Terry Teachout's Blog, page 110

TT: The last Sanibel sunset of 2012

We were there, and saw it from the back porch of our cottage:

TT: Something is about to be

A year ago today I was with Mrs. T on Sanibel Island. I'd just learned that my mother was dying, and I was doing my best to come to terms with the knowledge. A week later I got a call from Massachusetts informing me that Shakespeare & Company had decided to produce
my first play. In the months that followed, I got a Guggenheim Fellowship, drove down Highway 1 from San Francisco to San Diego, spent five weeks at the MacDowell Colony, saw Satchmo at the Waldorf produced by three regional theaters, made four new friends, finished writing the greater part of Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, and stood by my mother's open grave. No matter what 2013 turns out to be like, it won't be like that. It couldn't.

I brought 2012 to a close yesterday by writing the first three thousand words of the antepenultimate chapter of Duke. A year from now, barring some unthinkable catastrophe, Duke will be in print and I'll have seen a hundred more shows. Beyond that, I've no idea what to expect. I don't know what my next book will be, or whether Satchmo will have a life after its most recent closing night. I know where I'll be for the next six weeks...and that's all.

Is it enough? It'd better be.

I once quoted in this space the following words of Ogden Nash. It seems fitting to repeat them today:

Come, children, gather round my knee;

Something is about to be.

Tonight's December Thirty-First,

Something is about to burst.

The clock is crouching, dark and small,

Like a time bomb in the hall.

Hark! It's midnight, children dear.

Duck! Here comes another year.

To all of you who, like me, suspect that chance is in the saddle and rides mankind, I hope that 2013 treats you not unkindly, and that your lives, like mine, will be warmed by hope and filled with love.

TT: Lookback

From 2004:

I'd never want to know how a masterpiece ends prior to experiencing it for the first time. To be told what happens is to be cheated of the opportunity to sprint breathlessly from beginning to end, propelled by the overwhelming desire to know--and what happens in the last two pages, or the last thirty seconds, can make all the difference in the world. Think of the finale of The Four Temperaments, with its spectacular, gravity-dissolving lifts that sum up all that has gone before. Or the explosive stutter of the final chords of Sibelius' Fifth Symphony. Or the very last sentence of "The Turn of the Screw," which slams like an oak door in the face of the stunned reader....

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience."

Francis Bacon, "Of Travel"

TT: Far from Times Square

On Sunday morning Mrs. T and I flew south from New York City to Florida, where we took up residence on Sanibel Island in a modest, affordable little cottage (there are such things!) that is steps away from the Gulf of Mexico. We came here in January of 2011, loved it so much that we came back the following year, and are now making our third consecutive visit.

For Mrs. T, this is a vacation, pure and simple. We weren't able to take one last summer--life got too complicated, to put it very mildly--and she is much in need of a break. So am I, but it isn't going to be that simple. Not only will I be filing columns and reviewing shows in Fort Myers and Sarasota during our three weeks here, but I plan to write several chapters of Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington as well. On top of all that, I'll be flying up to New York on my own next weekend for a two-night stay, in the course of which I'll see no less than four plays, three on Broadway and one off.

So yes, I'll be working like a man possessed--but at least I'll be doing it in a tranquil and beautiful place where it isn't cold. Longtime readers of this blog have watched me learn by installments how to take vacations. I also learned that even if you can't take a full-fledged vacation, it's almost as therapeutic to go somewhere nice to work. Coming to Sanibel for the first time drove home that lesson, and our annual visit is now an important part of my life.

Since all work and no play is a recipe for frenzy and collapse, you can rest assured that I'll be going well out of my way to eat tasty meals, stroll up and down the beach with Mrs. T, read a few irrelevant books, and knock off at the end of each day to watch the sun set over the ocean. That said, I know perfectly well what I'm here for, as do my editors at Gotham Books and The Wall Street Journal, so don't expect to hear from me as compulsively as usual. If you're somewhere cold, try not to be too jealous. Remember what I'm up to, and wish me luck.

Happy New Year!

TT: Just because

The Mills Brothers sing "Lazy River":



(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

TT: Almanac

"As the Spanish proverb says, 'He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.' So it is in travelling: a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge."

Samuel Johnson (quoted in James Boswell, Life of Johnson

TT: Many happy returns

Today's Wall Street Journal drama column is devoted to my best-of-2012 list. Here are some of the items on it:

• Best performance in a play. Greta Wohlrabe was luminous as Kyra, the troubled lover of David Hare's "Skylight," which was revived with piercing sensitivity by Wisconsin's American Players Theatre.

• Best performance in a musical. The slight, huge-eyed Cristin Milioti vaulted into the spotlight in the Broadway transfer of "Once." She's here to stay.

• Best revival of a play. The competition was stiff, but Bedlam took the prize with its Off-Off-Broadway version of George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan," directed with uncanny ingenuity by Eric Tucker. All 24 roles were divvied up among a crack cast of four led by Andrus Nichols, and the result was the most exciting Shaw revival I've ever seen.

• Best revival of a musical. Another small-scale production, this one in Glencoe, Ill., rang the bell: William Brown staged "A Little Night Music" to emotionally overwhelming effect in Writers' Theatre's 108-seat house, accompanied by a five-piece pit band and graced by the perfect performance of Shannon Cochran as Desirée Armfeldt....

To see the rest of the list, including my picks for best musical, playwright, and company of the year, go here .

TT: Almanac

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

TT: So you want to see a show?

Here's my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Annie (musical, G, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Dead Accounts (serious comedy, PG-13, closes Feb. 24, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, closes Jan. 26, reviewed here)

• Glengarry Glen Ross (drama, R, closes Jan. 20, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Golden Boy (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 20, reviewed here)

• The Mystery of Edwin Drood (musical, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, closes Mar. 10, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 20, reviewed here)

IN BOSTON:

• Our Town (drama, G, remounting of off-Broadway production, closes Jan. 25, original production reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON OFF BROADWAY:

• The Piano Lesson (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)

• Golden Age (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)

• The Great God Pan (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, closes Jan. 13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN MADISON, N.J.:

• Trelawny of the "Wells" (comedy, G, not well suited to young children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY ON BROADWAY:

• Bring It On (musical, G, reviewed here)

• A Christmas Story (musical, G, nearly all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)