“Paul Nicholas is to take the lead role of Jack Point in three special performances of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Yeomen of the Guard, which will be staged at The Tower of London to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Henry VII.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Wallace Shawn On Writing About Sex
“I suppose it goes without saying that James Joyce, DH Lawrence and others were expanding the scope of literature and redrawing humanity’s picture of itself when they approached this subject in the earlier part of the 20th century. But by the time I came along, many of my friends were embarrassed on my behalf precisely because the topic I was writing about seemed so closely associated with an earlier era. So why have I stuck with it?”
Real-Life Bookseller Of Kabul Sets Up Business In Britain
“The man who inspired Asne Seierstad’s smash hit The Bookseller of Kabul, Shah Muhammad Rais, is to start selling Afghan books into the UK, including the memoir he penned as an angry response to Seierstad’s book.”
Gehry, Morphosis And A Dozen Other Firms Design Duplex Houses For A Rebuilt New Orleans
“[Brad Pitt’s] Make It Right Foundation recently revealed the new designs that are part of [a] multimillion-dollar initiative to help rebuild the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, devastated in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.”
A Directors’ Conclave Honors Jerzy Grotowski
The Polish director, one of the most influential theater artists of the 20th century, “developed the concept of the ‘poor theater’ – theater that has been stripped down to its most essential parts.” A two-week festival in his hometown of Wroclaw last month “drew master directors like Roberto Bacci, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook and [Richard] Schechner, among others. … All were staging performances and giving workshops and talks as part of the extensive program.”
Daniel Radcliffe Takes Up Ballet
The teen star “has revealed that he is taking ballet classes in an effort to protect his career after his Harry Potter glory days have ended. The 19-year-old explained to Esquire magazine that he knows he will soon have to compete with other actors his age when they have completed their training in drama schools which have taught them to sing and dance.”
Thirteen Great Gangster Movies (As Chosen By A Gang Of Canadians)
“We’ve seen the gangster movie as psychological study, love story, social commentary and family drama. It has come in guises as various as the European art film … and the lurid exploitation quickie.” Herewith, “a baker’s dozen of variations on the gangster theme” – gangster as monarch, gangster as comic relief, gangster lovers, ghetto gangstas, yakuza, singing child gangsters …
Beethoven’s Ninth: In Japan, It’s Bigger Than Hello Kitty
“An amateur pastime in Japan for more than 50 years, [the symphony] is often performed around the holiday season in venues across the country, occasioning the coming together of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of choristers of all ages and levels of vocal training. ‘Ode to Joy’ serves as a popular ringtone for cellphones as well as a ubiquitous selection at karaoke bars.” Says one observer: “Someone told me that it’s the only time that Japanese women are allowed to scream.”
Charmed, And Conned, By A Beijing Opera Singer/International Man Of Mystery
Joyce Wadler: “I was working as a reporter at People magazine, back in 1988, when I saw the Broadway show the case inspired, David Henry Hwang’s wonderful M. Butterfly, and it raised many questions: How could a guy make love to another guy for months and not know? Where had the kid come from? How could I get to Paris, where the two men were now living after spending time in prison, on somebody else’s dime?”
We Have Ben Franklin To Thank For Pommes Frites
“After all, in his day the French thought potatoes – fried or otherwise – were poisonous, or at the very least unpalatable, and Franklin took part in changing their minds about this New World vegetable.”