2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
So might two climbers lost in mountain weather On a high slope and taken by the storm, Desperate in the darkness, cling together Under one cloak and breathe each other warm. Stay…
Malcolm Muggeridge interviews Edward R. Murrow on Panorama, a BBC series first seen in 1953 that is the world's longest-running television program about current affairs. The two men discuss …
"I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable distur…
"With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook L
"Their one idea was to get in with people who didn't want them and to take snubs as if they were honorable scars." Henry James, "The Pupil"
"History is irony on the move, the Mind's jeer down through men and events. Today this belief triumphs; tomorrow, vanquished, it will be dismissed and replaced: those who accepted it wi…
"Why is it when we get older, we think it's the weather that's changing?" Robert W. Lenski, teleplay for Decoration Day (adapted from a novella by John William Corrington)
Two episodes of Three on the Aisle, the twice-monthly podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, became available on line for listening or…
"There is one thing that 99 percent of all critics share with one another: they are failures. I don't mean failures as critics"my God, that's understood. I don't even mean they are failures …
In addition to my regular drama columns, I published three other pieces in <I>The Wall Street Journal</I> during my recent semi-hiatus from this blog. The first one, which ra…
"Examine any work of art down to its bone and you find cliché." William Goldman, <I>The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway</I> (courtesy of Jason Zinoman)
My Wall Street Journal best-theater-of-2018 list appeared in the paper two weeks ago. Here are some excerpts. You can read the whole thing by going here. * * * ' B…
One of the finest new plays of the year just past, Heather Raffo's Noura, opened off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons a couple of days after I had to send in my Wall Street Journal best-t…
"'Do you know any happy music?' asked Stephen. 'I do not.'" Patrick O'Brien, The Hundred Days
I parted company with most of my colleagues in my Wall Street Journal review of Aaron Sorkin's new stage version of To Kill a Mockingbird, whose Broadway premiere I loathed. In the same…
"The sea, if it teaches nothing else, does at least compel a submission to the inevitable which resembles patience." Patrick O'Brien, Blue at the Mizzen
Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that Mrs. T's chronic illness has put us through the wringer of late. Among other things, she spent two weeks in a Connecticut hospital in November…
In the three weeks that have gone by since Mrs. T's hospital stays kept me from putting up new postings, I've reviewed four shows for The Wall Street Journal. One of them, Signature The…
A live performance of Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants, taped for TV at New York's Second Stage Theatre in 1996 and telecast by HBO. This show was directed for the stage by David Mamet: (This…
PYLADES I'll take care of you. ORESTES It's rotten work. PYLADES Not to me. Not if it's you. Euripides, Orestes (translated by Anne Carson)
Chet Atkins and Doc Watson perform "Tennessee Rag," "Beaumont Rag," and "On My Way to Canaan's Land" on The Tonight Show. They are introduced by Johnny Carson. This performance was originall…
"Someone asked me about the long marriage to Joe [Gousha, Powell's recently deceased husband]"42 years"and I reflected that he was the only person in the world I found it always a kick to ru…
"It is a mistake to suppose it is only the people who would like to be what they are not who are snobs." Henry James, "The Solution" (courtesy of Levi Stahl)
Glenn Gould plays Richard Strauss' Burleske on TV, accompanied by Vladimir Golschmann and the Toronto Symphony. (The announcer is Alex Trebek.) This performance was originally telecast by th…
"He was the truest friend, and practiced in the best friend's best response: 'You bet.'" David Mamet, "David Mamet on Ricky Jay, a Great Astonisher and 'Truest Friend'" (New York Times, Nov.…
