Tag: 03.29.03

Room For Politics In Theatre?

Why does the idea of political theatre scare off so many people? “Perhaps the problem is the very term ‘political’: most often it is used to mean theatre with a left-wing axe to grind. So, among other things, the question carries with it a hackle-raising, almost indiscernible whiff of red-baiting: ‘Are you now or have you ever been a member of the…?’ Added to this, there is the fairly mainstream notion that ideas and political theory are limiting for writers, if not downright hostile to talent and the ‘real’, and that truth springs from the individual, unencumbered by the blinkers of politicking.”

Urban Cowboy – Lookin’ For Love In All The Wrong Places

With business down, Broadway’s looking for a hit. A bunch of new shows are opening, led by a new musical version of “Urban Cowboy”. So how is it? Terry Teachout isn’t impressed. The story? “By turns cynically maudlin and pointlessly vulgar, it is a tissue of unfunny clichés so implausible-sounding that you wonder how Aaron Latham could possibly have been born in Spur, Texas. And the music? “Have I mentioned the score? Well, there isn’t one, only a jumble of ditties that might have been chosen by randomly punching the keys of an oddly stocked jukebox.”

Theatre – Putting Conflict In Perspective

“The bracing, dizzying state of the world lately has given rise to several plays about politics, and even more articles about plays about politics. The great virtue of plays about political history like ‘Midnight’s Children’ and ‘Golda’s Balcony’ is that they take the seemingly intractable problems out of the realm of finality and return them to contingency, where they belong. They remind us that, although the conflicts in the Middle East and on the Indian subcontinent owe much to ancient grudges and religious rivalries, they are also a product of individual leaders and the discrete decisions that they made.”

How Many Operas Are There? (How Many Worth Listening To?)

How many operas are there? a few hundred? A thousand? Fifteen hundred? We’re aware of more and more from the past as the years progress. “Strange then that the part of the repertoire least certainly alive is the modern, the new, the freshly commissioned. But perhaps 50 years from now people will look back on us and pity us for our ignorance of our contemporaries, who are as obscure to us as Handel was to Dent.”

Michelangelo “Doodles” being Restored

For six weeks in 1530, Michelangelo hid in a little cell-like room while the Medicis wanted him dead. While there, he drew on the walls. “The collection of around 50 ‘doodles’, first discovered by Paolo dal Poggetto in 1975, include a self-portrait, a life-size risen Christ and some sketches experts believe are copies of figures the artist had painted earlier on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.” The drawings are being restored after having badly deteriorated.