Word: farrar
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This year two books need no color to make them models of superlative craftsmanship and originality. In My Village, Sturbridge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $6.95), Gary Bowen invents a character, True Mason, and walks him through a 19th century New England village. Bowen's style is lean and precise. But it is his and Randy Miller's brilliantly detailed wood engravings that grant My Village the aura of a rare antique rescued from some forgotten attic. David Macaulay has won an international reputation without being able to draw believable people. What he can draw-churches, cities, pyramids-he does...
Directors Harry Dorfman and Patty Woo are unfailingly faithful to Tom Jones's 1959 script, and that is the production's greatest weakness. The unabashed sappiness of the romance between Matt (Rick Farrar) and Luisa (Cathy Weary) demands an audience steeped in bad musicals to be funny. Out of historical context, the parody is too broad to be effective. Even the attempts at self-parody in the second act are unsubtle, and we keep wishing someone on stage will pull the plug, drain the syrup, and dazzle us with fast comebacks and some naked sarcasm...
There is little dazzle, although some of the singing and acting is very good, even excellent. Farrar is funny as the gooey 20-year-old who believes he is rebelling against his father by falling in love with the girl next door, and his voice is strong enough to carry off his musical numbers. Weary's sweet, swooning Luisa is equally effective, and her voice is the best of the cast. Their duets are some of the finest numbers in the show--rapid musical banter honed sharp by careful rehearsal...
Thin is in, right? And sexier besides. Well, not according to Anthropologist Anne Scott Beller. In her new book, Fat & Thin-A Natural History of Obesity (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $10), Beller argues that fat women are not only cuddly, loving, jovial sorts, but more sexy too. She cites studies showing that endomorphic lasses are more responsive to erotic stimulation and have greater sexual appetites. In one survey conducted in a Chicago hospital, "fat women outscored their thin sisters by a factor of almost two to one," in terms of excitability. Only our culture's notion that fat is "morally...
...Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 263 pages...