessor, so much so that it looks and feels less like a stage show than a miniature movie. Call it what you will, “Suffocation Theory” is a dazzling piece of theatrical work…

The emergence of Samuel D. Hunter as a playwright of consequence has been one of the most gratifying theatrical occurrences of the past decade. His plays, which are set in northern Idaho (his home state) and portray small-town life and its discontents in a soft-spoken yet  searching way, remind me strongly of the work of Horton Foote and Brian Friel, two other playwrights who understood in their bones the quiet complexities of the towns from which they came.

“Lewiston/Clarkston,” a pair of separate but related 90-minute plays that were first performed as a single-evening diptych with a dinner break off Broadway in 2018, is Mr. Hunter’s most ambitious undertaking to date…

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

Replay: Edward R. Murrow interviews Tyrone Power in 1957

April 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Edward R. Murrow interviews Tyrone Power on an episode of Person to Person originally telecast live by CBS on December 20, 1957:

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

Almanac: Somerset Maugham on agnosticism

April 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“This is not the place for me to say what my own beliefs are in the matters with which religion deals, but it is only proper that I should state my conviction that no one of the faiths that men have embraced is ample enough to account for the enormous mystery. They seem to me like blind alleys cut into a primeval jungle and man deceives himself when he thinks they can lead him to its heart.”

Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando

Almanac: Somerset Maugham on tolerance

April 15, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Perhaps no one that we know of was more tolerant than Cervantes; but tolerance is not an umbrella that you take when you think it will rain and leave at home when it looks fine; tolerance is a staff that you carry with you always in all the circumstances of life.”

Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando

Snapshot: Nat Cole plays “Just One of Those Things”

April 14, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Nat Cole plays Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things” on The Ed Sullivan Show. This episode was originally telecast live by CBS on April 13, 1958:

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

Almanac: Somerset Maugham on literary productivity

April 14, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“His fertility was of course amazing and fertility is a quality to be praised in an author. It denotes physical energy, a gift a writer can as little do without as a tennis player, vitality, power of invention and variety of interest, which may from time to time create a masterpiece.”

Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando

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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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Recent Posts

  • Just because: Victor Borge’s “phonetic punctuation” routine
  • Almanac: Philip Roth on the mental confusion of man
  • Choking on chaos
  • Replay: Edward R. Murrow interviews Tyrone Power in 1957
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on agnosticism

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