Terry Teachout's Blog, page 75

TT: Almanac

"Now when the fiddle sang at all it sang alone: but since Stephen's departure he had rarely been in a mood for music and in any case the partita that he was now engaged upon, one of the manuscript works that he had bought in London, grew more and more strange the deeper he went into it. The opening movements were full of technical difficulties and he doubted he would ever be able to do them anything like justice, but it was the great chaconne which followed that really disturbed him. On the face of it the statements made in the beginning were clear enough: their closely argued variations, though complex, could certainly be followed with full acceptation, and they were not particularly hard to play; yet at one point, after a curiously insistent repetition of the second theme, the rhythm changed and with it the whole logic of the discourse. There was something dangerous about what followed, something not unlike the edge of madness or at least of a nightmare; and although Jack recognized that the whole sonata and particularly the chaconne was a most impressive composition he felt that if he were to go on playing it with all his heart it might lead him to very strange regions indeed."

Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission

TT: Almanac

"The band was deep in a minuet, a Clementi minuet in C major that Jack and he had arranged for violin and 'cello, one that they had often played together; and now that he was in it, in it for the first time as a dancer, the familiar music took on a new dimension; he was part of the music, right in its heart as one of the formally moving figures whose pattern it created--he lived in a new world, entirely in the present."

Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate

TT: Lookback

From 2003:

A drama critic who spends most of his evenings covering Broadway and off-Broadway openings tends to forget that most of the plays being staged in New York on any given night are performed in tiny little theaters consisting of a ratty lobby, a smallish rectangular performance space whose ceiling, walls, and floor are painted black (hence the name "black-box theater"), and an even smaller backstage area (often indistinguishable from the hall). Such places are typically situated on blocks so unfashionable that you look twice at your appointment book to be sure you've come to the right place. Then you climb up a flight or three of stairs, settle into a creaky old theater seat, and wait to see what happens next. Often it's painfully earnest. Sometimes it's downright awful. Every once in a while, though, the black box turns into a time machine in which you spend an hour or two exploring a parallel universe of the imagination, and when the lights come up again, you remember why you love theater, and why the waitress who served you brunch in between callbacks loves it, too....

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Just because

Alan Bennett discusses The History Boys on Theater Talk:



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

TT: Almanac

"Because, sir, teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul. It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over his pupils: he often beats them and insensibly he loses the sense of respect due to them as fellow human beings. He does them harm, but the harm they do to him is greater. He may easily become the all-knowing tyrant, always right, always virtuous; in any event he perpetually associates with his inferiors, the king of his company; and in a surprisingly short time alas this brands him with the mark of Cain."

Patrick O'Brian, The Ionian Mission

TT: The guillotine of history

In today's Wall Street Journal I review a new off-Broadway play, John Guare's 3 Kinds of Exile , and two out-of-town revivals, Present Laughter in Red Bank, New Jersey, and The Real Thing in Washington, D.C. Here's an excerpt.

* * *

The twin tyrannies of Communism and Nazism killed so many Europeans that it's temptingly easy to think only of the mountains of corpses that were their monument. But totalitarianism also did damage to countless other people by forcing them into unsought exile. Some who fled to America and elsewhere were able to start anew, but many others soon found that the guillotine of history had cut their lives in two. In "3 Kinds of Exile," John Guare dramatizes the sufferings of a trio of European émigrés whose existence was turned inside out when they left home....

Mr. Guare, as is his wont, tells these varied tales with surging energy and an infectious sense of the absurd, and the three parts of "3 Kinds of Exile" add up to an "entertainment" that is at once excitingly lively and unsettlingly macabre....

Michael Cumpsty was born to play Garry Essendine, the self-absorbed anti-hero of "Present Laughter," Noël Coward's comedy about a flamboyant matinée idol who bears a far-more-than-coincidental resemblance to the author himself. Mr. Cumpsty, the star of Two River Theater Company's new production of Coward's best play, knows that Essendine is at bottom a spoiled child who is scared of the dark, and he combines stiletto-sharp wit with high-camp poutiness to endlessly exhilarating effect. His performance would be worth seeing all by itself...

Studio Theatre has a strong track record with the plays of Tom Stoppard, and the company's in-the-round revival of "The Real Thing," Stoppard's most heartfelt play, is for the most part a sound piece of work. Annie Purcell, who plays the woman who teaches Henry (Teagle F. Bougere), Stoppard's own fictional alter ego, a painful lesson in the meaning of love, gives a really lovely performance, sincere and winsome in just the right proportions, and Caroline Bootle Pendergast is pointed and ironic as Charlotte, Henry's first wife and the mother of his only child (very well played by Barrett Doss). Mr. Bougere, alas, is the weak link, not because he isn't a good actor but because he lacks the lightness of touch necessary to bring Henry to convincing life....

* * *

Read the whole thing here .

TT: Almanac

"For my own Part, when I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring Favours, but as paying Debts. In my Travels, and since my Settlement, I have received much Kindness from Men, to whom I shall never have any Opportunity of making the least direct Return. And numberless Mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our Services. Those Kindnesses from Men, I can therefore only Return on their Fellow Men; and I can only shew my Gratitude for these mercies from God, by a readiness to help his other Children and my Brethren. For I do not think that Thanks and Compliments, tho' repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less those to our Creator."

Benjamin Franklin, letter to Joseph Huey (June 6, 1753)

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, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Matilda (musical, G, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• The Nance (play with music, PG-13, closes Aug. 11, some performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

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

• The Trip to Bountiful (drama, G, closes Sept. 1, reviewed here)

• Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (comedy, PG-13, remounting of off-Broadway production, extended through Aug. 25, most performances sold out last week, original production 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)

• Far From Heaven (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes July 7, reviewed here)

• The Weir (drama, PG-13, extended through Aug. 4, reviewed here)

CLOSING SOON IN ARLINGTON, VA.:

• Company (musical, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes June 30, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK OFF BROADWAY:

• The Caucasian Chalk Circle (drama with music, PG-13, closes June 23, reviewed here)

TT: Almanac

"In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself."

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

TT: Snapshot

Virgil Thomson is interviewed in 1974 on CUNY-TV's Day for Night:



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