Word: matronly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Germans' laughter belied their misgivings. Many Daimler-Benz executives initially viewed Chrysler as a primped-up matron would regard an earnest young suitor. Chrysler marketing chief Jim Holden recalls his first meeting at the Mercedes-Benz U.S. headquarters in Montvale, N.J. As the Germans presented their view of the brand hierarchy--Mercedes on top and everything else far, far below--the tension in the room was palpable. Says Holden: "We felt like we were marrying up, and it was clear they thought they were marrying down...
...other schools (a boarding school is a somewhat isolated backwater of the meme pool). But I do know that my father originally picked up the Chinese-junk meme during an almost identical epidemic at the same school 25 years earlier. The earlier virus was launched by the school matron. Long after the old matron's departure, I had reintroduced her meme to a new cohort of small boys...
...psychological complexity. This earlier work, making its off-Broadway debut, takes a complex premise--twin sisters embody women's changing roles from the 1950s through the '80s--but hammers it with obviousness. Swoosie Kurtz plays both the "good" sister Myrna, who goes from soda-fountain virgin to Republican matron, and the "bad" Myra, who becomes a radical terrorist. The play depends too heavily on easy pop-cultural cliches and the usual hit parade of nostalgic oldies. Forget the play; bring back Teresa Brewer...
...unexpectedly, the author sees this setting as a sorry patriarchy of ineffectual husbands and resentful wives. "The day after your wedding, when your mother cuts your hair off, that's your life falling on the floor," a matron tells a bride-to-be. Nattel's women get not only the saltiest lines but also the feistiest roles. Childless Hanna-Leah, the butcher's wife, is freed from disappointment by an ecstatic vision and demands that her husband share the housework. Faygela, poet-mother of five, travels to Warsaw, where she encounters a circle of secular Jewish intellectuals and renounces Yiddish...
Thankfully, Sondheim gives audiences a guide to understanding A Little Night Music right from the beginning. The wheelchair-bound matron Leonora Armfeldt (Lucy MacPhail '01) explains to her granddaughter (Kari Gauksheim '01) that people fall into three categories: the young, the fools and the old. MacPhail does a wonderful job with her elderly, jaded character, providing perspective on the play by holding the rest of the characters in brazen contempt. The Leibeslieders, a kind of Greek chorus, add another narrative layer to the work. Each of the singers parallels a character and performs occasional scenes based the plot, though...