Word: settings
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Long before the first rehearsal of this Marine Corps thriller set at Guantanamo Bay, its author had exceeded the daydreams of almost any debut playwright. Not only was the show on its way to Broadway with a 20-member cast headed by erstwhile Oscar nominee Tom Hulce (Amadeus), but it had been bought for the movies by producer David Brown, whose credits include Jaws, The Sting and The Verdict. He made a deal that could bring creator Aaron Sorkin, 28, a sum well into six figures. By the time the show opened last week, however, the publicity about a wunderkind...
Every game has winners and losers. The winners of this one are some collectors, some dealers and, in particular, the major auctioneers -- Christie's and Sotheby's -- in whose salesrooms the prices are set. The losers are museums and, through museums, the public...
...result was a dragged-out battle between the auctioneers and consumer affairs. The auctioneers won that round, but Aponte is getting set for another. Stiffer rules are pending, including those governing loans. The current consumer affairs code says that "if an auctioneer makes loans or advances money to consignors and/or prospective purchasers, this fact must be conspicuously disclosed in the auctioneer's catalog." But did this mean that Sotheby's put a note in the catalog of its November 1987 sale saying it had given one Alan Bond a loan of half the hammer price, repayment terms to be negotiated...
Early in 1989 Bond arranged to send the Van Gogh and five minor impressionist paintings he owned, packaged as "Irises and Five Masterpieces," on a tour of Australian museums, finishing at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. Irises was set in a double-glazed frame that ensured no one could touch or even closely inspect its surface -- which made some skeptical Aussies suspect it was an exact copy commissioned, for security reasons, by Sotheby...
...surely less effective. For example, it freights the naive scrubwoman anger of Pirate Jenny with sophisticated detail that is out of character, and enervatingly transforms the last syllable of the second-act finale from a strident long vowel to a swallowed short one. Jocelyn Herbert's cumbersome set obstructs movement, draining energy. But emotion intensifies after a dozy first act. As a singer, Sting needs the help of a recording studio, although he summons at least a shadow of the requisite cavalier charm. The main virtue is Kurt Weill's indestructible score...