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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for February 5, 2021

In Tampa, a superb Doubt

February 5, 2021 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal, I review regional webcasts of Doubt and The Niceties. Here’s an excerpt.

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Some plays are so obviously well-suited to socially distanced webcasting that I can’t imagine why every regional theater company in America hasn’t taken them up. John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt: A Parable” is a case in point. It has only four characters, none of whom is required to touch or closely approach any of the others, and it calls for no set pieces other than a door, a desk, a phone, two chairs and a couple of park benches. Nothing more is needed but appropriate costumes, atmospheric lighting and sound design and a director and cast unafraid of the thorny ambiguities of Mr. Shanley’s 2004 study of a regular-guy priest suspected of molesting a child in his care and a hard-nosed nun who takes it for granted that he is guilty, notwithstanding the absence of hard evidence. 

Even so, Jobsite Theater’s revival of “Doubt,” directed by Summer Bohnenkamp, is the first version I’ve seen online since the beginning of the pandemic. It is also a memorably fine piece of work….

Eleanor Burgess’ “The Niceties” had a month-long Manhattan Theatre Club in 2018 and was subsequently taken up by regional companies all over the U.S., of which Madison’s Forward Theater is the latest. I can see why: “The Niceties” is a variation on David Mamet’s “Oleanna” in which the militant student (Samantha Newcomb) is a young black woman and the benighted, condescending baby-boom professor whom she seeks to bring down (Sarah Day) is a garrulous middle-aged left-winger who has never questioned her own wokeness. Like Mr. Mamet, Ms. Burgess has stacked the deck high, and the results feel less like an actual human transaction than a scripted, somewhat stilted debate with good-gal-bad-gal dramatic flourishes thrown in.

Jointly directed by DiMonte Henning and Jen Uphoff Gray, this production was filmed not in an empty theater but in what looks like an actual professor’s office. Ms. Day, whom I know from her work as a core-company member of Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre, America’s finest classical theater festival, gives a pitch-perfect performance—she always does—but Ms. Newcomb, who became one of APT’s apprentice actors in 2019, also leaves nothing to be desired….

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To read my complete review of Doubt, go here.

To read my complete review of The Niceties, go here.

Replay: Meryl Streep and Viola Davis in Doubt

February 5, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Meryl Streep and Viola Davis in a scene from the film version of John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt: A Parable, directed by the author:

(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 the beauty of courage

February 5, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“I think there is in the heroic courage with which man confronts the irrationality of the world a beauty greater than the beauty of art.”

Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook

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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