Word: lyricizing
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...aesthetic taste buds gone dead? If all you can offer for "The Best Theater of 1996" is Rent as an updated opera, then American culture has indeed taken a dive. And as far as music is concerned, what happened to the brilliant performances of Wagner's Ring at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, or other noteworthy performances? How can watered-down rap as performed by the Fugees define what our culture should aspire to? Taste notwithstanding, you have completely ignored whole artistic genres. Your selection of the best should cover more than just pop culture. ALEXANDER J. WAYNE Chicago...
...RENT (the musical). Even if author-composer Jonathan Larson had not died just weeks before its off-Broadway opening, Rent would have hit like a thunderclap. A rock update of La Boheme set in the age of AIDS, it brimmed with energy, lyric intelligence and streetwise spirit. If not quite another Hair (more memorable melodies would have helped), Rent brought the old-fashioned musical resoundingly into the '90s. Then it moved to Broadway, won Tonys and...(see below...
...Small Repairs (Columbia), Colvin meets the Zeitgeist halfway. The harmonica, the assertive fuzz guitar, the typeface of the lyric sheet are all Morissettish. And if that cozens people to give her CD a necessary second listen, it will be a smart move for both Colvin and her new audience. What's crucial is that the voice hasn't changed; instead of Morissette's sandpaper, Colvin has a silky sound that she wears like sackcloth to suit her pretty dirges. These songs, most of which she wrote with her producer, John Leventhal, still have the swank and cutting edge of Colvin...
Nice, no. Soulfully conflicted, surely. Neeson grew up Catholic in a small, rural hamlet in Northern Ireland. As a teenager he was torn between a passion for boxing and a love of theater. The world of Chekhov won out in the early '70s, when Neeson joined Belfast's repertory Lyric Players and then graduated to the renowned Abbey Theater in Dublin. There he first tackled drama that dealt with his country's fractious history--in his words, "a lot of Sean O'Casey." (The apolitical Neeson, however, still knew almost nothing about Collins when he came to the role...
There's evocative atmosphere in the period detail and perky faux-'60s tunes. A pity these are wasted in a movie that, like many a pop tune, has a cute idea but a simpleminded lyric...