Terry Teachout's Blog, page 212

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:

• Anything Goes (musical, G/PG-13, mildly adult subject matter that will be unintelligible to children, closes Jan. 8, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical, G/PG-13, perfectly fine for children whose parents aren't actively prudish, most performances sold out last week, 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)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, off-Broadway remounting of Broadway production, original run reviewed here)

IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• August: Osage County (drama, PG-13/R, closes Nov. 5, reviewed here)

• Julius Caesar (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Nov. 6, reviewed here)

• Measure for Measure (Shakespeare, PG-13, closes Nov. 6, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN ASHLAND, OREGON:

• The Pirates of Penzance (operetta, G, suitable for children, closes Oct. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Oklahoma! (musical, G, remounting of 2010 production, suitable for children, closes Oct. 2, original run reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN EAST HADDAM, CONNECTICUT:

• Show Boat (musical, G, suitable for bright children, closes Sept. 17, reviewed here)

CLOSING SATURDAY IN SPRING GREEN, WISCONSIN:

• The Critic (comedy, G, too complicated for children, reviewed here)

TT: Closer and closer

Satchmo at the Waldorf , my first play, opens a week from tonight in Orlando, Florida. I'll be flying down first thing Saturday morning to join Dennis Neal, the star, and Rus Blackwell, the director, for the final rehearsals.

You probably won't be surprised to hear that I'm finding it difficult to concentrate on anything other than opening night. The funny thing is that I never gave any serious thought to becoming a playwright until I started writing Satchmo at the Waldorf a year and a half ago. Now that it's happened, though, I'm about as excited as it's possible to be.

Come Monday, I'll let you know how things are shaping up in Orlando. In the meantime, I'm pleased to report that Brian Shaw, an assistant professor at Louisiana State University, is currently teaching a seminar on Louis Armstrong that uses Pops , my 2009 Armstrong biography, as its text. He recently posted a Facebook playlist of Armstrong-related recordings and videos, all of them keyed to the text of Pops, that are available on YouTube and will be discussed in his seminar. You can view it by going here . I wish I'd thought of doing something similar when Pops first came out!

TT: Snapshot

Aaron Copland leads the New York Philharmonic in the finale of his Third Symphony. The performance was part of a televised "Young People's Concert" introduced by Leonard Bernstein:



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

TT: Almanac

"It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing."

Gertrude Stein, Everybody's Autobiography

TT: Almanac

"A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist."

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

TT: At last

The trailer for Margaret , Kenneth Lonergan 's long-awaited second film, out September 30 from Fox Searchlight:

TT: Top of the barrel

On Thursday Mrs. T and I returned home from a month-long stretch on the road. Most of it was pretty wonderful, especially our two-day visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Seth Peterson Cottage , at which I snapped this candid photo of Mrs. T sleeping on the couch. Not so the travel, which was grueling from start to finish, in part because there was so damned much of it, including two unplanned trips to Smalltown, U.S.A., to see my ailing mother (who is much improved, thank you).

In addition to the Peterson Cottage, the shows we saw, and the (frequently) fabulous meals we ate along the way, we stumbled across a brand-new independent bookstore-café that's equally deserving of high praise. Arcadia Books is located in Spring Green, the small Wisconsin town that is home to American Players Theatre and Taliesin . It's owned by James Bohnen, a stage director whose work I admire , and it's the kind of shop of which serious readers dream. The space is handsome and the choice of books imaginative (I bought a copy of the New York Review Books edition of Murray Kempton's Part of Our Time there). The food is good, too!

I'm tickled to report, by the way, that my own Pops was on display next to Rosanne Cash's Composed , a book of which I think highly . It was nice to be in such good company.

When you're gone for a month, you've got a month's worth of snail mail to open, and that's what I spent Thursday night and Friday morning doing. Most of it was publicity-type stuff, most of which was a notch up from junk. I did, however, receive a package from the University of Chicago Press that delighted me, containing as it did my copies of Richard Stark's Flashfire and Firebreak , to which I contributed an introduction of which I'm exceedingly proud.

If you haven't yet jumped on the Stark/Parker bandwagon, I have good news, which is that the University of Chicago Press is giving away free copies of the e-book version of The Score , the fifth novel in the Parker series, throughout the month of September. You can download your copy by going to the U of C Parker page , and you can also order it directly from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (If the $0 price hasn't shown up yet on these sites, come back later today or tomorrow.)

Incidentally, Flashfire is about to be turned into a movie called Parker that will star Jason Statham, Jennifer Lopez, and Nick Nolte. Some of the Parker movies have been much better than others, so I'm hoping that this one, which will be directed by Taylor Hackford, is an improvement on its most recent predecessor .

In addition to Flashfire and Firebreak, I also received an envelope from my theatrical agent that contained a check—the first money I've ever earned as a playwright. It was the advance payment for the premiere production of Satchmo at the Waldorf , my first play, which opens next Thursday in Orlando, Florida. It isn't a big check, but it still means a lot to me. Not only is it a symbol of an achievement that I never envisioned, but I'm allowing myself to think of it as—maybe, just maybe—a down payment on the future. Here's hoping, anyway….

TT: Sufficient unto the day thereof

I'm taking the day off, having labored excessively for the past month. See you tomorrow.

TT: Just because

Fred Allen, who had taken a leave from the panel of What's My Line? because of illness, returns as the show's surprise mystery guest on July 17, 1955:

TT: Almanac

"Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion. When a radio comedian's program is finally finished it slinks down Memory Lane into the limbo of yesterday's happy hours. All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter."

Fred Allen, Treadmill to Oblivion