Word: glorious
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There is a red light right at the start. In 1994's Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, Peter Guralnick movingly, and with the greatest empathy, showed the unlikely and glorious shaping of a poor white boy from the Deep South into a musical demigod. Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley (Little, Brown; 767 pages; $27.95), the second and concluding volume, is a long coast on the dark downside, a story of ugliness and indulgence and encroaching desperation...
...runaway slaves from Dutch plantations in the 18th century. We go by corjal to visit their descendants. Some are swimming; some are washing clothes in the river; some are staring at us. The faces of the children are a cross between innocence and gravity. On a far bank, a glorious ceiba rises to the sky. It is called the "house of the spirits" and is never cut down...
While an entire review filled with glorious praise could be written about each person who struts upon the stage of Guys and Dolls, I will have to try to summarize and make my raves more concise: The near-slapstick duo of Nicely-Nicely Johnson (Abraham Mills) and Benny South street (John Keefe) become the most clumsily charming racketeers the world has ever seen. Harry the Horse (Julio V. Gambuto), Big Jule (Clay Petre), and the other crap enthusiasts stumble over each other and gawk in bad New York accents with such silliness that many people (myself included) laughed...
...promptly breaks. (It is interesting to note that in this year's production, Fritz does not get spanked or punished in any way by his parents.) Drosselmeyer, however, takes pity on poor Clara--at midnight, he transforms the living room into a massive battlefield where the Nutcracker, brought to glorious life, fights and wins over the mischievous mice and their king. To show Clara his gratitude, the Nutcracker Prince (Carlos Ivan Santos) takes Clara to the Snow forest and the Palace of Sweets, where a myriad of candy-related dancers entertain the two of them until Clara goes back home...
There may be some small flaws with Boston Ballet's The Nutcracker, however, they remain few and far between and hidden under the frilly layers of breathtaking spectacle. Filled with gorgeous costumes, glorious sets and amazing special effects (particularly noteworthy are the hot-air balloon that Clara and the Nutcracker Prince fly away on, as well as Drosselmeyer's subsequent flight across stage), The Nutcracker is sure to leave audiences spellbound with the wonder and magic of the season, neatly packaged onstage, for the 33rd year in a row. The dancers are magnificent. The music is enchanting...