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AuthorWren, Celia
Paid articleDreamland & Call My Agent (August 2019)
SCREEN Celia Wren It’s Not Just Us ‘DREAMLAND’ & ‘CALL MY AGENT’ Comedy is not supposed to travel well. It’s perhaps for that reason that, at a moment when world television is more accessible...
Paid articleA Royal Mess (January 2019)
TELEVISION Celia Wren A Royal Mess 'THE ROMANOFFS' You have to admire the premise of The Romanoffs, the ham-fisted new Amazon series by Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. Each of the episodes...
Paid articleWestworld (July 2018)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Violent Delights HBO'S 'WESTWORLD' Philosophy and theology professors around the world are surely drafting syllabi based on West-world, the HBO sci-fi epic about robots in...
Paid articleThe Americans (May 2018)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Travel Agents with a Side of Assassination 'THE AMERICANS' ON FX For years, the plotting in the FX series The Americans struck me as fun but implausible. The series, now in...
Paid articleThe Art of the Wasted Day (May 2018)
Celia Wren Leisure Suits Her The Art of the Wasted Day Patricia Hampl Viking, $26, 288 pp. It's a long way from the Oracle at Delphi to the modern communicative agent that is the iPhone. Yet...
Paid articleLate-Night TV Turns Political (February 2018)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Late-Night TV Turns Political IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES TILL AN IGNORANT CELEBRITY BECOMES PRESIDENT These days, I get mad a lot. I get mad when I hear about President Trump’s...
Paid articleThe Handmaid's Tale (July 2017)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Women's Work 'THE HANDMAID'S TALE' The brutality unfolds with a precision so choreographed it's worthy of Busby Berkeley. In the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian...
Paid articleMozart in the Jungle (March 2017)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Armed & Musical 'MOZART IN THE JUNGLE' Art and commerce have long been at war, but the battle is rarely fought at a toxic-waste facility with a pair of dueling pistols—as...
Paid articleHBO's The Young Pope (January 2017)
TELEVISION Celia Wren A Kangaroo in the Vatican HBO'S 'THE YOUNG POPE' The title ofHBO's The Young Pope suggests a tale involving power, prestige, glamor, and youthful vigor—themes likely to...
Paid articleChaplains (December 2015)
TELEVISION Celia Wren They’re Everywhere AMERICAN PUBLIC TELEVISION'S 'CHAPLAINS' The Daytona 500 may not usually spark road-to-Damascus moments. But it did so for Nick Terry, who spent over a...
Paid articleThe Year of Lear (October 2015)
Celia Wren Text & Context The Year of Lear Shakespeare in 1606 James Shapiro Simon & Schuster, $30, 365 pp. In 2007, a small theater company in Northern Virginia attracted national attention...
Paid articleMad Men (June 2015)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Road to Nowhere 'MAD MEN' Anyone who has watched all seven seasons of AMC's Mad Men might have found some irony in a striking image from one of the show's final episodes....
Paid articleGrantchester (January 2015)
TELEVISION Celia Wren CSI Cambridgeshire 'GRANTCHESTER' Have sermons ever featured so frequently in a television whodunit? The formulaic but likeable new mystery series Grantchester is hardly a...
Paid articleThe Leftovers (August 2014)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Poof HBO'S 'THE LEFTOVERS' Aterrible mystery has shattered assumptions, and the world will never be the same. That's the reality confronted by the characters in The...
Paid articleFargo (April 2014)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Cold Case 'FARGO' ON FX Some roads you shouldn't go down," a creepily self-assured hoodlum says in the pilot for FX's limited series Fargo. Gazing with almost hypnotic calm...
Paid articleThe Hollow Crown (September 2013)
SCREEN Failure, Succession, Success Celia Wren PBS'S 'GREAT PERFORMANCES: THE HOLLOW CROWN' Political leaders often seem like an alien breed of humanity. They voluntarily give up privacy. They...
Paid articleBroadchurch (August 2013)
Television Celia Wren Broken Compasses ‘Broadchurch’ If W. H. Auden were alive today, he’d be setting his TiVo to catch Broadchurch, the atmospheric, artfully methodical detective drama...
Paid articleGreat Expectations and the Great Charles Dickens Scandal (March 2013)
Celia Wren Family Guy Great Expectations The Sons and Daughters of Charles Dickens Robert Gottlieb Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25, 246 pp. The Great Charles Dickens Scandal Michael...
Paid articleThe Dust Bowl (November 2012)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Before FEMA KEN BURNS'S 'THE DUST BOWL' The language of the Bible haunts the latest documentary by Ken Burns. There are descriptions of "plagues" that sound like the book...
Paid articleCity of Bohane (September 2012)
Celia Wren Off the Map City of Bohane Kevin Barry Graywolf Press, $25, 288 pp. When you open City of Bohane, you’re opening not just a novel, but a Fodor’s guide to a metropolis—an eerie,...
Paid articleA GLAM-FREE GATSBY (April 2012)
Celia Wren A Glam-free Gatsby ‘Gatz’ There’s an elusiveness to Jay Gatsby, the figure who haunts F. Scott Fitzgerald’s best-loved work. Gatsby is a charismatic millionaire who blends into...
Paid articleInsoluble (April 2012)
Celia Wren Insoluble ‘THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD’ ON PBS “Taut ” is not an adjective one usually associates with Charles Dickens. The great English writer composed novels that brim with...
Paid articleLuck (January 2012)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Track Marks HBQ'S 'LUCK' The slam of a prison door is one of the first sounds you hear in Luck, the hyper-pedigreed new drama series that premieres on HBO on Sunday,...
Paid articleJourney of the Universe (December 2011)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Eyeopener 'JOURNEY OF THE UNIVERSE' ON PBS Painted stars splay across the ceiling of an old Greek church. A flower blooms in slow motion. Tree roots twine serenely round...
Paid articleHidden Battles (October 2011)
Hidden Battles Celia Wren War Torn It might seem odd to apply the term “understated” to a documentary that features gritty combat footage: gunfire- and explosion-wracked images from conflicts...
Paid articleProhibition (September 2011)
TELEVISION CeliaWren Dry Land KEN BURNS'S 'PROHIBITION' At my local CVS Pharmacy in Virginia, I can buy dental floss, nail polish, aspirin, and mailing envelopes. I can also purchase booze:...
Paid articleThe Hour (August 2011)
MEDIA CeliaWren Breaking News BBC AMERICA'S 'THE HOUR' If you took the DNA of the movies Broadcast News and The Thirty-Nine Steps, added a pinch of Mad Men mystique, and mixed it all together in...
Paid articleThe Sunset Limited (February 2011)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Beyond Black & White HBO'S 'THE SUNSET LIMITED' Here are some things you might expect to find on HBO: Prohibition-era gangsters. Post-Ka-trina New Orleans jazzmen....
Paid articleThe Calling (December 2010)
TELEVISION Celia Wren Praying for a Living PBS's 'THE CALLING' A tattoo of a cross shimmers on an African Methodist Episcopal minister's calf, a few inches above her red stiletto sandals. A...
Paid article31 Sherlock (October 2010)
MEDIA Celia Wren 'The Game's On' PBS'S 'SHERLOCK' In an age of Google Earth and Twitter, when Facebook knows more about you than your mother does, and advertisers track your every move online,...
Paid articleGod in America (October 2010)
MEDIA Celia Wren The New Jerusalem 'GOD iN AMERICA' Who knew that seventeenth-century Puritan John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts, allowed a reality-TV crew to follow him around? A...
Paid articleNeighbors from Hell (July 2010)
Media Celia Wren Sympathy for the Devil TBS'S 'NEIGHBORS FROM HELL' Dante's Inferno stands on its head in the mildly amusing, candy-colored series Neighbors from Hell, the first original...
Paid articleTreme (April 2010)
Media Celia Wren Urban Studies DAVID SIMON'S 'TREME' Because it's co-created by David Simon, the genius behind the justly extolled crime saga The Wire, the new HBO drama Treme faces a...
Paid articleScenes from a Parish (December 2009)
Media Celia Wren Feeding the Multitudes ‘SCENES FROM A PARISH’ Your eyes and ears tell you that Scenes from a Parish is a documentary. So does a source that might be more reliable:...
Paid articleA Streetcar Named Desire (November 2009)
Stage Celia Wren Mind Games ‘A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE’ Forget swine flu—is madness contagious? You might think so, after watching the Sydney Theatre Company’s riveting version of...
Paid articleThe Book of William (October 2009)
Celia Wren Conceits & Ribaldries Included The Book of William How Shakespeare’s First Folio Conquered the World Paul Collins Bloomsbury USA, $25, 288 pp. Twitter is altering the way we...
Paid articleThe National Parks (September 2009)
Media Celia Wren Nature’s Cathedrals ‘THE NAT IONAL PARKS’ ON PBS By now, you might think, celebrated filmmaker Ken Burns should be able to concoct historical documentaries in his sleep....
Paid articleKings (May 2009)
It's extreme-makeover time for a portion of the Old Testament—and the results are pretty swanky. Kings, a recently launched NBC drama, sets the story of David and Saul in a...
Paid articleThe No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (March 2009)
The rooibos tea industry is missing a terrific productplacement opportunity. HBO is launching The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, a seven-episode drama adapted from Alex ander McCall...
Paid articleThe Newseum (February 2009)
media Celia Wren Temple or Memorial? THE NEWSEUM OPENS IN WASHINGTON, D.C. These days the news business appears to be teetering precariously between extinction and a banal ubiquity. On...
Paid articleMad Men (October 2008)
media Celia Wren Costume Drama ‘MAD MeN’ oN AMc Marketing has become the lifeblood of American culture—witness this election season’s theat rics, from photo-ops...
Paid articleCry-Baby (June 2008)
Celia Wren More Square than Campy ‘cry-BABy’ Even the sleaze is wholesome in Cry-Baby, the bobby socks– perky new musical that re­ cently opened on Broadway. The show may be based...
Paid articleJohn Adams (March 2008)
Celia Wren Family Values HbO’s ‘JOHn AdAMS’ MostofmyknowledgeofAmer ican history comes from the musical 1776. Not that I didn’t study the subject in...
Paid articleRock 'n' Roll (December 2007)
Stage The Revolution Will Be Amplified Celia Wren TOM STOPPARD’S ‘ROCK ’N’ ROLL’ It’s odd to imagine Tom Stoppard as a fan of classic rock. Post-Romantic orchestral works, or maybe...
Paid articleThe Undertaking (October 2007)
Media Bringing Out the Dead Celia Wren FRONTLINE’S ‘THE UNDERTAKING’ For most of us, the profession of mortician would fall fairly low on a list of desirable employments. Choosing to...
Paid articleNot Remotely Controlled (October 2007)
of which he is president. Jailed by the Israelis during the first Gulf War, he read proofs in his cell for a book¡ªcoauthored with an Israeli scholar¡ªon the specifics of a two-state...
Paid articleThe Riches (June 2007)
Celia Wren Family Business 'THE RICHES' ~ Jay Gatsby would invite them to a party. Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany's fame would see them as kindred souls. They are the Malloys, the...
Paid articleThe Coast of Utopia (March 2007)
Ce lia Wren Literature & Revolution TOM STOPPARD'S 'THE COAST OF UTOPIA" ~ An ice-colored likeness of St. Basil's, the famed Russian ~ ~ church, seems to float in ~ ~ the air during part of...
Paid articleA Chorus Line (December 2006)
Ce lia Wren Without Missing a Step "A CHORUS LINE" RETURNS TO BROADWAY Sometimes existential philosophy circulates in university classrooms and libraries, or hangs out on the...
Paid articleStudio 60 on the Sunset Strip (October 2006)
Media TV Land r Celia Wren 'STUDIO 60 ON THE SUNSET STRIP" ~ * ~ t,. ~ It's ducers a good don thing t run television the govern- pro- characters' In the aftermath...
Paid articleThe Closer (July 2006)
Peter Kavanagh Northern Exposure THE "WAR ON TERROR" COMES TO CANADA M any Americans, preoccupied with the politics of their southern border, are accustomed to paying scant attention to...
Paid articleThe Threepenny Opera (May 2006)
eq O of comfort while resting in an infirmary. This pinpoint use of color may remind us of the moment in Schindler's List when the hero spots a little girl in a red coat fleeing the decimation...
Paid articleRabbit Hole Sweeney Todd (March 2006)
This page is...
Paid articleThe Colbert Report (January 2006)
Media Celia Wren Patriot Act THE COLBERT REPORT' A footnote to those year-inreview roundups from 2005: Let's hand a laurel to Brooks Brothers, the upscale clothier, for its contribution...
Paid articleAll in the Family (December 2005)
pleading, and lying. "If I leave here without understanding you," he tells the condemned man, "the world will see you as a monster--always. I don't want that." When a hasty death sentence...
Paid articleHBO's 'Rome' (September 2005)
Media Celia Wren Sex & the City HBO'S 'ROME' ~ They came; they saw; they conquered. They ordered 250 chain-mail tunics from India, and they sent Hollywood actors to boot camp. Yes, I'm...
Paid articleAlec Guinness (September 2005)
g O ga have a state." That means an "effective monopoly over the means of violence." The Iraqi Governing Council doesn't have that monopoly, and neither does the U.S. military. Many critics...
Paid articleHouse (July 2005)
Media ?a Celia Wren What the Doctor Orders 'HOUSE" ON FOX Can P. G. Wodehouse teach us anything about Fox TV? Maybe, if we're talking about House, the hit medical drama that for the benefit...
Paid articleDirty Rotten Scoundrels & Spelling Bee (June 2005)
Stage Celia Wren Good on Their Feet 'DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS' The art of the con is alive and well--just take a look at my mailbox. The latest Williams Sonoma catalog suggests that I buy a...
Paid articleThe Office (April 2005)
Im eq o because this exchange has a comedic bent. But they reveal something important about the characters: the hint of predatory menace in Flynn's pointed inquiry about the other nun's...
Paid articleThe Controversy of Valladolid & The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (March 2005)
he returns in time for the funeral, his insanity has been dispelled. Though Johannes no longer believes he's Christ, Jesus is now truly inside his head. And, because of his new clarity,...
Paid articleLost (February 2005)
bedroom--that evoke his forbidden and anguished desire. In a bar, flirting with Vickie, Walter plays with a napkin, making it into goofy puppet figures. Realizing the implications of what he...
Paid articleStage (January 2005)
The nifty scenic design by Peter J. Davison also accentuates some of the play's crucial motifs. Shelves of colorcoded files (oh, those efficient Germans!) line the walls of the set's lower...
Paid articleAnimal Planet (December 2004)
MEDIA Celia Wren NICHE TV Animal Planet beckons It was probably a mistake to start with the animal psychic. Admittedly, I stayed pretty skeptical as Sonya Fitzpatrick, the clairvoyant on the...
Paid articleBroadway (October 2004)
Celia Wren SHOWTIME PBS's 'Broadway' M usicals blow the dust off the soul," Mel Brooks remarks in the first moments of Broadway: The American Musical, tossing out an exuberant metaphor well...
Paid articlePrime Suspect (August 2004)
ducting a phone interview with an American academic who delivers a ranting screed against American imperialism, Al Jazeera's chain-smoking senior producer, Samir Khader, blasts his inter-view...
Paid articleJumpers Bombay Dreams Assassins (June 2004)
on Boone's extra-innings homer off Tim Wakefield. For Red Sox fans it's 1946, 1967, 1975, 1978, and 1986 all over again. How could we have let ourselves hope? Stricken, Angry Bill snaps off his TV....
Paid articleAir America (May 2004)
LIBERAL & LOVING IT Al Franken & Air America ull disclosure: I am married to a Republican. Learning his political affiliation was a bitter blow, fifteen years ago, when I'd just fallen in love,...
Paid articleIn the Cherry Tree (April 2004)
THAT '70s SHOW In the Cherry Tree I )(In Poi Celia Wren ou have to admire a writer who gets mileage from the word "the." That's one of the sly coups that up-and-coming author Dan Pope pulls in...
Paid articleArrested Development (March 2004)
From a spiritual standpoint (and, yes, a cinematic one), the irredeemably dangerous are uninteresting. What grabs our moral imagination and elicits our moral dread is humanity in motion—downward...
Paid articleThe Mysteries (February 2004)
Celia Wren PASSION PLAYS Brian Kulick's 'The Mysteries' anuary brings the doldrums to the New York theater world. The glitzy Broadway openings of the autumn are over; the spring's...
Paid articleLittle Shop of Horrors Wicked Bad girls (December 2003)
STAGE Celia Wren SHADES OF GREEN 'Little Shop of Horrors' & 'Wicked' Let's face it evil is much more interesting than good. Dante's Inferno seduces us like a terza rima thriller; the Paradisio,...
Paid articleDoctor Zhivago Makeover for a classic (November 2003)
A LEAN-ER VERSION Masterpiece Theatre's 'Doctor Zhivago' he movie Doctor Zhivago fed my early childhood terrors. The initial scenes in David Lean's celebrated 1965 epic include a wintry funeral...
Paid articleHBO's 'Carnivale' (October 2003)
Celia Wren DWARFS & SUCH HBO's 'Carnivale' A woman vomiting coins. A carousel whirling in a parched Midwestern desert. An embalmed human embryo blinking awake inside a jar. HBO's occultism-laden...
Paid articleSummer reading (June 2003)
Celia Wren Celia Wren, managing editor of American Theatre magazine, is Commonweal's stage and media critic. Any classification is superior to chaos," anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss wrote in...
Paid articleAll in the family (June 2003)
Celia Wren ALL IN THE FAMILY 'Long Day's Journey into Night' Written in tears and blood"- such were the words Eu-gene O'Neill used to de-scribe Long Day's Journey into Night, a monumental...
Paid articleApparitions & expletives 'Our Lady of 121st Street' & 'Vincent in Brixton' (April 2003)
STAGE Celia Wren APPARITIONS & EXPLETIVES 'Our Lady' & 'Vincent in Brixton' Hhe Lord's Prayer crops up in few contemporary plays -the meager oeuvre of thirty-eight-year-old Stephen Adly Guirgis,...
Paid articleSix Feet Under (March 2003)
Celia Wren IN PARADISUH HBO's 'Six Feet Under' If television series came with Latin epigraphs, HBO would own the rights to "Ft in Arcadia ego." What maxim could better sum up the themes of Six...
Paid articleSpam wars Unwanted e-mail (February 2003)
MEDIA Celia Wren SPAM WARS Battling the relentless Web tide As if generated by some cyber-sorcerer's apprentice, they seem more numerous each day. "After Christmas blowout sale the tiniest remote...
Paid articleWaving the flag (January 2003)
MEDIA Celia Wren WAVING THE FLAG PBS's 'Freedom' & A&E's 'Benedict Arnold' It's the best of times and the worst of times for Freedom: A History of US, the gravi-tas-laden PBS series that...
Paid articleFast & easy (December 2002)
S T A G E Deep wisdom dwells in the oeuvre of Billy Joel. Such, at least, is the implication of Movin'Out, the bizarre dance-theater concoction that opened on Broadway in October to a cavalcade of...
Paid articleTrick or treat? (October 2002)
Celia Wren TRICK OR TREAT? 'Sightings' & other special issues What is it with those amber waves of grain? Three months after M. Night Shya- malan's Signs wrung a parable of doubt and faith from a...
Paid articleThoroughly Modern Millie Fortune's Fool (June 2002)
Celia Wren THE SET'S THE THING 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' & 'Fortune's Fool' What child is here," the six-teenth-century poet Sir Philip Sidney wondered in a moment of theater-related skepticism,...
Paid articleElaine Stritch at Liberty The Last Five Years (May 2002)
Celia Wren STAGE STRUCK 'Elaine Stritch at Liberty' & 'The Last Five Years' Life is a performance that, for most of us, is all too rarely broken by applause. You're out of the spotlight- or, even...
Paid articleSurfing Beliefnet.com (April 2002)
Celia Wren SURFING BELIEFNET.COM Soybeans & other religious enthusiams 0eligious people like soybeans. That's the first lesson I gleaned from Belief-net (www.beliefnet.com), the intriguing,...
Paid articleThe longest day (January 2002)
Celia Wren MEDIA THE LONGEST DAY Fox TV's '24' The ticking clock-that staple of the thriller genre- delivers more than suspense in Fox's much hyped action series "24": It also delivers the...
Paid articleSherlockian apocrypha The thousand lives of Sherlock Holmes (December 2001)
MEDIA Celia Wren SHERLOCKIAH APOCRYPHA From Jack the Ripper to Fu Manchu Carole Nelson Douglas's latest mystery novel, Chapel Noir, involves a Rothschild baron, Jack the Ripper, a...
Paid articleMurder in Small Town X (September 2001)
MEDIA Celia Wren KILLER RATINGS 'Murder in Small Town X' Desperate times call for desperate measures—in television as in all other fields. As the vogue for reality programming continues...
Paid articleSpringtime for Broadway: Does singing and dancing give life meaning? (June 2001)
STAGE Celia Wren SPRINGTIME FOR BROADWAY 'The Producers/ '42nd Street/ & 'Stones in His Pockets' Like Genghis Khan across the Asian steppes, like the tulip in seventeenth-century Holland,...
Paid articleJudgment at Nuremberg Trappists: Two plays about moral accountability (May 2001)
STAGE Celia Wren DECISIONS, DECISIONS 'Judgment at Nuremberg' & 'Trappists' The dry ice is the first bad sign. In the minutes before the house lights dim at Broadway's Longacre Theatre,...
Paid articleMuddled road to glory:HBO's 'Boycott' (March 2001)
MEDIA Celia Wren HUDDLED ROAD TO GLORY HBO's 'Boycott' Don't believe what you read, and only half of what you hear," a rumor-wary civil rights activist cautions in Boycott, HBO's commendable...
Paid articleTake five: The documentary filmmaker who brought us "The Civil War" and "Baseball" turns his ear to America's most distinctive artistic achievement (January 2001)
Celia Wren TAKE FIVE Ken Burns's 'Jazz' Jazz, the musician Matt Glaser opines at one point in Ken Burns's reverent new documentary film Jazz, "is the ultimate temporal art form It's...
Paid articlePoetry.com (November 2000)
ahia Plays Bach's Goldberg Variations (Sony Classical). Perahia carries a legend of his own as Celia Wren baggage, from his early days as mop- haired player of romantic music by...
Paid articleWe have good books, too (October 2000)
M E D I mother (C.C.H. Pounder) and...
Paid articleSurvivor (August 2000)
out: 360-degree camera swings, splitscreen shots, slo-mo video footage, and R. Crumb-like cartoons, all set to a pounding techno beat through the streets of Berlin. The film replayed...
Paid articleThe idea's the thing (June 2000)
ters dip in boiling vats of wildflower dye, nimbly he sorts out the threads of the au- dible world: music and a warbling dove in Celia Wren a Tehran shop; a cat's low yowl; the tum-...
Paid articleDavid Copperfield (April 2000)
M E D I repetitious traits like the...
Paid articleWar in Heaven Discerning the spirit of computer games (March 2000)
Jesus Christ leads to eternal life,...
Paid articleThe Donkey Show (February 2000)
curate commentary upon it." This...
Paid articleThe Sopranos (January 2000)
and snorts in contempt once or twice. Finally, he throws the book to the carpet, shakes his fist at the heavens, and calls out to whatever cloud Graham Greene is floating on: "Will you...
Paid articleTaking on Hollywood (January 2000)
of PBS." (Daniel Schorr will get a chuckle out of that one.) Michael Mann's direction holds the wide-ranging story together, giving it the proper measures of panoramic sweep and microscopic...
Paid articleNBC's 'The West Wing' (December 1999)
MEDIA Celia Wren THE INSIDE DOPE(S) NBC's 'The West Wing' N othing thrills like falling in with the in-crowd, and you can't get much further in— politically, at least—than NBC's new White...
Paid articlePBS's 'New York' (November 1999)
CHILDREN'S BOOKS Revivals & new arrivals Daria Donnelly To the litany of persons who shaped this century, let me add the name E[dith] Nes-bit, whose stories precipitated a still evolving...
Paid articleDOSTOEVSKI'S SHADOW (September 1999)
and Desire was apprentice work, scarcely seen at all.) This gangster movie is nothing but an exercise in moviemaking-Kubrick teaching himself to shoot a boxing match, then a love scene,...
Paid articleGhost Stories (June 1999)
STAGE Celia Wren GHOST STORIES 'The Weir' & 'Civil War' Once upon a time, on a dark and stormy night, there was a story. And because there was a story, there were also ...
Paid articleOLDIES BUT (May 1999)
Celia Wren OLDIES BMT... 'Nightingales' & 'Annie Get Your Gun' t's because "nobody reads anymore," a man in the audience grumbled to his companion, moments before the start of Not about...
Paid articleNEW VISIONS (April 1999)
STAGE Celia Wren NEW VISIONS Lincoln Center crossdresses Like a physicist yearning for a grand unifying theory, Richard Wagner dreamed of a "total art" that would incorporate all...
Paid articleLOVE IN THE RUINS: 'The Blue Room' & 'Phedre' (February 1999)
STAGE Celia Wren LOVE IN THE RUINS "The Blue Room' & 'Phedre' It is blue. Audiences who were underwhelmed by The Blue Room—the London-born Nicole Kidman vehicle that landed on Broadway this...
Paid articleATTITUDE (January 1999)
STAGE Celia Wren ATTITUDE 'Electra & 'Wit' Hhe new Broadway Electra is a heroine with an attitude. Mourning for her father, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, years after her...
Paid articleMinimal Effects (January 1999)
CXEJC13 Celia Wren MINIMAL EFFECTS "Anna Karenina' & 'Moses, My Love" Hf insomnia were a room, what would it look like? What color would the walls be? What would the furniture look like—and the...
Paid articleSilence (November 1998)
emotional chrysalis, Elise projects candor and the discovery of inner strength beautifully. Best of all is the great veteran actress Beau Richards as a village elder who nurtures the spirits...
Paid articleAwash in puppeteers (October 1998)
o away with the actor," proclaimed the theatrical innovator Gordon Craig in the early years of this century, "and you do away with the means by which a debased stage realism is produced...
Paid articleDorothy Day: The Play (September 1998)
he stage is a lie," Voltaire said; "make it as truthful as possible." Often, a production's physical setting plays a role in luring us to accept a dramatic lie, the words and movements of...
Paid articleThe Herbal Bed & Golden Child (June 1998)
century or earlier. The supporting cast (including author McCabe as the town drunk) is uniformly apt but, though Jordan gets some nice moments from Eamon Owens as Francie, this novice actor...
Paid articleSaint Nicholas & Art (May 1998)
II ~ t is hard, it is hard indeed," a bored theater critic intones in Tom Stoppard's comic masterpiece The Real Inspector Hound, "and therefore I will not attempt, to refrain from invoking...
Paid articleCapeman Black Snow (April 1998)
director has but one task," the director Tyrone Guthrie once remarked; "to make each rehearsal so amusing that the actors witl look forward to the next one." While most directors (and...
Paid articleThe Nan Who Was Thursday & The Diary of Anne Frank (March 1998)
few months ago, two a shrewd ballet companies co-produced a dance version of Dracuta. The success of the vampire ballet is a curious--not to say monstrous--instance of a story sliding out of...
Paid articleThe Magician's Wife (February 1998)
alive cinematographer Roger Deakins, designer Dante Ferretti, and editor Thelma Schoonmaker--helped Scorsese to a visual exquisiteness that never becomes pompous or pseudo-mystical. And...
Paid articleThe American Clock A View from the Bridge (February 1998)
Celia Wren MILLER TIME 'The American Clock" & 'A View from the Bridge' he glittering ball that plummeted toward Times Square on New Year's Eve plunged into the middle of an Arthur Miller...
Paid articleThe Scarlet Pimpernel Triumph of Love Gross Indecency (December 1997)
Celia Wren LOOKING FOR SOUL 'The Scarlet Pimpernel,' 'Triumph of Love,' & 'Gross Indecency' About the French Revolution, Charles Dickens remarked that it is "a wonderful fact to reflect upon,...
Paid articleNo Mercy by Redmond O'Hanlon (October 1997)
HEART OF DARKNESS No Mercy A Journey to the Heart of the Congo Redmond O'Hanlon Knopf, $2750,461 pp. Celia Wren Stranded in the equatorial African forest, temporarily deserted by his guide,...
Paid articleWoza Afrika! (September 1997)
Celia Wren AFTER APARTHEID LiriColrl Ceiifer-> Afrikw • r happens when -yenr non out enemies? This plaintive ;.ut stion, uttered by one of ht protean figures in the :L. n: •i;:h:Africanone-act...
Paid articleTitanic Jekyll & Hyde Play On! (June 1997)
'Titanic,' 'Jekyll & Hyde' & 'Play On!' Celia Wren THE BROADWAY MUSICAL theater. Not that the two genres have ever been completely separate: Even the loopy French avant-gardist Antonin Artaud,...
Paid articleA Doll's House Stonewall Jackson's House British actress Janet McTeer gives life and liveliness to Ibsen's heroine (May 1997)
Celia Wren FROM NORA'S HOUSE TO OURS 'A Doll's House' & 'Stonewall Jackson's House' An armful of Christmas pres-ents launches Henrik Ib-sen's ADo//'s Howse(Belasco Theatre) on its perfect...
Paid articleThree Sisters They never get to Moscow, but they think about it-a lot (March 1997)
STAGE 'Three Sisters' Celia Wren THEY THINK, ERGO, THEY SUFFER Chekhov's The Prozorov sisters' much de-sired and eternally thwart-ed journey to Moscow gleams through Anton Chekhov's Three...
Paid articleTaking Sides Present Laughter (January 1997)
Celia Wren CAREFULLY STAGED LIVES 'Taking Sides' & 'Present Laughter' The Broadway production of Ronald Harwood's play Taking Sides, just closed, at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, begins with the...
Paid articleAuden by Richard Davenport-Hines (October 1996)
WHERE THE STRESS LIES Auden Richard Davenport-Hines Pantheon, $30, 406 pp. Celia Wren The poetry of Wystan Hugh Auden impresses itself on the mind before it does so on the ear. Weighty ideas...
Paid articleChekhov'S Plays by Richard Gilman (May 1996)
A critic worthy of Chekhov Chekhov's Plays Richard Gilman Yale University Press, $30, 261 pp. Celia Wren Chekhov is known for his dictum that a gun hanging on a wall in the first act of a play...
Paid articleThe Cunning Man Robertson Davies (September 1995)
SNIFFING IT OUT The Cunning Man Robertson Davies Viking, $23.95,469 pp. Celia Wren After presiding over a murderer's deathbed confession, the narrator of Robertson Davies's latest novel...
Paid articleAbsolute Truths, by Susan Howatch: (June 1995)
HIGH CHURCH FROLICS ABSOLUTE TRUTHS Susan Howatch Knopf, $25,564 pp. Celia Wren The world of Susan Howatch's Starbridge series- six novels about spiritual dilemmas and human theatrics within...
AuthorWRIGHT, ANNE K.
AuthorWright, Bishop John J.
AuthorWRIGHT, CHARLOTTE E.
AuthorWright, Chris
AuthorWright, Cuthbert
AuthorWright, Elliot
AuthorWright, Elliott
AuthorWright, Herbert
AuthorWright, Herbert F.
AuthorWRIGHT, JACK
AuthorWright, John H
AuthorWright, John H.
AuthorWright, John J.
AuthorWright, Lawrence
AuthorWright, T. Page
AuthorWright, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Elliott
AuthorWright:, Elliott
AuthorWroblewski, Ladislas
AuthorWrong, Terence
AuthorWrong, Terence H
AuthorWrzesien, Marguerite
RangeWt - Wz
LetterX
LetterY
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