Word: englander
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Billy Elliot: The Musical might seem to be one British blockbuster with a precarious future. Though a monstrous hit in London for the past 3 1/2 years, it is as intractably British as musicals come. Based on the 2000 movie about a boy from the coal country of northern England who discovers his talent for dance, the musical is rooted in a time and place that have little resonance for Americans: the coal miners' strike of 1984-85, provoked by the Conservative Thatcher government's efforts to dismantle the country's nationalized coal industry. For an American theatergoer in London...
...truth, the British still got a little better of the deal in this transatlantic transaction. With mostly American actors taking a stab at northern England accents, the home scenes don't have the authenticity or grit they do in London. The dance-class ensemble includes a few too many 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...
...these outdated limitations, BlackCast has reworked the script’s basic structure and implemented gender- and race-blind casting. “Too often directors are too strict in their interpretation of the play,” Coles says. “If it is set in Victorian England, the play would be all 20 white men and women, and that is not representative of theater at Harvard.” But through a dramatic change in temporal setting—the play is set in the late 50s and early 60s instead of the 20s?...
Frederick could not help singing as he dressed that morning. It was good to be back home in England.“I am the happiest creature in the world,” he thought. “Others may have believed themselves to be the beneficiaries of such happiness before. They are fools.” He whistled stray phrases of some half-remembered hymn as he walked down the hall. “How hollow my former joys seem to me now.” He paused before a mirror, and beamed at the picture of poetry...
...that dog their coastal colleagues. When Republicans call Nancy Pelosi a "San Francisco liberal" or derisively refer to Upper West Side and Cambridge lefties, they tag those Democrats as ideologically extreme and culturally élitist. Politicians from Chicago can be just as liberal as those from New York, New England and California, but they come from the much-fetishized heartland, which makes attacks on them a tougher sell to swing voters. And they have an advantage within the Democratic base as well: while party leaders have long assumed that only a Southerner could successfully take the White House, the party...