Terry Teachout's Blog, page 252

TT: Done and done (and done and done)

Danse Russe, the backstage comedy about the making of The Rite of Spring on which Paul Moravec and I have been working for the past few months, is done. I signed off on the piano-vocal score over the weekend, and Paul made his final corrections and shipped the finished product off to his publishers yesterday. It is now going out to the members of the cast of the first production of our second opera, which opens in Philadelphia on April 28. All that remains for Paul to do (and it is, lest we forget, a big "all") is finish orchestrating the score, a back-breaking job in which I play no part. My job is pretty much over until the show goes into rehearsal next month.

I have to admit that I don't feel quite as excited as I did when we delivered the finished score of The Letter to the Santa Fe Opera. This is mostly because Danse Russe is, after all, our second opera. It's not that we're jaded--writing a comic opera is a very different proposition from writing an opera noir--but having been around the track once, we already knew which way to go to get to the finish line.

Almost as important, though, is the fact that my plate is piled high with work these days. In addition to wrapping up Danse Russe, I've been working on the first draft of my Duke Ellington biography and directing the first staged reading of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play. That's a lot of firsts in a row, and when you factor in the fact that I knock out a minimum of six columns for The Wall Street Journal and write a twenty-five-hundred-word essay for Commentary each month, it means that I'm pretty damned busy.

So no, I didn't break the neck of a bottle of champagne yesterday, nor do I plan to do so today. Instead, I'll be working on a pile on expense reports, an indispensable part of the life of a peripatetic drama critic, and wishing I were in Winter Park with Mrs. T. Tomorrow I'll present a literary award (about which more after it happens) and attend a preview of the Broadway revival of That Championship Season, and on Thursday I'll fly back down to Orlando and my beloved spouse.

It turns out that finishing an opera, like finishing a hat, isn't quite so big a deal when you've made a lot of hats. But that doesn't mean it isn't big enough:

There's a part of you always standing by,

Mapping out the sky,

Finishing a hat...

Starting on a hat...

Finishing a hat...

Look, I made a hat...

Where there never was a hat.

And that's that. For today, anyway.

TT: Man at work

I was going to tell you all about my visit to Palm Beach, but instead I spent the evening working on Satchmo at the Waldorf, my one-man-two-character play about Louis Armstrong and Joe Glaser, his manager. Now that I've seen two readings of the play in front of a pair of live audiences, I've cut ten pages out of what was originally a sixty-six-page script, written a new speech for Glaser, and done some restructuring of the first act. (The second act worked pretty much as is.) I think that's enough work for one night, don't you?

More about my adventures in Palm Beach--and my current trip to New York--in the next day or two. In the meantime, hang loose.

TT: Almanac

"Among those I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh."

W.H. Auden, "Notes on the Comic" (courtesy of Anecdotal Evidence )

TT: Playing it safe—and smart

In today's Wall Street Journal I review Orlando Shakespeare Theater's productions of Pride and Prejudice and A Midsummer Night's Dream . Here's an excerpt.

* * *

Now that America's economic woes have forced regional theaters to play it as safely as possible, their artistic directors must grapple with a tough question: How to be both safe and stimulating? Florida's Orlando Shakespeare Theater has responded to the challenge by offering its patrons a mini-season of rotating repertory in which two warhorses, "Pride and Prejudice" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream," and are being presented in smart, cliché-free stagings.

I confess to having previously gone out of my way to avoid stage versions of "Pride and Prejudice." I love Jane Austen's most popular novel (who doesn't?), but it's been adapted so many times in so many different media that I couldn't see the point of yet another version. Moreover, I find that plays based on classic novels tend to be stiff and stagy. So I'm pleasantly surprised to report that Jon Jory has done a top-notch job of turning "Pride and Prejudice" into a play.

Mr. Jory, who founded Louisville's Humana Festival of New American plays, adapted the novel in 2005, and since then his version has been performed throughout America. I can see why. While it requires a cast of 19, the scenic demands are modest--Orlando Shakespeare did the show with ten gilded chairs and a couple of footstools--and Mr. Jory has trimmed and shaped the book into a swift-moving script that gives directors plenty of room to maneuver. Thomas Ouellette's light-footed, virtuosically coordinated staging flows as smoothly as a ballet and has just the right amount of comic crackle....

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is performed on the same unit set as "Pride and Prejudice," a two-story country-house façade painted to look like a summer sky that overlooks a wide-open playing area. Not only is it acted by the same group of players, but both shows have been cast similarly. Michele Vazquez and Courtney Moors, for instance, play Elizabeth and Jane in "Pride and Prejudice" and Hermia and Helena in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," while Michael Daly does double duty as Mr. Collins and Bottom. This approach gives a strong feeling of unity to the season: You immediately see the artistic point of presenting the two shows in tandem.

On the other hand, the productions couldn't be more different in tone. Whereas Mr. Ouellette's "Pride and Prejudice" is crisp and classical, David Lee has deliberately emphasized the farce-like elements in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," staging the scenes for the four young lovers as a long, seamless arc of comic action whose propulsive physical energy I found exhilarating. Ms. Vazquez and Ms. Moors are wholly charming in "Pride and Prejudice," but they really come into their own here. I don't know when I've seen two such naturally gifted young stage comediennes...

* * *

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."

Samuel Johnson, letter to Hester Thrale, Sept. 21, 1773

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.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• La Cage aux Folles (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Driving Miss Daisy * (drama, G, possible for smart children, closes Apr. 9, reviewed here)

• The Importance of Being Earnest (high comedy, G, just possible for very smart children, closes July 3, reviewed here)

• Lombardi (drama, G/PG-13, a modest amount of adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Million Dollar Quartet (jukebox musical, G, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Angels in America (drama, PG-13/R, adult subject matter, extended through Apr. 24, reviewed here)

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

• Black Tie (comedy, PG-13, extended through Mar. 27, reviewed here)

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

• Molly Sweeney (drama, G, too serious for children, extended through Apr. 10, reviewed here)

• Play Dead (theatrical spook show, PG-13, utterly unsuitable for easily frightened children or adults, reviewed here)

IN SARASOTA, FLA.:

• Twelve Angry Men (drama, G, closes Mar. 26, reviewed here)

IN WASHINGTON, D.C.:

• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (drama, PG-13/R, Washington remounting of Chicago production, adult subject matter, closes Apr. 10, Chicago run reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN MINNEAPOLIS:

• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (drama, PG-13/R, Minneapolis remounting of Phoenix production, adult subject matter and violence, closes Mar. 6, Phoenix run reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN PHILADELPHIA:

• A Moon for the Misbegotten (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN WINTER GARDEN, FLA.:

• Shhhh! (farce, G, suitable for children, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"The soul of the journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases."

William Hazlitt, "On Going a Journey"

TT: Almanac

"The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sightseeing.'"

Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Psuedo-Events in America

TT: Snapshot

Ernie Kovacs' Eugene, originally telecast on ABC in 1961:



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

TT: Almanac

"The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to be late for the one before."

G.K. Chesterton, "The Prehistoric Railway Station"