Word: theater
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Peter Hall neither writes plays nor acts in them, yet no history of the postwar British stage could run much longer than a paragraph without mentioning his name. Founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960, successor to Laurence Olivier as director of the National Theater from 1973 to last summer, he is the embodiment of the subsidized institutions that make Britain the envy of most U.S. drama fans. Even shows that bring Hall to Broadway -- including The Homecoming (1967) and Amadeus (1981), which won him Tony Awards for best director -- often originate in the nonprofit houses...
CHESS London's frantic multimedia hit was rewritten for Broadway as a tender, doom-struck musical meditation on how East-West politics crush individuals. Trevor Nunn's trademark cinematic staging gave narrative clout to the best rock score ever produced for the theater...
DINNER AT EIGHT The classic dawn-of-the-Depression satire was hauntingly revived by New Haven's Long Wharf Theater. A superb cast of 24 included Elizabeth Wilson as the pathetic social climber and Charles Keating as the broken-down actor immortalized on film by John Barrymore...
Davies juggles these plots with consistent good humor and remarkable insider erudition. The latter should come as no surprise, given the author's extensive background in the theater and academe; as a young man he was an actor in Britain's Old Vic Company, and he later served 20 years as the master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. The novel is crammed with funny renditions of wheezy professorial badinage and flamboyant dramatic monologues. But it is Davies' own voice that seems most memorable: confident, unhurried, interested and amused. Late in the novel, on the brink...
Once before, in 1986, Pettersson was questioned by the Palme investigation team, which has faced numerous charges of mismanagement. But the suspect was released for lack of evidence. This time witnesses identified him as the mysterious "Grand Man" seen loitering outside the theater Palme and his wife attended the night of his death. And now Pettersson's roommate has undermined the suspect's alibi that he was on his way home at the time of the shooting. Swedish newspaper reports say he possessed a large-caliber weapon and limped just as the assassin was seen to do while fleeing...