Terry Teachout's Blog, page 138

TT: Slightly over my head

As some of you know, I'm simultaneously revising Satchmo at the Waldorf for its transfer to New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre in October and working with Paul Moravec to revise The Letter for its New York premiere in February. (Operas have much longer lead times than straight plays.) I also have to write two Wall Street Journal columns, a Commentary essay, and a program note for the Long Wharf production of Satchmo at the Waldorf between now and Thursday morning.

Complicating matters still further is the fact that the lovely country cottage where Mrs. T and I are living during our stay in Lenox is so far off the beaten path that my cellphone doesn't work there, nor do I have access to a wi-fi signal. I have to drive five miles to the nearest McDonald's in order to pick up my e-mail and check my voicemail.

For all these reasons, I've got quite a bit more to do than I can easily handle this week, so if you're trying to get in touch with me, please be patient--I may not get back to you until after Labor Day.

TT: Wheee!

I know, I know, don't read your own reviews, but the Boston Globe review of Satchmo at the Waldorf really is too gratifying not to pass on....

TT: Lookback

From 2008:

I was sitting on the couch eating a bowl of high-fiber cereal yesterday morning when the phone rang. It was Paul Moravec, my collaborator on The Letter.

"Can we talk?" he said. "I'm stuck on the high C in scene four. What do we do next?"

Translation: Paul is composing the fourth scene of our opera....

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"A list of books that you reread is like a clearing in the forest: a level, clean, well-lighted place where you set down your burdens and set up your home, your identity, your concerns, your continuity in a world that is at best indifferent, at worst malign."

L.E. Sissman, "The Constant Rereader's Five-Foot Shelf"

TT: Laughter in the dark

Over the weekend I received this e-mail from Paul Moravec , my sometime operatic collaborator:

My brother Matt visited us yesterday. Apropos of nothing, he said, "I saw somewhere that Terry is opening a restaurant
at the Waldorf."

Word gets around!

I'm relieved to report, however, that I'm not going to be making my debut as a restaurateur any time soon. Satchmo at the Waldorf opened last Friday at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts, and it was--and is--a rip-roaring success.

This is not to say that John Douglas Thompson, Gordon Edelstein, and I don't plan to do a fair amount of further tinkering prior to transferring the production to New Haven's Long Wharf Theatre in October. Some "fine sandpapering" (as Gordon says) awaits us. That said, we're pleased with Satchmo as is. Tickets are selling famously, and the audience response to the two previews and first five performances has been...well, let's just call it emphatic.

The most interesting part of seeing the play performed several times in a row has been the chance to see how different audiences react to it. When I wrote Satchmo at the Waldorf, I never imagined that anybody would find it amusing--I expected it to get no more than a half-dozen laughs--and when Dennis Neal and Rus Blackwell staged the show in Orlando last fall, I was astonished to discover that the first two-thirds of the script played like a comedy. Much the same thing is happening in Lenox, albeit with the same wide variability of response that I first observed in Orlando. I suppose the best way to put it is that some audiences receive Satchmo at the Waldorf as a serious comedy and others as a funny drama. What's more, I can tell within a minute and a half of the beginning of the show which way it will be received on any given night.

Time and again, though, people are laughing at lines that didn't strike me as especially funny when I wrote them, and in one or two cases I still don't understand why they're laughing. Early in the play, for instance, Louis Armstrong delivers the following lines: "See the write-up in the paper today? Man say I'm 'a walking Smithsonian Institution of jazz.'" This is a direct quote from John S. Wilson's New York Times review of Armstrong's last gig, but it comes across as a joke, and even after seven performances, I'm damned if I know why.

I mentioned to John at the first rehearsal in Lenox that he'd probably be getting some laughs once we opened. He asked me not to tell him where they'd be. "If you do, I'll be tempted to play those lines too broadly," he explained. I kept my mouth shut, and when we opened last week, I could see that he was astonished by the audience's response. If you read Alec Wilkinson's profile of John, which appeared in The New Yorker in May, you'll know that he's long felt doubtful about his ability to get a laugh on stage. The subtitle of the profile was He's been called our greatest classical actor. Can he learn to be funny? Well, John took his first course in comedy on opening night, and graduated summa cum laude at evening's end.

Anyway, that's the news from Lenox. We very much hope that you'll come see the fruits of our collective labors, either here or in New Haven, where Satchmo at the Waldorf begins previews on October 4 and runs from October 10 through November 4.

TT: Just because

Ray Price sings "City Lights" on Pet Milk Grand Ole Opry in 1962:



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

TT: Almanac

"Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination."

Ernest Hemingway, introduction to Men at War

TT: Just so you'll know

The opening-night performance of Satchmo at the Waldorf was a tremendous success. More on Monday, but suffice it for now to say that I'm profoundly happy.

Yes, I'm already at the theater

"On the day before a New York opening, a company moves within a solar system of its own. It is a planet in outer space, detached from the moon and stars, and its orbit is the stairway from the dressing rooms to the stage. Each actor sits at his make-up table, staring into the brilliantly lit mirror at his own image, making the prescribed movements that will detach him still further from the world of reality and allow him to achieve the anonymity of complete disguise."

Moss Hart, Act One

TT: Two for two

The second preview performance of Satchmo at the Waldorf went over just as well as the first one . We had an older, quieter audience on Thursday, but they were no less attentive to the show--I didn't see or hear a single yawn anywhere in the house--and I'm pleased to report that we got our second standing ovation in a row.

The official press opening is tonight. We're very, very hopeful. No matter what happens, though, I plan to sleep in tomorrow. It isn't quite right to say that I'm burned out, but I am feeling a bit crispy around the edges!

As always, watch this space for details.