Word: epically
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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PEER GYNT. Hartford Stage Company captures both the epic sweep and the proto- Freudian core of Ibsen's poem of self-discovery in a sequential pair of full-length productions...
Plot, however, is not her strong suit, given that alientation has been the key theme in every major modern work since existentialism. What Wittman does and says is not original. Even his dream--of writing an epic play that would weave together Chinese novels and tales about the famed monkey who brings back Buddhist scripts from India--is based on others' thoughts. And nothing really happens in the book; the drama is practically irrelevant...
Such a grand beginning inspires confidence that we are in the hands of a master storyteller, and Schama's epic history richly fulfills that promise. This saga of revolt and revenge may at first seem somewhat familiar, for it has long been one of the great narrative legends of modern time, told and retold by Burke, Tocqueville, Carlyle and others. We already know -- don't we? -- about the dim-witted King Louis XVI, about Queen Marie Antoinette's supposedly saying "Let them eat cake," and the ragged mobs cheering as the bloodied guillotine rises and falls in its awful rhythm...
LIFE AND DESTINY by Vasili Grossman (Knizhnaya Palata, 1988). An epic novel about the Battle of Stalingrad that some call the 20th century's War and Peace. Completed in the 1960s, the book was suppressed during Khrushchev's regime for daring to agonize over the conflict between personal freedom and Communism...
...Jewish community has been a buffer against U.S. Government pressure on Israel. Though their support for Israel, as the embodiment of the Jewish people, remains as solid as the stone blocks in the Western Wall, many American Jews balked at being used as extras in Shamir's biblical unity epic. Some of those invited journeyed to Jerusalem with misgivings; others stayed home. The open criticism from American Jews is raising fears in Jerusalem, which depends on the U.S. for military and economic survival. Says Yossi Ahimeir, director of the Prime Minister's bureau: "When the U.S. Administration sees that support...