Word: playful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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MIKE TYSON wants JAMIE FOXX to play him in biopic despite having essentially perfected his own character...
...this American fan, following Ayckbourn over the years has been a cycle of hope and frustration. First there's the trip to London to see each new Ayckbourn play, gems like Joking Apart (1978), in which a "golden couple" inadvertently destroy the lives of all who come in contact with them, and Man of the Moment (1988), his acidic satire of a former criminal turned media star - so prescient about the distorting mirror of reality TV - and Wildest Dreams (1991), his chilling black comedy about addicts of a Dungeons & Dragons - style fantasy game who lose touch with real life. Then...
...there's a bittersweet quality to the new Broadway revival of Ayckbourn's celebrated trilogy The Norman Conquests. First produced in 1973, it's one of his most grandly entertaining works: three plays that chronicle the same traumatic family weekend in an English country house from three vantage points - dining room, sitting room and garden. It is packed with laughs, brimming with stage tomfoolery (a character who leaves the dining room in one play shows up in the sitting room in the next) and staged superbly by Matthew Warchus, in a production first seen at London's Old Vic Theatre...
...relentless experimenter. His plays might conflate the action in several rooms in one stage space or go backward in time or branch off into different permutations, but his formal ingenuity is matched by his ability to create incredibly vivid, fully realized characters who live on even after they've left the stage. The multiple perspectives prove it: Norman, the randy assistant librarian who puts the moves on two sisters-in-law, reveals new sides in each room, scene and play...
...likely sensible in the current environment. The recent announcement, however, that each of Harvard’s 12 Houses will be required to cut spending by an additional 10 percent—25 percent in full—is especially regrettable, considering the vital role that House life should play in the Harvard undergraduate experience...