Word: theater
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Theater is the clue to understanding how we are choosing the successor to our first actor President. This may be one of Reagan's lasting legacies. Onstage the candidates offer performances of calculated civility, feigned rage and planned ad libs. Backstage the underlying hostility is real enough, among competitors not that far apart on the issues. It surfaces in moments of phony drama contrived to catch another fellow off guard, breaking the rhythms of his planned explanations and evasions. This the public sees in the televised debates; but with more candor and detail than in past campaigns, the press...
ACTING is falsehood. Or so it is in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing, in which a love-entangled quarter of theater people, so used to faking emotions on stage, cannot feel emotions off stage. They resort to biting wordplay that is done to the hilt in the polished but ultimately sterile Winthrop production...
...costuming and the musical selections are equally unsuccessful. Apparently Spraggins intends to resolve the disparities he has created in moving the setting of the play from 1700 to the present by turning World into theater of the absurd. Thus, the actors dress according to the personality of their characters, which might have been a helpful and amusing device, had the execution been less haphazard. Most of the costumes either add nothing in the way of characterization or worse, create an image that is incongruous with the characters. The musical interludes, which range from Billie Holiday to George Michael, are meaningless...
...past decade movie-theater queues have resembled waiting lines at a sock hop. Teenagers stormed the box office, and Hollywood cloned films in their image. Their favorite genres -- sci-fi fantasies, peekaboo sex farces, gross-out horror movies -- multiplied on the screen, and sequel followed sequel followed sequel. Who needed adults? Those forgotten creatures stayed home with their TV movies and VCRs. For them the local multiplex was a teenagers' tree house bearing the sign GROWNUPS STAY...
...Swaggart's Sunday sermon a sincere moment of contrition or a piece of theater carefully calibrated to salvage his ministry and its yearly intake of $150 million. Or perhaps both? God only knew. However, there was no shortage of scoffers, for Swaggart had fashioned himself into the most hated of the TV preachers. He smoldered with resentment against the proud, the well born and the intellectual. He had attacked Roman Catholicism for "damning the deceived souls of multitudinous millions," and Jews, attributing their sufferings to "rejection of Christ." With equal venom, he spewed accusations against fellow conservative Protestants...