Word: baron
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...modern-day nobleman (David Skeist '02) who has, for the last 20 years, believed himself to be Emperor Henry IV of Germany. As the play opens, his one-time paramour Matilda (Karin Alexander '02) comes to visit "Henry" in his grotesquely medieval living-space. She brings her friend Baron Belcredi (Tom Price '02), her daughter Frida (Marianne Cook '02) and a psychiatrist (Matthew Carlson) who intends to study "Henry" and attempt to cure him. Matilda and Belcredi explain the scenario to the doctor and to us before entering Henry's masquerade along with the madman's attendants (Luvh Rakhe...
...other leading roles are quite capably filled. Carlson plays the supercilious psychiatrist excellently; his haughty posture is such that he manages to look down his nose even at the towering Skeist. Price is similarly condescending as Baron Belcredi, weathering Matilda's insults and ruthlessly mocking Frida while always maintaining his panache. Cook brings great zest to the role of the attention-seeking Frida, and David Freeman '02 gives her fianc, the Marquis, an appropriately petulant reading. The four attendants are alternately hilarious and touching; Rakhe and Haynie are deliciously over-the-top throughout Act I, and both Asnes and Goulet...
This Puritan disdain for ostentation is a cherished tradition. After all, Thomas Paine penned Common Sense hoping to liberate Americans from the grip of ostentatious English aristocrats. In fact, the most poignant lesson in U.S. history teaches that today's Horatio Alger (see Andrew Carnegie) is tomorrow's robber baron (see Andrew Carnegie)--unless, of course, the baron performs a useful public service, such as owning a pro sports team or three, like 60-year-old Ted Turner, who also recently gave a billion dollars to the United Nations for humanitarian causes. Turner was following the tradition of the Astors...
...legendary for forcing guests at his estate to use a pay phone, and H.L. Hunt (1889-74), who every day either brought his lunch to work in a paper sack or, when not feeling quite so flush, cadged his secretary's sandwich. Less well known was oil and cattle baron James ("Silver Dollar Jim") West (1903-57). Wearing a diamond-encrusted Texas Ranger's badge and hunched behind the wheel of one of his 30 automobiles, West loved to race alongside Houston police in pursuit of evildoers, throwing handfuls of silver dollars to startled onlookers as he sped...
...things in perspective for you, Baron von Thayer, just for a second, before I address your very legitimate concern. You're 18 or 19 and you've been in this relationship for at most seven weeks. Now tell me: how serious is your relationship? In any case, blocking is a messy process. So is dating. When you put those two things together, you guessed it! A big mess...