• Home
  • About
    • About Last Night
    • Terry Teachout
    • Contact
  • AJBlogCentral
  • ArtsJournal

About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Sustainable satire

July 9, 2021 by Terry Teachout

In Friday’s Wall Street Journal I reviewed Westport Country Playhouse’s webcast of Michael Gotch’s Tiny House. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

One by one, America’s theaters are turning on the post-pandemic lights, among them several top-tier troupes that are only just getting around to putting shows online. The latest, Connecticut’s Westport Country Playhouse, has just brought us a newly filmed play, Michael Gotch’s “Tiny House,” that is acted and directed with sure-footed skill and is both charming and bitingly witty—a rare and noteworthy example of a comedy filmed without an audience that comes off without a trace of awkwardness….

“Tiny House” is a sharp-tongued yet unabashedly affectionate satire whose protagonists, Sam (Sara Bues ) and Nick (Denver Milord), are an ultra-progressive millennial couple who have wearied of “the ugly” of urban life and the high political anxieties of the moment. (Donald Trump’s shadow is visible at all times, even though his name, à la Voldemort, is never spoken aloud.) So they’ve decided to move to the woods, go off the grid and set up housekeeping in a 150-square-foot “downwardly mobile home” that is “solar, bio-friendly, 100% recycled materials, tiny carbon footprint, completely self-sustaining.”…

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for Tiny House:

Filed Under: main

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...]

Follow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

@Terryteachout1

Tweets by TerryTeachout1

Archives

July 2021
M T W T F S S
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031  
« Jun   Aug »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Terry Teachout, 65
  • Gripping musical melodrama
  • Replay: Somerset Maugham in 1965
  • Almanac: Somerset Maugham on sentimentality
  • Snapshot: Richard Strauss conducts Till Eulenspiegel

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in