John Osborne
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Bad Behavior
Richard in Richard III is intended to be a villain. Shakespeare paints him as evil on legs. And yet, we get impatient when he’s off the stage. Clarence has a long speech filled with poetry. Yes, yes, beautiful, but could you wrap it up and bring the monstrous brother on again? Richard’s treatment of the Continue reading
A Streetcar Named Desire, Aaron Sorkin, Abby Rosebrock, Alan Cumming, Atticus Finch, Blue Ridge, Carnal Knowledge, Christopher Walker, Daddy, Downstairs, Halley Feiffer, Hamish Linklater, Happy Birthday Wana June, Harper Lee, Heidi Schreck, Hillary and Clinton, Iago, Ink, Jack Nicholson, Jenny Allen, Jeremy O. Harris, Jessica Tandy, Jez Butterworth, John Osborne, Jules Feiffer, Kurt Vonnegut, Look Back in Anger, Marin Ireland, Marlon Brando, Mike Nichols, Network, Othello, Paddy Chayefsky, Restoration, Richard III, Rita Moreno, Rupert Murdoch, Shakespeare, Socratese, The Double-Dealer, The New Yorker, The Pain of My Own Belligerence, Theresa Rebeck, Tim Blake Nelson, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tyne Daly, What the Constitution Means to Me, Wheelhouse Theater -
Wandering Through History
Sometimes I think of the past as a huge black box, and any time you read a book of history or a biography or a historical novel it’s like shining a concentrated beam of light through that darkness, briefly bringing to light what is in its path. Other beams may come from a movie or Continue reading
A World to Win, Alan Brinkley, Amazon streaming, Babylon Berlin, Berlin, Beyond the Fringe, Father Coughlin, FDR, Henry Ford, Hotel Adlon, Huey Long, John le Carre, John Osborne, Labour, Lanny Budd, Meyer Levin, Nazis, Netflix, postwar England, the Beatles, the depression, The Old Bunch, Tory, Traitors, Upton Sinclair, Voices of Protest, WWII -
In Dialogue
One of the differences between a blog post and an essay is that an essay is expected to be shapely and to move to some resonant conclusion. Occasionally a blog post will end resonantly, but mostly I find blogging is where I stir the kettle a little. I’ve been thinking about dialogue lately. Not dialogue Continue reading
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 