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There are moments in Hideous Progeny (especially early in the second half) that grip and move the audience. But there are not enough of them. I dare this gifted troupe of theater makers to be more inventive, take greater risks, and live up to their so obvious promise. Hideous Progeny by Emily Dendinger. Staged by…
The Chester Theatre Company’s production, directed by Ron Bashford, runs over two hours with nary a dull moment and the actors seem to be having as wonderful a time as the audience.
“To End All Wars” embodies its themes –- the decline of the aristocracy, the rise of propaganda, the transformation of war-making, the heroism of resistance –- so skillfully in a dozen or so major characters and another dozen minor ones that this history of the First World War reads like a lively group biography.
There is nothing shocking, nothing sensational, nothing revelatory, in this workmanlike production of ARMS AND THE MAN. Nor should there be, as the play doesn’t give much room for innovation.
The wily Enrique Vila-Matas remains wary but respectful of Ernest Hemingway and asserts his independence by going on his own self-consciously vaudevillian way—Juan Gabriel Vásquez is too subservient to elude the shadow of Joseph Conrad.
The theme of fading passion would have been enough. It is the theme of many a love story. It would have been enough for this chess story. But author Robert R. Desjarlais won’t let it be enough.
“There were times when I felt as if I were perpetually stuck, like in that film, ‘Groundhog Day,’ in the spring of 1992 just as Bosnia was careening into conflict. At one point I went to Sarajevo to visit friends and was relieved, indeed surprised, to find that while I had been re-living the war over and over, the city was gradually rebuilding and leaving the war behind.”
“On China” boasts photos of Henry Kissinger’s numerous visits to China. In many you see him smiling hugely, brandishing chopsticks alongside the likes of Zhou Enlai. He’s enjoying making history — and the food.
ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE is an intermittently engaging and very useful book for millions of partners, parents, children, friends and caretakers of stroke victims as well as anyone else interested in the workings of the mind.
Book Commentary: A Thousand Words for Paul West
Paul West’s goal is to expand consciousness through the uninhibited play of the imagination, to revel in the glory of words, not to preach lessons in civic do-gooding. And that anarchistic intensity has gotten him into trouble with those who mistakenly believe that exploring the mind of evil indicates approval.
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