Word: playwrighting
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...adult American drama existed which could be considered as something beyond mere theatrical entertainment." Eugene O'Neill wrote this self-assessment in a 1944 letter, and the judgment, while hardly modest, still seems incontrovertible 35 years after his death and a century after his birth. As a young playwright, O'Neill inherited a theater tradition that was principally a frame for gaslighted frivolities. By the time he got through with it, the U.S. stage had become electric, and had learned to accommodate native-grown murder, madness, alcoholism, dark sexuality and the howling tensions of family life. Opening the curtain...
Talk about having it all. Jessica Lange is juggling three golden balls: a life with playwright-actor Sam Shepard, status as a celebrity supermom (two children by Shepard, one by Mikhail Baryshnikov) and, when she can make time, movie stardom. Is Lange's part-time job as exemplary actress a hobby, as football is for Bo Jackson? If so, it can be no less punishing or rewarding, because Lange -- any actress, really, in today's Streepstakes -- must find the core of feminism, of flinty self-fulfillment, in a modern movie role. No wimpering-wife parts, thank you. Just Joan...
...centenary, the playwright' s letters reveal that despite his revolutionary achievements, he grew disenchanted with the stage. -- An expose of the Hare Krishna movement...
...building a utilitarian set, changing the play's locale to the United States (though the heaths of England added more to the intrigue of the story) and changing the famous line "I never drink...wine" to "I never drink...socially." Of course, the last of these alterations is probably playwright Ted Tiller's fault, but whoever's fault it is, the change underscores the effect of the whole play--an old story told in a tired...
Jack O'Brien has preserved his deft, unobtrusive staging of the original production at San Diego's Old Globe Theater, where he is artistic director, and has retained a splendid company: Bruce Davison as the playwright, Holland Taylor as his discontented sister, Keene Curtis as their fussy paterfamilias and Emmy winner Nancy Marchand as the mother. Puffing up her husband, belittling her offspring, getting slowly sozzled with "just a splash" -- a command she never barks the same way twice -- Marchand at first appears silly and superficial. Like the play, she turns out to have surprising depths...