Word: splendid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Just before he flew to the U.S. to direct a splendid revival at Princeton this month of his favorite early play, Hello and Goodbye, dramatist Athol Fugard asked friends at a dinner party, "Am I about to become the new South Africa's first literary redundancy?" Although he tells the story with a twinkle, that fear has hovered over him for years. In his mind he is a poetic playwright, but the world has seen him as a political, even polemic one, and his works are valued more as testimony against apartheid than for their subtle interplay of emotion...
...adding both context and detail to that story let me admit that I am a friend of the museum: I have chaired committees for two of the museum's most splendid exhibitions ("Judaica from the Vatican Library" and "The Silver Calf from Ashkelon") and was a member of the committee for a third ("The City of David: Discoveries from the Excavations"). I acquired for the museum the photographs by the rediscovered 19th century photographer M.J. Diness now on exhibit until December 18. My bias for these undertakings notwithstanding, the facts are the facts...
...work The Face of Battle, his new book is alive with sudden, unexpected details and delights of knowledge -- a treatise, for example, on how to make a composite bow, that revolutionary asset of the horse warrior; a detour into the institutionalized vengeance of Maori warmaking; or a splendid interlude on the effects of geography on war, including a disquisition on why Adrianople, Edirne in modern Turkey, has been the most fought-over place in the world (it stands at the land bridge between Europe and Asia). If Keegan spends too little time on war in the 20th century, his unusual...
Despite all the cautionary tales, they keep coming. Disney, last year's disastrous Newsies notwithstanding, seems on the verge of turning its hegemonic attentions to live-action musicals: the studio has the splendid composer Danny Elfman (The Simpsons, Tim Burton's films) and Alan Menken, & Newsies' composer, each developing a new live-action movie musical, plus Oliver Stone in preproduction on Evita...
...reversal of normal college theatre procedure, the men in Drood are far better dressed than the women. Costume Designer Tinadetta Lee has outfitted the male characters in several splendid variations of Victorian dress--special note should be made of Jasper's splendid frock coat and purple waistcoat. Other than the gorgeous tatters of Princess Puffer, however, the women are mostly stuffed into badly tailored, frumpy dresses...