I regret to write that Terry Teachout, one of ArtsJournal’s original bloggers since 2003, has died unexpectedly at his home in New York at the age of 65. The Wall Street Journal, where Terry was the longtime theatre critic, has anobituary here.

I will write more about Terry in the days to come. He was a generous and valued friend. Though we spoke rarely, we had an active correspondence over the years and he was one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever known. He will be much missed. More later.

• Douglas McLennan, Editor, ArtsJournal

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Theater lovers throughout America owe a huge debt to the Irish Repertory Theatre for having kept us sane and entertained by streaming exemplary, standard-setting video productions throughout the Covid-19 lockdown. Now the Irish Rep, for me New York’s finest off-Broadway theater, is reopening its doors with a revival of Charlotte Moore’s 2002 musical version of Dion Boucicault’s “The Streets of New York.” In his play, the celebrated 19th-century theatrical ne’er-do-well, who died in New York in 1890 after spending his career shuttling back and forth across the Atlantic, told a succulent tale of melodramatic woe. It is greatly enhanced by Ms. Moore’s songs and is performed to the hilt by her new cast…

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Alan Pryce-Jones interviews Somerset Maugham at his villa on the Mediterranean in 1965:

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

“Sentimentality is only sentiment that rubs you up the wrong way.”

Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook

Richard Strauss leads the Vienna Philharmonic in a 1944 performance of his Till Eulenspiegel. These are a series of single-camera views intended to be cut together. At the end is the only surviving film of Arthur Nikisch conducting. It is silent, and shown sideways:

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

“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”

Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence

Hilary and I used to spend two or three weeks each winter on Florida’s Sanibel Island, our favorite place in the world. Alas, her deteriorating health caught up with her at last, and the doctors made her stop going there in 2016. It was always our plan to return as soon as she recovered from her double lung transplant. Instead, I lost Hilary and went straight from her deathbed into lockdown, after which I spent a painful year and a half learning to cope with that which I had most feared.

Then, six months ago, Cheril Mulligan and I fell in love, and though I’ll always miss Hilary, my life is once again full and joyous. One of these days I’ll take Cheril down to Sanibel—I know she’ll love it—but for now I’m more than content to live in the present and revel in the return of good fortune to my once-charmed, twice-blessed life.

I don’t need to know what’s to come next, which is a blessing, since it’s not given to any of us to know that. The only thing I know is that more surprises await me in 2022. Such being the case, allow me to quote Ogden Nash, as is my longstanding custom on the last day of the year:

Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.

Tonight’s December Thirty-First,
Something is about to burst.

The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.

Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.

If, like me, you have a sneaking suspicion that chance is in the saddle and rides mankind, then I hope the year to come treats you not unkindly, and that your lives, like mine, will be warmed by hope and filled with love—and if you feel otherwise, then I wish for you the very same thing. We all deserve to be loved on New Year’s Eve.

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Ana Gasteyer sings “Defying Gravity,” written by Stephen Schwartz for the score of Wicked:

There will be no posts this week—I have no shows to review and so will not be filing aWall Street Journaldrama column, and it struck me as appropriate to shut the shop down between the holidays.

See you again on Friday for my annual end-of-the-year sendoff.