Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
The Miles Davis Quintet plays “My Funny Valentine” on Italian TV in 1964:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
Raymond Carver, “Late Fragment”
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On Broadway, Patrick Page usually plays bad guys, most notably the monstrous villains of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” and “Hadestown.” Elsewhere, though, he is best known as one of America’s greatest classical actors, blessed with a bass voice so resonant that it can actually make your theater seat shake—I’ve felt it—without benefit of amplification.
To capture such a force of nature on a screen is no small trick, but “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” a solo show written and performed by Mr. Page and produced by Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company, does the job with seeming ease. Not only does it clearly convey the immense force of his stage presence, but it is also an illuminating introduction to an insufficiently appreciated aspect of Shakespeare’s genius….
The three characters in Brian Friel’s “Molly Sweeney,” one of whom is a blind woman whose sight is temporarily restored by surgery, speak to the audience but never to one another. This makes the play a natural for webcasting, though it is not nearly so easy to stage as it looks at first glance. Fortunately, Lantern Theater Company’s revival, directed by Peter DeLaurier and taped in an empty theater on a semi-naturalistic set designed by Nick Embree, is so fine as to be worthy of unapologetic comparison with the Irish Rep’s 2020 video version…
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Read the whole thing here.Patrick Page talks about All the Devils Are Here:
Laurence Olivier talks about delivering Shakespearian blank verse in an undated TV clip. Also heard from is John Gielgud:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“It seemed to Graham that he had learned nothing in forty years. He had just gotten tired.”
Thomas Harris, Red Dragon
A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the 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 American Theatre’s “official” summary of the proceedings:
This month the critics talk to Soraya Nadia McDonald, culture critic for The Undefeated. Soraya is the 2020 winner of the George Jean Nathan prize for dramatic criticism, a 2020 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism, and the runner-up for the 2019 Vernon Jarrett Medal for outstanding reporting on Black life. The critics talk about the evolving role of their work in a time of pandemic, about the multi-layered issue of theatrical and critical gatekeeping, and about the ongoing question, “What is theatre?” Critics’ picks this month include Blood Meal on Youtube from Theatre in Quarantine, Mike Nichols: A Life, a biography by Mark Harris, and Simply Sondheim from Signature Theatre.
To listen to or download this episode, read more about it, or subscribe to Three on the Aisle, go here.
In case you’ve missed any previous episodes, you’ll find them all here.
“Never forget that the spoken word is not twice nor three times, but five times as potent as the written word, so that what would occupy a page in a novel should take up only five lines in a play.”
Terence Rattigan (quoted in Michael Darlow, Terence Rattigan: The Man and His Work)
Randy Newman sings his own “I Think It’s Gonna Rain Today” on the BBC in 1971:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)