Word: berlins
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Fitzpatrick returns to the family ranch after a stint as a NATO tank captain patroling the Berlin Wall. Borders are just as tense back home. His cantankerous grandfather goes on living and seething beyond his time; a sister with "insufficient resistance to pain of every kind" opts for the lesser agony of suicide. The lonesome cowboy finds purpose only in pursuing Claire, the icy wife of a "vivid . . . piercey-bright, oilman feisty" pseudo-patrón named Tio. The result is McGuane's standard mano á mano struggle in which the prize is less significant than the battle itself...
...that explains the angry, self-righteous lone of the singers and those out-of-the-blue slides of bloody North Vietnamese which keep materializing above the stage. Perhaps it also explains the passage from Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories which Hill reads before the company breaks into a funky rendition of "Rebel, Rebel." And maybe it has something to do with all the gratuitous semi-nudity, or the baffling pantomimes of torture and death. May be it even explains Leslie Beckhart's stunning array of metallic punk costumes, although they make Peoploids look more like a Fiorucci fashion show than...
...worth recalling what Schell overlooks: "brinksmanship" was a feature of the Soviet-American contest in the '40s, '50s and early '60s, over Berlin (twice), Cuba and other trouble spots. That was back in the days when the U.S. had overwhelming nuclear superiority. Since the Soviets achieved nuclear parity with the U.S., and thus brought about the dilemma of true mutual deterrence that Schell describes so well, the two countries have tried to stay well back from the brink, despite the many points of tension between them. In short, the choice facing mankind may be less stark...
André Previn? The Berlin-born music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, Previn, 53, came to the U.S. in 1939, when his parents fled Hitler. First active as a jazz pianist and arranger-winning four Academy Awards for his film scores-he got his start conducting in a post in Houston but attracted wide notice only after he was appointed to lead the London Symphony. Even in Pittsburgh, he is still strongly identified with English music. Another prominent member of this generation, Thomas Schippers, died at 47 in 1977. The music director of the Cincinnati Symphony was an opera conductor...
DIED. Vasili Chuikov, 82, Russian military commander and hero of the Soviets' stalwart defense of Stalingrad during World War II. Chuikov accepted the German surrender of Berlin and headed the Soviet occupation forces in East Germany from...