Word: elliot
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...Trouble in Ireland Michael Elliot's view that it will take a long time to drain the poison from Northern Ireland is very perceptive [March 23]. The latest outbreak of IRA violence is like a recurring tumor, the cause of which is a pernicious cancer in the Nationalist body politic, namely: our fixation with a "united Ireland." As long as we succumb to our animal territorial instinct and harbour this futile dream, every generation will produce some young hotheads prepared to use violence to achieve it. Of course, like Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness et al, they will come...
...image issue right from the beginning. "No mother is going to buy her daughter a doll with breasts," Ruth Handler's husband and business partner Elliot insisted. Her other male colleagues at Mattel, the company she founded, concurred. But Handler, a 5-ft. 2-in. (1.6 m) dynamo, was convinced there was a market for a mass-produced adult doll. Little girls aspired to be bigger girls, she reasoned. For years she pressed on, finally introducing the doll at the 1959 Toy Fair in New York City...
...American musicals these days, the path to success falls into one of three categories: camp (Hairspray), hip (Spring Awakening) or kid-friendly (Wicked). Billy Elliot takes the old-fashioned route and makes an honest, emotional connection. Billy's motherless household is a grubby, oppressive place, and when his father and brother join their fellow miners in walking off the job, it becomes a tension-filled one. The story unfolds at a carefully unhurried pace: after a disastrous boxing lesson, Billy accidentally finds himself in a girls' ballet class. The teacher recognizes his talent, begins tutoring him in private and persuades...
...telling its uplifting tale, Billy Elliot does an amazing job of not pandering. Billy's road to self-discovery is hard fought, and it comes at a painful price. His father, once over the shock and the shame of learning his boy's ambitions, crosses the picket line to earn money for Billy's audition. Issues of sexuality and gender-stereotyping are faced head-on but not pressed. He's no "poof," Billy insists, but that doesn't stop him from a joyful number in which he dons women's dresses with his (less poof-averse) friend Michael...
...mugging little girls trying out for Annie. The show is not quite as well sung as it was in London, and the Billy I saw (David Alvarez, one of three boys who are alternating in the role) turns out to be, unsurprisingly, a better dancer than actor. Still, Billy Elliot does almost everything a musical should do, and more. It's a diplomatic triumph...