2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
In today's Wall Street Journal I review two very different plays about the supernatural, the Public Theater's Shakespeare-in-the-Park production of The Tempest and a Baltimore revival of Bli…
In today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column I discuss Jonathan Pryce's charge that Tom Stoppard is a snob"and put it in a wider cultural context. Here's an excerpt. * * * Tom Stoppard,…
Johnny Mercer stumps the panel as a "special" mystery guest on an episode of What's My Line? originally telecast on February 9, 1964. The regular mystery guest, who is seen at the end of the…
The latest episode of Theater Talk, in which Susan Haskins and Michael Riedel discuss the Broadway season just past with Ben Brantley of the New York Times, Peter Marks of the Washington Pos…
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists"
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity
Jascha Heifetz plays the first movement of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto on a 1949 episode of The Bell Telephone Hour, accompanied by Donald Voorhees and a studio orchestra: (This is the l…
"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." George Orwell, discarded preface for Animal Farm (written in 1945, published in 1972)
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…
"You know, the problem with my guilty pleasure films is that I don't feel guilty about them. I don't really experience that sensation." Wes Anderson (quoted in Matt Zoller Seitz, Wes Anderso…
I've been posting arts-related videos in this space each Monday and Wednesday since February of 2014. (So far as I know, I have yet to post the same video twice.) I get enormous pleasure fro…
One of the most striking things about Ron Howard's Apollo 13 is the way in which Howard and the film's designers sought to recreate on screen the lost world of America in 1969. Nowadays we t…
Edward G. Robinson's "window cameo" from a 1966 episode of Batman. In real life Robinson was one of the most noted art collectors in Hollywood: (This is the latest in a series of arts-relate…
"Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power." Eric Hoffer, Working and Thinking on the Waterfront
In today's Wall Street Journal I review two regional Stephen Sondheim revivals, a Passion in Philadelphia and a Company in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Here's an excerpt. * * * The gold stand…
"The average man doesn't want to be free. He wants to be safe." H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy
an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience. Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel
Ray Charles performs "You Don't Know Me" and "What'd I Say" on The Dinah Shore Show in 1963: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and …
"Delay is the deadliest form of denial." C. Northcote Parkinson, The Law of Delay
' If you visit this blog with even modest regularity, you know that the next stop for Satchmo at the Waldorf is San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre, where the John Douglas Thompson…
From 2005: Perhaps my powers of concentration have been diminished by advancing age, or maybe I've simply become more sensitive to the emotion-evoking power of music. (I cry more easily now …
"The only 'ism' that has justified itself is pessimism." George Orwell, "The Limit to Pessimism"
An old college friend of mine who visited Los Angeles with her husband last week made a special point of going to see a performance of Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, which closed the…
A scene from John Frankenheimer's 1973 film version of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. Robert Ryan plays Larry Slade and Jeff Bridges plays Don Parritt: (This is the latest in a series o…
"My quarrel with propaganda in the theatre is that it's such damned unconvincing propaganda"whereas, if you will restrain the propaganda purpose to the selection of the life to be portrayed …
