Word: gathering
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Hard Weather Boating Party, by Naomi Wallace, suffers from something like the opposite problem. The play knows where it's going; the problem is getting there. Three apparently unrelated men gather in a seedy motel room to plan a murder. Yet the first act is padded out with mostly aimless talk; only in the second act, when the three return after the semi-botched operation, do we learn what's on Wallace's mind. The men's target, it seems, is the chief executive of a chemical company that has been polluting the waters and sickening workers. It's nice...
...Amid all the absurdist chaos, there's a brief scene in which all the actors, one by one, pull a ringing cellphone out of a bucket, answer a call and proceed simultaneously to have a hushed, fraught conversation with a lover - a Babel of romantic pain. Later the actors gather to recite a round-robin reverie for icons of mid-century American life, with no irony whatsoever: "I remember my father's collection of arrowheads." "I remember loafers with pennies in them." "I remember game rooms in basements." "I remember come-as-you-are parties..." I'll remember that clown...
...Wall movement (in which reformists posted calls for political change on a wall in the city center). It is followed by more shocking news: just before her execution, Shan's kidneys had been harvested for an influential Communist Party official who needed them. A fledgling protest haltingly tries to gather momentum in Muddy River - but when the democratic movement in Beijing is suppressed, Muddy River's hopes of change are also routed brutally...
...real focus at the Olde Bell is the common spaces. "It's all based around the table," says Crawford of the inn's public rooms. So the dining room has long, rustic tables ("with room for a roast," says Crawford). In an outbuilding dating from 1135, guests can gather around small tables next to crackling fires. The chef uses ingredients from nearby purveyors, like Machin's butchers in Henley, and has even been known to barter a meal in exchange for locally grown vegetables. Conveniently, the Olde Bell is within an hour's drive of central London, making...
...stand down from plans to test an intercontinental rocket. But on Sunday morning, North Korea launched it anyway - as it pledged to - saying the rocket bore nothing more than a communications satellite. With six U.S. cruisers equipped with Aegis anti-missile systems deployed in the region - to watch and gather intelligence, not fire on the rocket, Pentagon officials had said late last week - North Korea sent the Taepodong II rocket over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean. That, by itself, meant the launch for Pyongyang was a success: two years ago, an earlier version of the same long-range rocket...