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TT: Entries from an unkept diary
– The other night I went to a play in which a very short actress gave a very good performance. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that a great many of the women to whom I’ve been attracted over the years have ranged in height from five foot zero to five foot three. I once had occasion to mention this fact to a self-styled feminist, who told me that I clearly had an unnatural need to dominate women. (I’m five foot eight.) I sputtered in reply that one of the most attractive women I know is six feet tall, and it later occurred to me that I also happen to like art songs, novellas, small paintings, and cozy little apartments such as the one in which I so contentedly live.
To this list I would now add plays of no more than two hours’ length, performed if at all possible without an intermission. (Remember my Drama Critics’ Prayer?) One such show that I recently reviewed is Primo, Sir Anthony Sher’s one-man dramatization of Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoir. I went to see it with Sarah, and as my review doubtless made clear, I was deeply moved. I actually started crying shortly after we left the theater, and the two of us walked together in silence for a block or so as I struggled without success to regain my composure.
For some reason I glanced across the street at the marquee of the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, where Sweet Charity is playing. Below it I saw a huge poster on which was emblazoned in jumbo letters the following blurb:
“IT’S A BLAST!”
–Terry Teachout,
The Wall Street Journal
I looked at Sarah and pointed silently at the poster. The absurdity of the juxtaposition caused us both to dissolve on the spot into helpless laughter, and we were still laughing when we finally managed to flag a cab and flee the theater district.
Like the man says, life is pandemonium.
– I recently watched a TV documentary called Ken Russell: In Search of the English Folksong. Like all of Russell’s films and TV shows, it stank of self-regard, but there was one moment that struck me as especially awful, even for him. At the top of the hour, an unnamed young woman sang Percy Grainger’s seraphically beautiful harmonization
of “Brigg Fair,” a folk song that Grainger took down in 1905 from the singing of Joseph Taylor, a seventy-two-year-old Lincolnshire bailiff. The camera then cut to Russell sitting at a table with an old phonograph and a stack of 78s, and I realized that he was about to play one of the rarest records ever made, the 1908 performance of “Brigg Fair” that Taylor recorded at Grainger’s urging for the Gramophone Company of London. It was one of a dozen folk songs recorded by Taylor in the studio, the very first time that a “genuine peasant folk-singer” had made commercial recordings. “Nothing could be more refreshing,” Grainger wrote at the time, “than [Taylor’s] hale countrified looks and the happy lilt of his cheery voice….though his age was seventy-five, his looks were those of middle age, while his flowing, ringing tenor voice was well nigh as fresh as that of his son.”
I’d long known of the existence of this record (Grainger is one of my favorite composers), but I’d never heard it, and was starting to think I never would. Then, to my amazement and delight, Russell slipped it out of the pile of 78s, placed it on the turntable, and lowered the needle to the spinning shellac surface. From the speakers of my TV set came a century-old sound: It was on the fifth of August, the weather fair and fine/Unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined. I listened with wonder to Joseph Taylor’s throaty, ever-so-slightly creaky voice and the fluttering ornaments with which he gracefully decorated the long descending arch of melody. Time was melting away…and then Ken Russell, damn him, started talking. “Bit crackly,” he said midway through the second line. “But, you know, it was recorded on a cylinder.” (Actually, it wasn’t.) “Lovely, isn’t it?” He kept on prattling to the very end of the song.
Hell isn’t hot enough.
– I met a writer friend for lunch yesterday at Caf
TT and OGIC: New around here, stranger?
If you came here by way of Instapundit, welcome to “About Last Night,” a 24/5-to-7 blog (we come and go on weekends) on which Terry Teachout writes about the arts in New York City and elsewhere, assisted by Laura Demanski, who writes from Chicago under the no-longer-a-pseudonym of “Our Girl in Chicago.”
In case you’re wondering, this blog has two URLs, the one you’re seeing at the top of your screen right now and the easier-to-remember www.terryteachout.com. Either one will bring you here.
All our postings from the past week are visible in reverse chronological order on this page. Terry’s start with “TT,” Laura’s with “OGIC.” In addition, the entire contents of this site are archived chronologically and can be accessed by clicking “ALN Archives” at the top of the right-hand column.
You can read more about us, and about “About Last Night,” by going to the right-hand column and clicking in the appropriate places. You’ll also find various other toothsome features there, including our regularly updated Top Five list of things to see, hear, read, and otherwise do, links to Terry’s most recent newspaper and magazine articles, and “Sites to See,” a list of links to other blogs and Web sites with art-related content. If you’re curious about the arty part of the blogosphere, you’ve come to the right site: “Sites to See” will point you in all sorts of interesting directions, and all roads lead back to “About Last Night.”
As if all that weren’t enough, you can write to us by clicking either one of the “Write Us” buttons. We read our mail, and answer it, too, so long as you’re minimally polite. (Be patient, though. We get a lot of it.)
The only other thing you need to know is that “About Last Night” is about all the arts, high, medium, and low: film, drama, painting, dance, fiction, TV, music of all kinds, whatever. Our interests are wide-ranging, and we think there are plenty of other people like us out there in cyberspace, plus still more who long to wander off their beaten paths but aren’t sure which way to turn.
If you’re one of the above, we’re glad you came. Enjoy. Peruse. Tell all your friends about www.terryteachout.com. And come back tomorrow.
TT: So you want to see a show?
Not surprisingly, people in and out of town are always asking me what plays they should see. For this reason, I’ve decided to start running on Thursdays a regularly updated list of recommended Broadway and off-Broadway shows. In all cases, I either gave these shows strongly favorable reviews in The Wall Street Journal when they opened or saw and liked them some time in the past year (or both). For more information, click on the title.
Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.
BROADWAY:
– Avenue Q* (musical)
– Chicago (musical)
– Doubt (drama)
– Fiddler on the Roof (musical, family-friendly)
– The Light in the Piazza (musical)
– Sweet Charity (musical)
– The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee* (musical, family-friendly)
OFF BROADWAY:
– Orson’s Shadow (drama)
– Philadelphia, Here I Come! (drama, closes 9/25)
– Slava’s Snowshow (performance art, child-friendly)
CLOSING SOON:
– Glengarry Glen Ross (drama, Broadway, closes 8/28)
– Primo (one-man show, Broadway, closes Sunday)
– The Skin Game (drama, off Broadway, closes Sunday)
REOPENING SOON:
– Sides: The Fear Is Real… (sketch comedy, off Broadway, previews start 8/18)
TT: Words to the wise
A well-placed little bird tells me you can still get tickets to the second and third performances of L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Mark Morris’ full-evening modern-dance staging of the Handel oratorio, next Friday, August 19, and Saturday, August 20, at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival. (Thursday’s opening is about to sell out.)
If you know anything about Morris, you don’t need to hear more than that, but if you’re unlucky enough never to have seen L’Allegro, it might be worth my quoting what I wrote about this extraordinary work four years ago in the Washington Post:
“L’Allegro” is a whole world of dance in a single evening, everything from childlike pantomime to knockabout comedy to complex groupings reminiscent of George Balanchine in their control and clarity. I wish Morris’ dancers did “L’Allegro” in New York each spring, just like New York City Ballet does Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” so that we could all revel in it as often as we want….
Since then the Mark Morris Dance Group has taken to performing L’Allegro fairly regularly at Mostly Mozart, though never often enough to suit me. Needless to say, I’ll be there–you come, too.
All performances are at eight p.m. at the New York State Theater. For more information, go here.
TT: Almanac
“Well, I read a lot. I’m no intellectual, you understand, but I like Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Hemingway, John P. Marquand, Louis Auchincloss, and Georges Simenon. He really understands character.”
Bing Crosby (in conversation with Nat Hentoff, 1976)
TT: One more thing
No, I haven’t answered my blogmail, either. But I will. Soon.
TT: Elsewhere
I haven’t quite gotten over the stresses and strains (both good and bad) of the past three weeks, and as a result I find I don’t have anything especially original to say this morning! Instead of blathering randomly, I’ll leave the blogging to the following well-chosen assortment of my esteemed friends and colleagues. Go get ’em, tigers:
– The adorable Ms. Maccers shares a few “things I have learnt while aging.” Some pertinent excerpts:
You will always lose the ones you love the most
Those you hate
Hang around ad infinitem
Taunting you for your failure to kick their arses years ago
Kill ants
Wear black
Eat red fruit
Biceps rock
Small dogs are gay
And so is my ex
Living alone will become a comfort and then a shield
ALWAYS sell the jewelry…
Ooh, yikes! (But she does have a point or two, or three.)
– The indispensable Mr. Something Old, Nothing New reports in extenso on the contents of the forthcoming third volume of the Looney Tunes Golden Collection. Money quote:
I would say, overall, that this is the best selection of cartoons yet, and certainly the most varied….
Mmmm.
– Listen up, OGIC: Mr. Wax Banks has some smart things to say about one of your favorite flicks:
The Insider is an adult movie: though it carries a moral message, it’s not simply two and a half hours of moralizing (though I’ve got to point out that no one lights a single cigarette in this long movie about Big Tobacco–an odd atmospheric choice by Mann). We should be grateful for grownup artists who take on subjects worthy of their talent….
O.K., I give up, I’ll watch the damn thing the next time I come to Chicago. Really.
– While we’re at it, Mr. Superfluities is no less smart about a major TT-OGIC fave:
Though many swear by the delightful Waiting for Guffman and enjoy All About Eve‘s wallow in thespian bitchiness, I’ve found no movie to be quite as accurate and inspiring about theater work than Mike Leigh’s 1999 Topsy-Turvy, concerning the creation and premiere of Gilbert and Sullivan’s masterpiece The Mikado. In many ways an unusual film for Leigh, who’s best known for his semi-improvised films and plays about contemporary British culture, Topsy-Turvy is nonetheless very much in the Leigh tradition of showing everyday work and frustration, even though there often doesn’t seem to be much point beyond the ability to endure. Here, though, that everyday work and frustration is located in the artistic community of the theater. In fact, those parts of Topsy-Turvy that many people find boring–mostly the scenes of endless (sometimes fruitless) rehearsal, worry over potentially disastrous financial arrangements and constant professional bickering–seem to me the most fascinating and true-to-life….
Yes.
– Dizzy Gillespie’s estate is being auctioned off next month. Here’s the online catalogue. Browse and marvel.
– Mr. Manhattan Transfer rhapsodizes on the joys of summer in New York:
Opera in the park, with bits of cheese and chilled Sancerre in plastic cups. Lingering lunches in shaded sidewalk bistros. Rooftop parties overserving beer out of garbage cans filled with ice and sand. Sunrise whiskeys with bartenders in the Rockaways. Girls in short skirts with beads of sweat on the small of their backs. Falling asleep on the lawn alongside the Hudson River. Aperitifs at A60. Midday movies to escape the humidity. Seared tuna salad and buffalo mozzarella and three pinot grigio lunches. The song of the summer. Pretending the subway doesn’t exist….
Er, mostly.
– Sarah (all others are imitations), who in my humble opinion is one of the nicest things about summer in New York, has some thoughtful and thought-provoking things to say about reviewers who court conflicts of interest:
How transparent should reviewers be? What constitutes a conflict of interest? These are things I think about constantly…
In a perfect world, a reviewer could completely divorce his or her feelings about a book from everything else. Put it in a vacuum. Isolate it from the larger context of a genre, a literary oeuvre, whatever. And make sure that he or she is only judged by the words appearing on the page.
But of course, that’s not the case. In the mystery world, I think reviewers can be divided into two categories: those that mingle, and those that do not. It’s a no-brainer as to which one I belong to; I don’t believe I would have been able to write any review whatsoever had I not already been an active fan, participating on various internet message boards. And even when there are times when I wish I could drop back, I can’t–nor do I particularly want to. Also, here on the blog, I can be as subjective as I like–the URL does bear my name, after all.
Yet it makes things difficult, especially in regards to my column. Luckily I only have five books a month to review, and so in theory, I can endeavor to pick books by people I’ve never met, never exchanged an email, never socialized with in any way, shape or form. But with every book I view for potential inclusion, I have to ask if there could be any sort of bias involved…
Read the whole thing.
– Here’s a vivid and revealing interview with my favorite classical singer, Anne Sofie von Otter, who just turned fifty and doesn’t seem too terribly weirded out about it:
She has confessed to being “reserved” and a “control freak,” and is a little wary of interviews. Or perhaps she is bored by them–by familiar questions of how she began singing and what her favourite operatic roles are. “Some interviewers are like zombies,” she says. “You want to slap them.” Having just stepped off a plane, I feel zombie-like and hurriedly suggest the photographer goes first–planting the uncomplaining Von Otter next to trees, on soaking benches, and dangerously near the edge of the lake–while I rethink my questions….
God, but I love that woman. (If you don’t yet know what all the fuss is about, buy this CD and be enlightened.)
– Ms. Killin’ time being lazy went to see Philadelphia, Here I Come! (which I’ve been plugging at frequent intervals) and reports back on a disquieting aspect of the show that I failed to notice:
I went to see the show because I know a cast member and I know a crew member–and while I know that almost every waiter in the City is also an actor, it was clear that the audience wasn’t made up of “friends of…”. Rather, the average age of the audience was 60. Granted, it was a summer Saturday matinee, but still–60? Not great if a theater company wants to survive. The audience needs a median age of 40-ish–difficult to do in these times. Part of that is the rise in ticket prices. I understand that theaters have to pay Equity salaries and IATSE salaries and rent and rental for costumes/props and royalties and other salaries and all that. But it does keep audiences–young, necessary audiences–away….
Again, yes.
– Finally, Howard Kissel, my opposite number at the New York Daily News, tossed off a nifty little feature about what it’s like to see The Producers, The Lion King, The Phantom of the Opera, and Chicago from the cheap seats. I wish I’d written it….
– …just as I wish I’d written this utterly characteristic Galley Cat lead:
I’m not sure I could imagine any combination I’d dislike more than Jonathan Safran Foer and opera….
In the immortal word of James Joyce, mkgnao!