Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Thomas Quasthoff and Daniel Barenboim perform “Gute Nacht,” from Schubert’s Winterreise:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
Ecclesiastes 1:18 (King James version)
My annual Wall Street Journal column about the best theater of the year is out. Here’s an excerpt:
Read the whole thing here.In July, I resumed reviewing live theater after a protracted pandemic-related hiatus. First came a string of outdoor performances in New England. Then Broadway reopened in August, and the 2021-22 season got under way in earnest two months later. Now shows are opening on and off Broadway with gratifying regularity, all in front of masked audiences, though there’s no telling whether the spread of the new Omicron Covid-19 variant will shut down America’s theaters in weeks to come.
Whatever lies ahead, I saw plenty of memorable shows in 2021, some in the theater and at least as many via streaming video, which is now firmly established as an effective medium for the viewing of small-scale productions…
From 2003:
Read the whole thing here.Earlier this evening, three generations of family converged on my mother’s house in Smalltown, U.S.A., there to eat dessert and talk. We’d just dined together in the banquet room of the Grecian Steak House–the first time my mother’s family has ever eaten its collective Christmas dinner in a restaurant, or at any time other than on the night before Christmas. Things went surprisingly well, too, considering that we’d torn up a half-century’s worth of family tradition in one fell swoop. Two dozen of us crammed ourselves into the living room, desserts balanced on knees, and discussed in detail all the things that small-town families like to talk about whenever they get together. (More often than not, illness is the number-one topic, closely followed by restaurants.)
I don’t know how typically American my mother’s family is nowadays, though there was a time not so long ago when we would have seemed far more typical than we do now….
“You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
Albert Camus, The Fall
“The Nancy LaMott Story,” a 1999 TV documentary about the cabaret singer, who died twenty-five years ago today:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“In love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve.”
Thornton Wilder, “The Angel That Troubled the Waters” (courtesy of David Brooks)
Read the whole thing here.Two weeks after Stephen Sondheim’s death, a revival of his first great musical has arrived on Broadway. And while revivals of “Company” long ago became common—I’ve reviewed five—this one, directed by Marianne Elliott, is by definition exceptional, for it is a high-concept production originally mounted on London’s West End in whch Bobby, the seemingly confirmed bachelor whom all his friends long to see married, becomes Bobbie, a sexy bachelorette in a red pant suit, played by none other than Katrina Lenk, who shot to stage stardom as a result of her performance in “The Band’s Visit.”
What’s the point of the gender juggling? According to Ms. Elliott, the original premise of “Company,” which was first performed in 1970 and in which Bobby has just turned 35, is no longer valid for contemporary viewers. Casting him as an unmarried woman of the same age, by contrast, is consistent with the experience of today’s women, who are forever being asked why they haven’t settled down, gotten married and started a family (nobody, she says, asks men the same question anymore). Hence this production….
This one makes the same mistake, only in a more systematic way, and I don’t see how updating “Company” serves the needs of so masterly a show, which was prophetic in 1970 and doesn’t require Ms. Elliott’s help to be relevant in 2021. Nor am I enthusiastic about her staging…