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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 16, 2021

Lear among the spruces

July 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal, I review Shakespeare & Company’s new outdoor production of King Lear, with Christopher Lloyd in the title role. Here’s an excerpt.

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With live theater productions opening throughout America, I gave much thought to how I would break the 16-month fast from public performance that began for me after I saw Katori Hall’s “The Hot Wing King” off Broadway in March 2021, mere days before the Covid-19 lockdown. I wanted to review a show as special as the occasion itself, and I didn’t have to look long to find it: Shakespeare & Company, located in the Berkshires, Massachussetts’ center of summer theater, plus concerts, dance, and the visual arts, has opened its new 500-seat outdoor amphitheater with “King Lear.” In it, Christopher Lloyd, who is 82 and is best known, despite his extensive stage credits, for his appearances in such popular films as “Back to the Future,” plays for the first time the mad old king. Nor did I choose wrong: This “Lear,” directed by Nicole Ricciardi, is one of the strongest productions of Shakespeare’s all-encompassing super-drama of man’s fate that I’ve seen in my 18 years as a drama critic….

“Lear” asks so much of its star, especially in the storm scene, that the role is normally played by a much younger man. Mr. Lloyd, to be sure, is no longer able to shake the rafters, for which reason the storm has been dialed back in sonic intensity. But he is still a magnificent performer who effortlessly projects his lines all the way to the back row of the amphitheater…

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Read the whole thing here.

Replay: Peter and Rudolf Serkin play Schubert

July 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Peter and Rudolf Serkin play Schubert’s G Major Marche militaire for piano duet in a 1988 concert telecast. They are introduced by Van Cliburn:

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

Almanac: André Gide on clichés

July 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Great minds tend toward banality.”

André Gide, Pretexts

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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