Word: wager
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Prose. Set in New York's Little Italy in the years following World War II, this film examines the changing American culture through three different generations of Italian-American women and each woman's unique relationship to faith and family tradition. A freak heat wave causes a father to wager his only daughter against a blast of cool air in a pinochle game; a deal of cards begins a relationship that will produce a child obsessed with miracles...
Visually, the production blends an authentic '30s Art Deco look with wry hints of updating. Wager was lucky in being able to cast John P. Wintergreen, the vacuous presidential nominee, with actor Gary Beach, who bears a more than casual resemblance to the young Ronald Reagan. There is also an eerie familiarity to the Supreme Court Justices as depicted in giant caricature masks (one is black and another female, emphatically not reality in 1931), and an oblique gay inflection has been wrung out of one bit of dialogue. But most of the performers make no headline reference -- the dim Vice...
Arena Stage, the leading theater in the nation's capital, plainly doesn't think so. Nor do audiences for its zesty production: they find startling topicality in gibes that weren't born yesterday. Says artistic director Douglas Wager: "Apart from revisiting the librettists' first draft and incorporating some of Ira Gershwin's alternate lyrics, we haven't updated a thing. We haven't had to." The librettists were Morrie Ryskind and, ironically, Kaufman, who despite his woes with satire kept at it anyway. The humor is neither as rich nor as heartfelt as in his You Can't Take...
...everyone was ready to concede the gold medal in Barcelona to the assemblage now and forever more to be known simply as the Dream Team. Nevada bookmakers, who never miss an opportunity to make a dollar, have fastidiously refused to post odds or take a bet. The only surer wager than the Dream Team may be that George Foreman will not try to make it next as a featherweight...
...everyone else wants to beat. Shannon Miller of Edmond, Okla., who was sidelined in late March with a dislocated left elbow and bone chip, recuperated from surgery in record time, and is now stronger and more confident than ever. Spectators who favor a dynamic, explosive style will want to wager on Zmeskal. Those who appreciate technical brilliance and high-level difficulty, however, will prefer the graceful Miller...