Word: mad
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...about Ruddigore is ridiculous. Some of the most preposterous little touches slip by almost unnoticed--the Gilbert & Sullivan Players' excellent production gives them just the right sense of serene, oblivious seriousness--like the hint of a flute obligato at the first entrance of an almost entirely irrelevant character called Mad Margaret, or the "Alas, poor ghost" with which the hero, for no reason in particular, greets his spectral uncle...
...more beautifully than Gilbert's words. Gerald Moshell evokes a full, singing tone from his fine orchestra, as is only proper, since Ruddigore has more than its share of set-apart showpieces--Thomas D. Fuller's hornpipe in the first act, the respectable caper Edith Marshall as a reformed Mad Margaret dances with Pell Osborn as a reformed wicked baronet in the second, the astonishing materialization of the Ruddigore ancestors, led by David Buchner, from their picture gallery--as well as a first-act finale that includes one madrigal, with lyrics about how nice the seasons are, that...
...Mad Artist. Fest's Hitler is less the traditional devil than the mad artist-close to but much deadlier than the maniacal globe juggler in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Hitler sought power not for power's sake, Fest argues, but to accomplish his own grandiose vision of reordering the world. He trained like a messiah: he became a vegetarian, for instance, not on principle but to cheat the early death he expected and thus gain more time for his mission...
...Hollywood's attributes were so amply like West Egg's, Hollywood was bound to lure Fitzgerald into a mad hate-love affair. Its attraction could magnetize the man as certainly as it could rot his art. As the peeling Dr. Eckleberg--monument to America's first age of advertising and god of the ash heaps--mocked the death of Gatsby's dreams, so Hollywood--monster bulwark of materialism and smug summit of the equation--tortured Fitzgerald. Yes, the place could be as hostile to Fitzgerald as West Egg had been to Gatsby. Though both could dream unto death, neither could...
Like the Wagnerian theater in Bayreuth that Mad King Ludwig paid for, Mrs. Harkness's monument may prove to be a lasting and useful home for the lively arts. Some of her talented dancers will surely be exposed some day to more challenging choreography. Mean while, one can only sorrow that so much love, money and care was expended to such little result. such little result...