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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Almanac: Robert Anderson on death

December 21, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some resolution, which it never finds.”

Robert Anderson, I Never Sang for My Father

Just because: The King’s Singers perform Praetorius’ “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen”

December 20, 2021 by Terry Teachout

The King’s Singers perform Praetorius’ “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen”:

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

Almanac: Charles Dickens on Christmas

December 20, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home!”

Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

Cary in the sky (with Aldous and Clare)

December 17, 2021 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review Lincoln Center Theater’s premiere production of Flying Over Sunset. Here’s an excerpt.

*  *  *

I didn’t know what to make of LSD. It was illegal, of course, and Sgt. Joe Friday assured me on “Dragnet” that taking it was the first step down a short road to psychotic hippiedom. Yet the radio was simultaneously full of trippy hit singles like the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” and the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” that seductively begged to differ. Being the cautious type, I ended up steering clear of the stuff, but I wonder what I’d have done had I known that in 1958, a full decade before possession of LSD was criminalized in the U.S., Cary Grant took it every week under a psychiatrist’s care and thereafter swore by it, claiming that his hundred-odd trips effected a “beneficial cleansing” of his soul.

James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim’s longtime creative collaborator, took LSD frequently in his younger years, and now he has written the book of a new musical called “Flying Over Sunset” in which he portrays onstage the LSD-related experiences of Grant (played here by Tony Yazbeck), the novelist Aldous Huxley (Harry Hadden-Paton) and the playwright-politician Clare Boothe Luce (Carmen Cusack), who all took acid trips around the same time. The heavily fictionalized conceit of the show, whose score is by Tom Kitt and Michael Korie, is that the members of this peculiarly sorted trio got to know one another by chance and took flight together under the guidance of Gerald Heard (Robert Sella), a wealthy scholar of Eastern religion who doubled as an ardent advocate for hallucinogenic drug use. While Mr. Lapine and Lincoln Center Theater, which is producing “Flying Over Sunset,” have struck it lucky—microdosing of LSD for therapeutic purposes is now in the news—this deliriously strange show would have been irresistibly watchable under any circumstances….

*  *  *

Read the whole thing here.

Aldous Huxley is interviewed by Mike Wallace in 1958:

Clare Boothe Luce is interviewed by William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1969:

Replay: Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers in 1966

December 17, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers perform “Dinah” on a 1966 episode of ABC’s The Hollywood Palace:

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

Almanac: Borges on happiness

December 17, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“I have sometimes suspected that the only thing that holds no mystery is happiness, because it is its own justification.”

Jorge Luis Borges, “Unworthy”

Time was

December 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

Between the pandemic and my late wife’s final illness, my life has been changed utterly, in many ways almost beyond recognition. I can’t remember the last time I:

• Went to a classical concert or an operatic production

• Rode in a boat

• Bought a book in a brick-and-mortar bookstore

• Saw a movie in a theater

• Attended a rehearsal of anything

• Watched the sun set

• Felt at ease walking after dark in New York’s theater district

• Sat in a hot tub

• Visited an art gallery

• Heard jazz in a club

• Went to Washington, D.C., which I used to visit regularly to see shows and friends

• Played piano

• Took a vacation

• Read a weekly newsmagazine

• Shopped in a store for anything at all other than food or pharmaceutical supplies

• Ate a corn dog or a steak

One of these days….

Almanac: Ingmar Bergman on Alfred Hitchcock

December 16, 2021 by Terry Teachout

“Psycho is one of his most interesting pictures because he had to make the picture very fast, with very primitive means. He had little money, and this picture tells very much about him. Not very good things. He is completely infantile, and I would like to know more—no, I don’t want to know—about his behaviour with, or, rather, against women. But this picture is very interesting.”

Ingmar Bergman, interviewed by John Simon (1970)

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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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