“Sixty years after a Congressional panel grilled 10 uncooperative writers, directors and producers about their supposed Communist connections, Hollywood still quarrels over the heroes and villains of its Red Scare. … But on Monday night in Toronto, one of the era’s acknowledged heroes, the jailed and blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, was expected to deliver some posthumous words that might finally put to rest the hunt for good guys and bad. The admonition occurs in the first few minutes of ‘Trumbo,’ a documentary….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Pavarotti Hits UK Singles Chart With “Nessun Dorma”
“Luciano Pavarotti has made a posthumous comeback to the UK singles chart, nearly 15 years after his last hit. Download sales of Nessun Dorma saw the track rise to number 24, following the tenor’s death on Thursday. The track made number two in 1990 after being used as the BBC’s theme to its coverage of the World Cup in Italy.”
Brooks’ Hulking Monster Overshadows Disney’s Ariel
“A lot of things have happened this year for Disney Theatrical Productions: the closing of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ after 13 years; the steady weeks of million-dollar grosses for ‘Mary Poppins’ on Broadway and the demise of its struggling London counterpart; and the belated entry of ‘High School Musical’ into the Disney theatrical catalog. There was also, of course, that ‘Tarzan’ unpleasantness.” Next, “The Little Mermaid” will sneak onto Broadway, obscured so far by Mel Brooks’ latest publicity-sucking behemoth.
Folk Artist Jimmy Lee Sudduth Dies At 97
“Jimmy Lee Sudduth, an African-American folk artist whose evocative, textured paintings made partly from Alabama mud were prized by collectors around the world, died last Sunday in Fayette, Ala. … A self-taught artist who began painting as a very small child, Mr. Sudduth was renowned for the effects he could produce with his own homemade paint, which consisted of mud blended with a variety of common substances — soot, axle grease, sugar, coffee grounds and much else — to lend it color and texture.”
“Lysistrata,” Partially Veiled, Confronts Islamophobia
“How do you make a play written 2,500 years ago communicate to a 21st-century audience? Using the latest technology is one way. Putting the characters in modern dress is another. But sometimes the key lies in a seemingly trivial or random detail,” writes Blake Morrison, who noticed a line in Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata” that makes reference to a woman in a snood. In his version of the play, that snood becomes a Muslim veil.
Even On Tour, Matthew Bourne’s A Protective Papa
“His shows are virtually guaranteed to sell out wherever he plays, but choreographer Matthew Bourne always keeps one seat free for a very important person – himself. … In London, he attends every single performance. On tour, Bourne stays with his company until completely satisfied that everything is in place, then heads back home – only to join them on the road at a new venue the following week.”
Grace Paley’s Fiction, Short And Straight To The Heart
“Like all the greatest masters of the short story–Chekhov, Hemingway, Sholom Aleichem, Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel–Paley had an uncanny genius for containing a world within a sentence. … Why did Paley never write a novel? At the beginning of her career, her first editor suggested it, and Paley later wrote, ‘I tried, for a couple of years. I failed.’ In a sense, the question is as absurd as asking why Chekhov never did, or Carver, or Borges.”
In Creative Realm, Gods And Artists Sometimes Clash
“The very idea that art purports to be a creative activity can offend a man of faith,” Peter Conrad notes. “But is it really nonsensical to praise a man of genius for creating a painting, a poem or a tune, just because he did not invent the canvas and the colours, the words or the notes? Art is a magical activity, and anyone who creates the likeness of a man seems to be exercising the power that created man in the first place.”
Would Any Other Artist’s Death Lead The News?
“When Pavarotti died this week something very unusual happened. The death of an artist – no. It was that the death of a classical practitioner of an elite art form led many news bulletins here in Britain, and no doubt around much of the world. All right, Pavarotti was a special case, someone who transcended the rigid categories which divide music. … But the ability to command the news headlines is unusual. When was the last time it happened in this way?”
Gender-Switch The Classics — But Only To A Point
“Cross-dressing is a vital part of theatrical tradition. It has also acquired an extra layer of significance in an age when women feel a new empowerment and want to extend their theatrical territory. But in society, as Caryl Churchill reminds us in Top Girls, it is pointless for women to ape role models. Equally, in theatre, there is little purpose in women (or men, for that matter) merely replicating the opposite gender.”