Word: stagecraft
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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With their customary dazzling display of stagecraft, the Russians opened the Kremlin gates this week for the 25th performance of the classic miracle play of Communism: the Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The onion domes and crosses atop the Kremlin's cathedrals and churches coruscated in the winter sunlight, while the renovated brick battlements of the ancient fortress loomed over the elegant imperial palaces, freshly painted in pastels. Outside the walls of the ancient fortress, huge posters dominated Red Square, proclaiming the principal theme of this year's political extravaganza: SUCh as GLORY...
...wretched Okies were the common components of tragedy. But even milestones can erode with the years and weather. Depression America is not Recession America; economic determinism is no longer in literary style. The ranch hands who surround George and Lennie are types rather than characters, and the stagecraft contains all the ungainly devices of yesteryear: the breathless entrances, the lamplit confessionals, the contrived pathos that redeems criminal actions...
...conceived for the Met in 1971. Everding has an almost TV-like fondness for "closeups," achieved through the use of solo spotlights. At key moments, Everding darkens the stage and picks out a character with a single spot. Isolating Boris at the end of the coronation scene is brilliant stagecraft. But giving the Simpleton a solo spot in the forest clearing, at the opera's end, is mere staginess...
When Ry (short for Ryland) Cooder's fourth and latest album, Paradise and Lunch, popped up at the shallow end of the charts this summer, the reaction at Warner Bros. Records was gratification tinged with a trace of awe. Cooder has no gruesomely elaborate stagecraft or lifestyle, and his work is not the sort that goes down easily with Carly Simon fans or Elton John aficionados. His music is elegantly eclectic, running from Leadbelly and Sleepy John Estes blues numbers through main-line ballads of the 1940s to reggae and rock 'n' roll. "Ry's pure...
...Streak or The $10,000 Pyramid, tend to resemble life in the city itself. They reward the ability to stand up under pressure -from the clock, from the fear of losing winnings accumulated in earlier rounds of competition. On the whole, they are more sedentary, rely less on flashy stagecraft for their appeal than the Los Angeles games...