Why is it that all those “fix-up” shows (Queer Eye… et al) make the apartments they redo look more or less the same? “Almost anywhere can be improved with a bit of judicious gardening, a slap of paint and some maintenance. No argument there. But the overarching pretension of some of these programs makes them vastly amusing. They aren’t just fixing up a place, they act as though they are saving the world.”
Tag: 11.12.03
Why Non-Profit Theatre Doesn’t Belong On Broadway
John Heilpern says the Manhattan Theatre Club’s latest offering is just more evidence why it’s a bad idea for non-profit theatre to go to Broadway. “The Manhattan Theatre Club’s expansion into Broadway at the Biltmore as another dangerous example of nonprofit-theater “Broadwayitis.” In my view, the entire purpose and lifeblood of the uncommercial theater isn’t to become part of Broadway, but to offer a radical alternative to it.”
ABT’s Bitchin’ Boys
Robert Gottlieb is impressed with the quality of male dancers at American Ballet Theatre. “The ranks of dazzling boys just keep swelling. Has there ever been an American company this strong in the male division? I think I’ve suggested it before: How about trading a couple of these guys for a world-class ballerina…”
Miami: We’re Banning Giant Puppets. Really?
“Over 100,000 protesters are expected at next week’s Free Trade Area of the Americas summit in Miami. In anticipation, the city is considering an ordinance that would, according to Reuters, ban “glass bottles, slingshots, signs on wooden sticks and giant puppets.” Can Miami really ban giant puppets?”
Greek TV Fined For Showing Men Kissing
A Greek TV network has been heavily fined after showing a program in which two men kissed. “The National Radio and Television Council which imposed the fine called the scene ‘vulgar and unacceptable’. But TV critic Popi Diamandakou called the decision ‘hypocritical’ after shots of Britney Spears kissing Madonna at the MTV Awards were repeatedly shown.”
Lloyd-Webber: West End Theatres At Disadvantage
Andrew Lloyd-Webber tells a parliamentary committee that London’s commercial theatres are at a big disadvantage to non-profit theatres. ” ‘We are not on a level playing field with the public sector’. He said central London’s theatres were crumbling while state-backed venues picked up grants to fund revamps.” There is a proposal to grant tax breaks to the theatres to help refurbish them.
Up With Southern Art (Whatever That Is)
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art opens in New Orleans. But just what counts as “southern” art? “I’m not aware that there is such a thing as Southern art, at least not if you’re defining it by technique. If there’s something distinct about it, it’s subject matter and also inner heritage. All Southerners who try to express themselves in art — whether it’s writing or painting or anything else — are very much aware that they are party to a defeat, which is something most other Americans didn’t feel until Vietnam.”
Digging Up “Little Rome”
“After 10 years of digging, ‘Little Rome,’ as the great Roman orator Cicero called it, is coming to light near Naples, in what could be the most important discovery of an ancient Roman town since the excavation of lava-entombed Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 18th century.”
Culshaw: The Real Problem With Jazz?
Peter Culshaw thinks he knows: “The real problem seems to me the disappearance of spontaneity and fun from the world of jazz. Marsalis’s attempt to turn jazz into America’s classical music often produces work that is respectable and bourgeois to the point of dullness. Yet take a look at the greats of jazz history, from Fats Waller to Billie Holliday and Miles himself, and you will nearly always find a sleazy undercurrent of sex and drugs.”
Cleveland Picks Up A Krasner
“The Cleveland Museum of Art closed a major gap in its collection last night by bidding $1.9 million at auction at Christie’s in New York for a mural-sized painting by American Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner. The price is a record for the artist, who died in 1984 at age 76.”