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The article published on the website of the newspaper “The Thelegraph” on March, 27, 2013 is headlined “Hamlet, Royal Shakespeare Company,Stratford-upon-Avon, review

”. The article reports at length that There is too much fury in Jonathan Slinger's Hamlet at the RSC, says Charles Spencer

It was revealed

His production is annoying, too. Farr is the kind of director who has 20 bright ideas before breakfast and bungs them all on stage to prove how clever he is. Sometimes it works but a show-offy approach to Hamlet strikes me as verging on the obscene.

I’m feeling pretty raw at present, as my father died last week, indeed I registered his death en route to the theatre, and I was looking forward to Shakespeare’s play which explores loss, grief and guilt with more beauty, wisdom and profundity than any other work of art I know. I thought it might make me cry, but knew they would be the kind of tears that help to heal. In fact I remained dry-eyed throughout.

The article carries a lot of comment on the fact that Farr has set the play in the 1960s (cue spliffs and ban-the-bomb signs), with the action taking place in a down-at heel gymnasium with the words “mens sana in corpore sano” inscribed on the wall, heavily undelining point that Hamlet isn’t always in his perfect mind.

Analyzing this situation it is necessary to emphasize that in fact the defining notes of Jonathan Slinger’s Hamlet are relentless anger and withering sarcasm, a reductive view of the character that becomes decidedly wearing. At one point he even starts singing Ken Dodd’s Happiness in a mocking way and, with his piscine features, thinning hair and ill-fitting suit he looks more like an embittered low-rank civil servant than a prince.

As for me, I think that the quality the actor fatally lacks is warmth, though he does strikes some gentler, quieter notes at the end which hint at what might have been. The one success is Greg Hicks, equally compelling as Claudius and the Ghost of Hamlet’s father. His physical grace and superb verse-speaking puts most of the company to shame, and I wonder what Greg Doran, the company’s new artistic director, makes of this botched shot after his own superb production a few years ago, starring David Tennant.

Pleasure Reading 36-50

The Dashwoods return to Barton Cottage, and Marianne continues to recover from her illness. While she and Elinor are taking a walk one day, the subject of Willoughby is broached once again. Marianne admits that she behaved imprudently in her relations with him, but Elinor consoles her by relating Willoughby's confession. Marianne feels much better knowing that his abandonment of her was not the final revelation of a long-standing deceit, but rather the result of his financial straits, and was thus not entirely willed. Marianne also acknowledges that she would never have been happy with him anyway; he has proved himself rather lacking in integrity. Elinor shares Willoughby's confession with Mrs. Dashwood as well, who pities the man but cannot fully forgive him for his treatment of Marianne.

Thomas, the Dashwoods' manservant, arrives from town with the news that "Mr. Ferrars" has married Lucy Steele. This news distresses both Elinor and Marianne: Marianne falls into a fit of hysterics, and Elinor appears deeply disappointed. Witnessing her eldest daughter's grief, Mrs. Dashwood wonders whether she ought to have paid closer attention to Elinor's feelings over the past several months.
Not long after, Elinor thinks she sees Colonel Brandon approaching Barton Cottage on horseback, but upon closer look, she realizes that the visitor is actually Edward Ferrars. When he enters the house, and she and Marianne inquire about his recent marriage, he realizes the misunderstanding and assures them that it was Robert who married Lucy Steele. (Now that Robert is the heir to Mrs. Ferrars's money, Lucy has shifted her affections.) Elinor is so overcome by relief that she runs out of the room, unable to contain her tears of joy. Within the next three hours, Edward proposes to Elinor and she accepts, of course, with great happiness. Over dinner that evening, he explains the unfortunate circumstances that first led to his engagement to Lucy. Edward also shares with the Dashwood sisters a note from Lucy in which she informed him of her engagement to Robert and severed all romantic ties with him. When Colonel Brandon arrives at Barton and hears the news of their engagement, he graciously offers to improve the parsonage at Delaford (which he had first offered to Edward when Edward planned to marry Lucy) to accommodate the couple comfortably.
Mrs. Ferrars ultimately reconciles herself to Edward's new situation, though she continues to favor Robert as if he were her eldest son. Elinor and Edward live together at Delaford and frequently invite both Marianne and Colonel Brandon to visit, in the hope that the two will form an attachment with one another. Their plan is successful, for the Colonel and the younger sister become engaged and move in with Elinor and Edward at Delaford. The sisters continue to maintain close ties with their mother and Margaret at Barton Cottage, and the families live happily ever after.

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The article published on the website of the newspaper “The Thelegraph” on March 19, 2013 is headlined “Bruce Norris: 'I think we aredoomed’”. The article reports at length that American playwright Bruce Norris has the super-rich in his sights as his latest work prepares to open at London’s Royal Court, says Jasper Rees.

It’s an open secret that theatre-goers should start quaking in their Louboutins as he prepares to give them another bloody nose.

It was revealed that Norris’s speciality is pointing a finger at his well-heeled, self-satisfied audience. “I like to disrupt is what I like to do,” he says as his new play rehearses in the next room. “I just like to disrupt situations. I don’t like when people seem to think they know the answers or their mind is made up about something.” Thus The Pain and the Itch scratched raucously beneath the veneer of smug East Coast liberalism to reveal ugly, unpeaceable instincts, although that was an exercise in throat-clearing compared to Clybourne Park, which shone an interrogative arc light into racial attitudes among both black and white.

The article carries a lot of comment on the fact that playwriting mostly in the not-for-profit sector — the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago has put on seven of his plays – has not made him wealthy, he insists. He rents in Chelsea, New York, and should he so wish, he has enough to down tools for a couple of years. Not that he has. Later this year a new play for the Lincoln Center called Domesticated will feature a philandering US politician. Meanwhile, The Low Road emanates partly from his visceral shock at quite how much money other people have stashed away.

Analyzing this situation it is necessary to emphasize that even the pleasure of lecturing a captive audience for two hours has its drawbacks. “What I like is sitting there while the play is going on because no one takes the megaphone away from you. Then I have to put my clothes back on.”-said the playwright.

As for me I think that musical theatre is a form of theatre that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements of the works.I

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The article published on the website of the newspaper “The Thelegraph” on March, 21, 2013 is headlined “Book of Mormon: The new golden ageof the musical”. The article reports at length that as ‘The Book of Mormon’ reaches the West End and ‘Matilda’ hits Broadway, Matthew Sweet celebrates an unexpected renaissance .

It’s an open secret that the RSC’s musical version of Roald Dahl’s black little work Matilda is thriving in Covent Garden and gathering its skirts to do the same in New York. Once – an acclaimed Broadway hit adapted from a tiny Irish film that you probably never saw – makes the opposite journey next week. The Menier Chocolate Factory’s heartbreakingly brilliant revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along transfers next month from its modest home under a south London railway bridge to a grand venue in the West End. Tom Hooper’s film of Les Misérables, which has won more awards than Cosette has swept floors, remains resolutely on cinema screens, and the stage production is returning to Broadway next year.

It was revealed that there’s a clue to be found in Works and Days, a didactic poem written by Hesiod of Ascra in about 700 BC, a good few years before Barbara Dickson joined the cast of Blood Brothers. Hesiod asserted that the Greek world in which he lived was an Age of Iron: wretched, chaotic, debased. Long before this, however, there had been an Age of Gold, in which mortals lived like gods and everything was as upbeat as a first-act curtain number

The article carries a lot of comment on the fact that unlike the history of art, film or poetry, the history of musical theatre is essentially Hesiodic. Its Golden Age began on March 31 1943, when the curtain rose on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! to reveal not the customary line of chorines, but an old woman hunkering over a butter-churn as an unaccompanied voice sang Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’. From this moment, the old Broadway adage “no girls, no gags, no chance” was abandoned. Musicals were no longer adjustable frames upon which to hang a bunch of songs, they were the 20th-century answer to Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk – total works of art offering audiences coherent dramatic narrative, strong characterisation and music integrated with the action: a combination exemplified, in quick succession, by Kiss Me Kate (1948), South Pacific (1949), Guys and Dolls (1950), The King and I (1951) and West Side Story (1957).

Analyzing this situation it is necessary to emphasize that the Book of Mormon is acutely aware that the obituary of the musical has already been written. Its grinning paean to sexual and emotional repression – called Turn it Off – is an acknowledgement that its kind of theatre is often dismissed as glib and shallow. Its Ugandan village scenes exist to demonstrate the absurdity of using show tunes to make meaningful comment on African poverty, child soldiering or the Aids epidemic. Its sense of the musical as a worked-out, decadent, decomposing art is, perversely, the source of its monstrous vitality. On this evidence, I hope the musical stays dead. May it dance on its own grave forever.

As for me, I think that musical are very interesting and bright performances. We should visit them to relax and put aside all our problems. However, if you looks for knowledge and “food for thinking”, watch serious drama.

Pleasure Reading 28-36

Elinor and Marianne go on an errand to Gray's, the jeweler in town. They are annoyed by the presence of an impertinent coxcomb who stands before them in line and orders an elaborate toothpick case. As Elinor at last conducts her business, her brother enters the shop. John Dashwood confesses that he has been in town for two days but has not had time to visit his sisters. The next day, John pays a visit to his sisters at Mrs. Jennings's home. He takes a long walk with Elinor, during which he informs her that he would be very glad if she married Colonel Brandon. Elinor assures him that she has no intentions of doing so, but John insists on the desirability of the match. He also comments that Mrs. Ferrars expects her son, Edward, to marry the wealthy daughter of Miss Morton. Finally, Edward notes that Marianne's appearance has declined considerably in her time of misery, and thus she will no longer be able to find quite so wealthy a husband.

Fanny Dashwood is initially reluctant to visit the Dashwoods because she is unsure if Mrs. Jennings is sophisticated enough for her, but she consents upon hearing her husband's favorable report. Fanny enjoys the company of Mrs. Jennings, and especially enjoys the company of Lady Middleton. She decides to host a dinner party at her home on Harley Street. She invites the Dashwood sisters, Mrs. Jennings, the Middletons, Colonel Brandon, and Mrs. Ferrars. Elinor is very worried about meeting Edward at the dinner party, and is relieved to learn that he is unable to attend. She strongly dislikes Mrs. Ferrars, a sour and sallow woman who seems to care only about seeing her son Edward marry rich.

After dinner, the ladies withdraw into the drawing room. Much to Elinor's dismay, the subject of conversation is Harry Dashwood and Lady Middleton's second son, William, and whether one is taller than the other. When the gentlemen guests enter the room, John Dashwood shows off to Colonel Brandon a pair of screens that Elinor painted as a gift for her brother's family. Mrs. Ferrars insults Elinor's artwork and Marianne, furious at Mrs. Ferrars's rudeness, rushes to her sister's public defense. Colonel Brandon admires the "affectionate heart" of this girl, who cannot bear to witness her sister slighted.

Mrs. Jennings is called away urgently by her daughter Mrs. Charlotte Palmer, who is expecting the birth of a child. Meanwhile, Lucy Steele visits the Dashwoods to tell (brag to) Elinor how pleasantly surprised she was by Mrs. Ferrars's favorable behavior toward her (Lucy) at the party. In the middle of their conversation, the servant suddenly announces the arrival of Mr. Ferrars, and Edward walks into the room. He looks immediately uncomfortable upon realizing that both Lucy and Elinor are in attendance. Marianne, who does not know anything about Lucy's claims of an attachment to Edward, expresses her tremendous joy at his arrival. Marianne is surprised when Edward leaves so soon after, and remarks to Elinor that she cannot understand why Lucy calls so frequently (Lucy has also departed). Elinor, bound by her pledge of secrecy to Lucy, cannot offer a single word of explanation.

Mrs. Palmer gives birth to a son and heir, to the great pride and joy of Mrs. Jennings. Mr. Palmer, however, seems unaffected by the birth of his son and insists that the baby looks like all the other babies he has ever seen.

Fanny's friend, Mrs. Dennison, invites her and John to a musical party and extends the invitation to the Dashwood girls, under the mistaken assumption that the girls are living with their half-brother's family. There, Elinor is introduced to Mr. Robert Ferrars and discovers that he is the very same coxcomb who stood before her in line at the jewelers. At the party, it occurs to John to invite his sisters to stay at his house in London, but Fanny objects on the grounds that she had just been planning to invite Anne and Lucy Steele to visit. Elinor worries that perhaps this invitation is a sign that Fanny has decided to support Lucy's engagement to her brother, Edward.