Word: 1950s
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...lyrics stand out in part because the book of this musical is so good. Joseph Dougherty's script hysterically recreates the world of 1950s television comedy a la Sid Caesar and "Your Show of Shows." Much of the action of My Favorite Year takes place in and around the offices of "Comedy Cavalcade," the show for which Benjy writes, giving Dougherty the opportunity to toss off one-liners and badinage worthy of a much better show than the one he's stuck with...
Costume designer Betty McNally has worked wonders. From Belle's purple beaded coat to Downing's prim sweaters and pleated skirts to the glamorous yet tawdry gowns of the chorus girls, McNally has captured 1950s America perfectly. In several scenes, Belle's shoes are more interesting than anything else happening on stage...
...which managed, by means of some cunning detours through the Caymans, to reduce its 1987 tax rate to 1.7% of sales. Meanwhile, the company was laying off hundreds of stateside employees, who for their part had no choice but to pay taxes on their unemployment benefits. Or contemplate the 1950s, when corporate tax rates were piratical by today's standards but unemployment was low and the middle class was busily expanding...
...hour or so. That's bound to be a losing struggle, what with middle-class wages tumbling from year to year. Hence the deficit, which sits toadlike on our national aspirations. Two-thirds of it could be wiped out overnight if corporate taxes were restored to their 1950s levels. But even the deficit can be a boon if you're in the filly-raising class. The interest payments, which take up about 15% of the federal budget, go to the owners of Treasury bonds, meaning mainly the monied, and thus serve as one more conduit for the upward flow...
...time is 1974, and Max, who is fleeing from the wreckage of his first marriage, is a summer-house guest on Lake Como, where he encounters the two characters who will shape his life over the next 20 years: Charlie Swan, a Harvard classmate from the 1950s turned famous architect, whom Max remembers as the campus Lothario; and Toby, a poised and polymorphous teenager who is soon to become Charlie's protege and lover. Yes, there is a romantic triangle at the core of the novel, but it does not play out with the cliches of AIDS-aware contemporary fiction...