Word: shaw
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Glenn Shaw leans back against a huge fallen eucalypt, shaking his head. "I feel no need to go in," he says, black beanie pulled down low against the chill. "I'll just sit here and listen to the scrub." Wind roars in the canopy above and the sullen Tasmanian winter sky threatens rain or worse. In layers of thermals, waterproof trousers and parkas, gloves sodden from slippery branches, Shaw and other members of the local Aboriginal community have scrambled for an hour through steep rainforest to reach this spot in the island's wild southwest. Here at the base...
...preserving its secret, the Aboriginal community's best ally is the landscape itself, a maze of outcrops, winding valleys and steep-sided natural depressions so baffling that one of Shaw's staff recently spent a night lost in it. And for what's under the ground here, in this part of what cave biologist Arthur Clarke calls "the underworld," there are no maps at all. Cavers tend to "look at their feet and not at the walls, so there could be other art work down there," Clarke says as he adjusts his hard hat before going inside. Years of studying...
...turned it into a play about George W. Bush. In the Greek original, Dionysos, the god of theater, travels to the underworld to choose which of Athens? two late, great playwrights, Aeschylus or Euripides, should return to earth. Shevelove updated it by making the battle between George Bernard Shaw and William Shakespeare. Lane keeps those playwrights but adds a twist: Dionysos wants to bring back Shaw to help save the nation from its current troubles - namely, ?a war we may not be able to win. A war we shouldn?t even be in.? Thinly veiled political punches are thrown throughout...
...underplaying as Charon, the wisecracking pilot of the boat to Hades). And director Susan Stroman (The Producers) has pitched in with everything from bungee cords and backflipping frogs. It all might have worked if the central conceit didn?t seem so fusty and out of touch. Summoning George Bernard Shaw to save the nation? How many people today even know his plays, much less remember that he once wrote a famous essay proposing that he was ?better than Shakespeare?? Lane might as well have brought back Ethel Merman. Now that would be a battle...
...supporting cast is still a bit too imposing for the material. If you could assemble some of Britain's most noted actors--Thewlis, Oldman, Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Julie Christie, Emma Thompson, Fiona Shaw, Richard Griffiths, Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters--well, it probably wouldn't be for a kid-movie franchise. But these master thespians aren't slumming; they're vacationing. They all throw themselves into the serious fun of a grand game...