Tag: 03.26.05

Theatre Of Major Reality

London’s Tricycle Theatre is staging a series of enactments of real events. “Critics have hailed the ‘tribunal’ productions as more revealing than any news report. For a start, we can go where cameras are banned. And, thanks to painstaking verisimilitude (every word in the script was spoken by the characters to whom they are attributed), the key players come alive. We see lawyers exchanging notes, water being poured, secretaries looking bored. Lights remain up during the performance, so you can’t help feeling implicated as witnesses lie or prevaricate.”

Where Are Those Trivial Books?

“In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote of the necessity of writing that covers all aspects of our lives, and of women, in particular, making the subject of what they know an honourable and serious one: ‘I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial’. Where are these books now, that hesitate at ‘no subject however trivial’? Despite the burgeoning interest in houses, gardens and cooking on television, in non-fiction and a certain kind of popular novel, in literature it seems we continue to gloss over the significance of home.”

Wanna See The Art? Wait Here.

The latest blockbuster exhibitions to hit London museums are drawing thousands of visitors who are apparently willing to spend hours waiting in the kind of lines one generally associates with Disney World. “Once inside, having paid £7.50 to see 16 paintings (or 47p a painting) visitors will share their view of each canvas with, on average, eight others. It is not, perhaps, the atmosphere of contemplative isolation that many regard as the ideal conditions under which to observe these masterpieces.” Still, most museum-goers seem to have anticipated the delays and overcrowding, and few are complaining.

Why Politicians Can Never Understand The Arts

People in the arts spend a great deal of time bemoaning the lack of governmental support, but is the ignorance of politicians really a great surprise? After all, the arts are everything that politics isn’t: subtle, nuanced, full of deep ideas and gray areas, and imbued throughout with a belief in the intelligence of the audience. “The [UK’s] Labour party used to justify its support of the arts rather as a 19th-century curate’s wife might advocate distributing informative pamphlets to the deserving poor, by their social usefulness… This approach, of course, swaps the robe of the wizard for the coat of the social engineer: it robs art of its chance to enchant.”

Rescuing Cities From Themselves

“Architects grab more attention with their imposing skyscrapers. But landscape architects are emerging as the heroes of modern urban existence. They reclaim the wastelands,” of which there are certainly no shortage in America’s big cities, and turn them into, well, whatever you like, really. “After 53 years, mountains of garbage piled 225 feet high on New York’s Staten Island have begun a slow transition to parkland… In Duisburg, Germany, a derelict iron mill was reborn three years ago as a sort of theme park of the Industrial Age… In Beirut, a Garden of Forgiveness (Hadiqat As-Samah) is being constructed on a 5.7-acre site that was reduced to rubble by Lebanon’s 16-year civil war.”

Art That Makes You Go ‘Huh?’

Everyday life in Toronto has gotten decidedly weird lately. “You may have stumbled recently across neatly wallpapered bus shelters, perhaps being attended by a primly dressed man in a crinoline skirt… Trees, at times, have worn sweaters. Fire hydrants have been garlanded in cake icing. There have been knitted cosies for bike locks and public phone receivers, dress-up parties in Trinity Bellwoods Park, and a well-tended garden of ferns growing from the toilets and urinals of Metro Hall. Tiny gold trophies have been affixed around town, engraved with the slogan ‘Good For You.'” Meet the Interventionists, artists determined to bring their work directly to the public, and to do so with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

An Opera House Worth Staying In Your Seat For

Copenhagen’s new opera house may not be a universally acclaimed architectural hit, but there is no question that its opening has invigorated the city. Moreover, operagoing in Denmark is clearly an experience considered to be worth savoring, as “arriving early and lingering late seem to be part of the experience,” a far cry from the dashes for the exits so common when the curtain rings down in New York and London. Could the jaded New Yorkers learn a thing or two from their Danish counterparts? “After a compelling performance at the Met, shouldn’t there be a natural tendency to want to share the moment with the audience, to bond, to cheer, to let out the pent-up intensity you’ve experienced with some lusty bravos?” One can only hope…

Beware The Ides of March. Or, Um, Steal Them.

Three of the four bronze sculptures making up a Philip Pavia sculpture known as ‘The Ides of March’ have been stolen from the New York City office building in which they were being temporarily housed while awaiting transfer to Hofstra University. The theft cannot have been easy, as the three stolen pieces weigh 600 pounds apiece. ‘The Ides’ was originally commissioned by the New York Hilton hotel, which displayed it at its entrance for more than a quarter-century.

Sweet Charity Turns Sour

The supposedly Broadway-bound revival of Sweet Charity starring Christina Applegate won’t be making it to New York, after all. Intial test runs of the show in Minneapolis, Chicago, and Boston garnered mixed reviews, and Ms. Applegate broke her foot midway through the Chicago run, further depressing already-slow ticket sales. Facing the possibility of an expensive Broadway flop, the producers pulled the plug this weekend.