Word: madman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...madman's repeated clashes with authority fit a maddeningly familiar pattern: since arriving in the U.S. from Cuba as part of the Mariel boatlift in 1980, Jorge Delgado had been arrested at least eleven times for petty crimes and hospitalized as a mental patient seven times. Once he had smashed a chalice during a service at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Twice in the past six months, city psychiatrists had examined him and failed to discover any reason not to return him to the streets...
Along the third-base line, an old man in a traditional Korean black hat and flowing black gown was spinning around like a madman and waving a Korean flag. The same versatile character had been sighted just a day before at the Hanyang University gymnasium waving a Japanese flag. That time he had been surrounded by four mild-mannered Japanese matrons who were waving their own flags of the Rising Sun and calling out "Good luck! Good luck!" to the Japanese volleyball team. As soon as the unprepossessing quintet finished their cheer, a thunderous chant arose from two separate sections...
THERE are two sides to the work of Nikolai Gogol, one lighthearted and delightfully absurd, the other darker, crueler and obsessive to the point of madness. Director Christopher Duff manages to display through two short pieces, The Nose and From a Madman's Diary, both sides of Gogol's talent with out losing the peculiar, manic sensibility that unites the whole of his canon...
David Silver, as the diarist narrator, with his sheared hair, unshaven face and ripped pajamas, appears a convincing lunatic. Moreover, he delivers his many long monologues with the curious self-absorption of a madman, drawing the audience into his twisted world where dogs write letters, the earth is crashing into the moon and a Russian bureaucrat can discover that he's actually the king of Spain. As he loses himself more and more in his delusions, the real pain behind his situation becomes clear, and the audience realizes that class boundaries separate him forever from the general's daughter with...
...never experienced a Gogol short story, The Nose and From a Madman's Diary prove a superb introduction to his work. Even if you are a longstanding Gogol fan, this creative production may offer some pleasant surprises...