Archives for January 25, 2019

The case for Chopin

January 25, 2019 by Terry Teachout

My latest monthly essay for Commentary, occasioned by Alan Walker’s important new primary-source biography of Fryderyk Chopin, is now on line:

Chopin…was a publicity-shunning introvert who played only his own music and performed mainly in the salons of Paris and England on increasingly rare occasions. He made his living teaching piano to well-heeled students of indifferent ability. He wrote no autobiography, died too soon to make records, and left behind no symphonies, string quartets, operas, or ballets for a later generation of writers to parse at leisure and at length. By all rights, then, Chopin should have gone the way of the many other 19th-century pianist-composers whose renown did not outlive them. Instead, his music is as familiar today as it was at the time of his death in 1849. It is ubiquitous—but is it truly great?

Read the whole thing here.

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Vladimir Horowitz plays Chopin’s G Minor Ballade at Carnegie Hall in 1968. This performance is part of a solo recital by Horowitz that was originally telecast in prime time on CBS:

The twenty-sixth episode of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading.

Here’s an excerpt from American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings:

This week the discussion is Broadway-focused. First, Peter regales everyone with his trip to Puerto Rico to cover the opening of Hamilton, currently starring Lin-Manual Miranda. Elisabeth traveled somewhere much closer to home: 53rd Street, to be exact, where she met with the theatre fans and cosplayers of BroadwayCon, which has gathered theatre fans together for three days for four years. Then the critics memorialize Broadway legend Carol Channing, who died Jan. 15….

To listen, download the latest episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.

In case you missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.

Home invasion

January 25, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column, I review a new Broadway revival of Sam Shepard’s True West. Here’s an excerpt.

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Sooner or later, most serious playwrights who do hard time in Hollywood end up writing a play about the experience. What’s more, these plays often prove to be popular. This stands to reason, seeing as how most of us are fascinated—in spite of ourselves—by that unreal city and its peculiar ways. That’s what happened to Sam Shepard, who came back from Hollywood with “True West,” a rambling tale of two feuding brothers who collaborate on a screenplay. First produced in 1980, “True West” has always been a magnet for talented actors…

Shepard’s once-formidable reputation, however, had gone into eclipse long before his death in 2017, and even “True West,” which was last seen on Broadway in 2000, is no longer widely known to younger theatergoers. For that reason, it will be interesting to see how the Roundabout Theatre Company’s new Broadway revival, which stars Paul Dano and Ethan Hawke, fares at the box office. My guess is that it will do pretty well, since Messrs. Dano and Hawke are biggish names in the screen trade. Moreover, they’re both giving vivid performances, the kind that get talked about. But how does the play itself hold up after all these years? Is it as good as we remember?

The answer is yes and no. The first act is a tight-knit piece of storytelling based on a conventional but nonetheless promising premise: Austin (Mr. Dano), a quiet, self-contained young man who has set up shop as a screenwriter and is on the verge of landing his first big deal, is muscled off the road to riches by Lee (Mr. Hawke), his ne’er-do-well older brother, a hard-drinking petty thief who shows up without warning on his doorstep, moves into his suburban home and starts to disrupt his life. By intermission, you’re set up for a payoff that could either be comic or horrific—or both. That, however, is when things start to unravel….

Mr. Hawke, who has the flashier of the two parts, comes on strong, occasionally over-egging the pudding (you get the feeling that he’s enjoying himself a little too much) but nonetheless giving a performance in which you can smell the anger and envy leaching out of his pores. Mr. Dano, by contrast, is both subtler and more interesting: Here as in “Love & Mercy,” he plays a character whose bland surface serves as camouflage for roiling interior turmoil, and everything he does in “True West” is excitingly surprising….

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Read the whole thing here.

Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano talk about True West:

Replay: Ronald Reagan appears on What’s My Line?

January 25, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Ronald Reagan appears as the mystery guest on What’s My Line?The host is John Daly and panelists are Steve Allen, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This segment was originally telecast by CBS on July 19, 1953: