Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
“In art, as in life, bad manners, not to be confused with a deliberate intention to cause offence, are the consequence of an over-concern with one’s ego and a lack of consideration for (and knowledge of) others.”
W.H. Auden, foreword, Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957 (courtesy of Modern Kicks)
I’m sitting at a table in the food concourse (or whatever they call it) of Chicago’s Midway Airport, clicking away at my iBook instead of eating breakfast. Not only were Our Girl and I too busy to write anything this weekend, but I expect to find myself in a medium-sized tizzy shortly after I return to New York this afternoon. I have to write a Wall Street Journal column about my recent playgoing and a Commentary essay about Malcolm Arnold, the British composer who died over the weekend, and come Friday I’ll be on the road again. (Look out, Minneapolis!) For all these reasons, I figured I’d do better to knock out a quick what-we-did-this-weekend posting than cram down a Sausage McMuffin before bording my plane, a decision with which my cardiologist will no doubt concur.
My visit to the Windy City got off to a shaky start on Friday when OGIC and I showed up on time for an eight-thirty reservation at Blackbird, a Chicago restaurant we used to like. After spending a half-hour waiting in vain to be seated, during which time the snooty staff offered us nothing in the way of solicitude, reassurance, or liquid compensation, we took our trade to La Sardine, vowing as we departed to blog about our disagreeable experience at the earliest opportunity. (No, we won’t be back.)
You’ll have to wait until Friday to find out what I thought of the Goodman Theatre’s big-budget production of King Lear and Remy Bumppo’s small-scale revival of Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, but in the meantime I can tell you that the buffalo sausage on which I lunched at Hot Doug’s was sensational. Alas, we didn’t make it to the Farnsworth House on Saturday–Laura figured it didn’t make much sense to visit a glass house on a gray, rainy day–but we did have tea with Ms. Litwit after our Sunday matinee, and can report that she is as clever and charming as her blog. As for music, we listened to Rachel Ries and Madeleine Peyroux in the car, about which more later.
The rest was talk, some of it over breakfast
at Hyde Park’s Original Pancake House and dinner downtown at Osteria Via Stato and some of it in between movies at Our Girl’s place, where we watched Kicking and Screaming and The Lady Vanishes. OGIC and I don’t chat on the phone as often as we should, so when we do get together we always have a lot to say and not enough time to get it all said.
That’s it for now–my plane is boarding and I have things to do in New York. See you in cyberspace.
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