Word: satirists
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...drawn from the memoirs of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. Prince of Central Park, which quickly closed, derived from a book that had also prompted a made-for-TV movie. Brecht's own The Threepenny Opera, featuring rock star Sting as the seductive villain Macheath, is freely filched from British satirist John Gay's 1728 The Beggar's Opera. Sad to say, although each show could boast ingenious design and staging or beguiling acting, far from the best writers have been at work...
...more verve in academic settings than in his conscientiously worked-up factory scenes, and naturally so. He taught literature at the University of Birmingham from 1960 to 1987, and still holds an honorary chair there. But in either sphere his writing displays the wicked eye of a born satirist. Swallow's smile exposes teeth set at odd angles, "like tombstones in a neglected churchyard." A receptionist at Vic's factory strokes her platinum-blond hairdo "as if it were an ailing pet." This is a novel that lives up to its own billing: it's nice work...
Sometimes O'Rourke adopts an air of bemusement, reminiscent of Robert Benchley in mid-quandary. But most of his entries could not be written by any other satirist at any other period: "The most delightful introduction you can make is to introduce an important person to someone he or she is going to find sexually interesting . . . you march Kiki over to your well-known friend. 'Antonio, you're going to love this girl. She once made Warren Beatty bleed out the ears...
Other recent speakers include Canadian satirist Garry Trudeau, journalist Ted Koppel, industrialist Lee A. Ioccoca and newspaper publisher Katherine Graham...
...Wasserstein is far too deft a satirist, and far too gentle a person, to compose a screed. Instead, with subtlety and humor in The Heidi Chronicles, she has written a memorable elegy for her own lost generation. Heidi tells the story of a slightly introverted art historian, a fellow traveler in the women's movement, who clings to her values long after her more committed friends switch allegiance from communes to consuming. At the pivotal moment in the play's second act, Heidi (played by Joan Allen) stands behind a lectern on a bare stage, giving a luncheon speech...