2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
In addition to writing about theater and the other arts for a living, I also blog in this space purely for my pleasure. Here are ten of my favorite posts from the year almost past: ' Februar…
"Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power." Bertrand Russell, "Recrudesc…
Arturo Toscanini leads the NBC Symphony in a performance of Rossini's William Tell Overture, originally telecast from Carnegie Hall on March 15, 1952: (This is the latest in a series of arts…
"One of the most disconcerting, unpleasant, and sordid aspects of life is the awareness that nearly all of us find an evil deed more exciting than a good one." Josep Pla, The Gray Notebook (…
If my family had any dark secrets, they went to the grave with my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. But like all families, we did have a few subjects of which we preferred not to spe…
From 2006: The phrase "guilty pleasure," of course, is itself inherently problematic, because it implies that we ought to be hypocrites when it comes to our artistic responses. Kingsley Amis…
"Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and ca…
My brother, like me, is deeply attached to the increasingly distant past that we share. That's one of the reasons why he and my sister-in-law live in the house where the two of us grew up, a…
A scene from the 1940 film version of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, adapted by Wilder, Frank Craven, and Harry Chandlee from Wilder's play and directed for the screen by Sam Wood. The score is…
"I like filmed theatre; I think there is a charge and a glamour about filmed plays and revues and vaudeville and music hall that one rarely gets from adaptations of novels or from those few …
A scene from "The Night of the Meek," an episode of The Twilight Zone originally telecast by CBS on December 23, 1960. The cast includes Art Carney and John Fiedler and the teleplay is by Ro…
"Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind." Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind
"Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced." Aldous Huxley, Grey Eminence
Rachel Harnisch, Claudio Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic perform "Laudate Dominum," a setting of Psalm 117 from Mozart's Vesperae solennes de confessore, K. 339, performed in 1999 at Salz…
"Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?" J. M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
From 2006: Why, then, did I never get around to putting up a tree of my own after I left home? The answer, I suppose, is that since I made a point of coming back to Smalltown, U.S.A., for th…
"Goodness is the only investment that never fails." Henry David Thoreau, Walden
A scene from Miracle on 34th Street, written and directed by George Seaton, featuring Edmund Gwenn and Philip Tonge. The film was released in 1947: (This is the latest in a series of arts-re…
"A man without nobility cannot have kindliness; he can only have good nature." Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort, Maxims and Considerations
Lee J. Cobb stars in a TV version of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, directed by Alex Segal and originally telecast by CBS on May 8, 1966. Cobb created the role of Willy Loman in the or…
"The theatre is a gross art, built in sweeps and over-emphasis. Compromise is its second name." Enid Bagnold, Autobiography
In today's online Wall Street Journal I review the New York Theatre Workshop's new production of Othello. Here's an excerpt. * * * "Othello" doesn't get done nearly often enough. It hasn't b…
In the online edition of today's Wall Street Journal, I review In Transit, the last new Broadway musical of 2016. Here's an excerpt. * * * To transfer a modest little off-Broadway musical to…
Today's Wall Street Journal contains my annual best-of-the-year theater column: Lots of excellent revivals, several impressive new plays, two terrific new musicals"most of them produced off …
"Pity is exhaustible. What a terrible discovery!" Enid Bagnold, Diary without Dates
