Word: versions
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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From the bitter opening invocation "Look down, look down," intoned by prisoners in a dungeon, to the anthemic rallying cry "When tomorrow comes," sung at the finale by the spectral dead of revolutionary 19th century Paris, the musical version of Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Miserables is a melodrama inflamed with outrage. Its politics always matter more than its love stories. Many of its principals die in violence or grief, but the most unprincipled of them endure and thrive. Like Nicholas Nickleby, staged largely by the same team, Les Miserables denies itself the indulgence of even a muted happy...
...underclass, a Gothic romance about love at first sight threatened by family secrets, a psychological study and a radical tract. The novel's scale and complexity seemingly defy adaptation to a musical, especially one that in the fashion of opera, sets every word to song. The stage version's triumph is that it captures the book's essence while speaking with absolute clarity to that vast majority of spectators who have not read the novel...
This premise has plenty of potential, but Davenport has made It's Really Me into little more than a musical version of St. Elmo's Fire. In fact, many of the characters from that movie seem to have found their way into the bar where much of this play...
...seemingly serious argument is cited in defense of the package principle: imagine that the U.S.S.R. abandons the package and agrees to a substantial cut in strategic missiles, while the U.S. maintains its freedom to deploy SDI and at a certain point begins launching SDI components into space -- in the version proposed by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for example ((Weinberger eight weeks ago called for early deployment of a preliminary SDI, including some space-based components)). Weinberger's project envisions the development of a network of space stations over several years, each armed with several dozen antimissile missiles to destroy...
...preliminaries are finally over, the pipes assembled and tuned, and it is time to do some serious piping. Britton straps himself into his instrument like a fighter pilot getting ready for combat. First comes the bellows, a smaller version of the fireplace variety, belted next to his body and held under his right arm (whence comes the name: Uilleann is based on the Gaelic word for elbow). The bellows replaces a Scotsman's lungs in filling the leather bag that drives the sound. The bag goes under his left arm; out of it and across his lap comes a collection...